Global warming

[rockoon]

Also, when you point at error discovered by McIntyre, he is "just and statician" wich is an "Oil Industry businessmen" and who "confuses degrees with radians", so nothing he writes is worth of attention and that way the AGW's nuts never examinate the claims made by them (or Richard Lindzen). They just use the "paid by Exxon" argument.


Just a point of note here, because there is often a confusion about it.

McIntyre never confused degrees with radians. The research with that confusion was done by McKitrick and Michaels. (Also an "M&M")

You will often see forum and blog posters making this error but something even more disgusting is that supposed "media" articles try to link McIntyre in with the mistake through insinuation, if not being outright inaccurate. They begin by mentioning McIntyre and McKitrick's paper and then roll right into the error with McKitrick and Michaels paper.

Even on this forum one heavy-handed AGW proponent fell for this confusion when he tried to cast this aspersion at McIntyre and his blog. Instead of admitting to his mistake when it was pointed out, he cast even more aspersions to the character of McIntyre and at me as well.

[David Rodale]

Just a point of note here, because there is often a confusion about it.

McIntyre never confused degrees with radians. The research with that confusion was done by McKitrick and Michaels. (Also an "M&M")

You will often see forum and blog posters making this error but something even more disgusting is that supposed "media" articles try to link McIntyre in with the mistake through insinuation, if not being outright inaccurate. They begin by mentioning McIntyre and McKitrick's paper and then roll right into the error with McKitrick and Michaels paper.

Even on this forum one heavy-handed AGW proponent fell for this confusion when he tried to cast this aspersion at McIntyre and his blog. Instead of admitting to his mistake when it was pointed out, he cast even more aspersions to the character of McIntyre and at me as well.

So what does this say about the 'peer review' process?

[rockoon]

So what does this say about the 'peer review' process?

It says that some people will ignore problems with the peer review process, and even specific problems with peer reviewed papers, if their personal agenda is served by doing so.

You might find this interresting:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=McIntyre+degrees+radians&word2=McKitrick+degrees+radians

[mhaze]

It says that some people will ignore problems with the peer review process, and even specific problems with peer reviewed papers, if their personal agenda is served by doing so.

You might find this interresting:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=McIntyre+degrees+radians&word2=McKitrick+degrees+radians

That is indeed interesting, using googlefight to quantify disinformation or misinformation.

I never paid any attention to the argument itself because I was aware that McIntyre was a math whiz. IFFC he was the Canadian high school math champ. Which in turn means that whether he was a "certified climatologist" would not be relevant, one must just look at his work. And there, we are talking formulas.

His use of statistics is a bit difficult for me, without first some 10-20 hours of some background reading. However, he's got it all there for anyone to dig into...

As a general comment, there are probably several more "corrections" to the temperature series that will come from McIntyre's work.

[rockoon]

As a general comment, there are probably several more "corrections" to the temperature series that will come from McIntyre's work.

Yes, he doesnt seem to be even close to done with his audit of climate science.

Regardless of what unfolds over the next several decades specifically with the climate of this planet, McIntyres story will be very interresting.

A man who saw marketing behavior in a global warming research paper that would be illegal in many business sectors and who is now spending a good portion of his life methodically sifting through whatever climate data he can get his hands on (sometimes going to great lengths to get it, infact.)

He has done climate science a great service on more than one occasion, and inspite of not being a climate scientist, is now well respected by most of
the field. An official reviewer of the IPCC's fourth assessment report, and is now responsible for finding a major problem with NASA's publicly accessable climate data from the year 2000 to the present (a Y2K bug.)

I have no doubt that he will prove to be a notable figure in history. There are several climate scientists who wish he would just go away but its really their fault that their work is so shoddy.

[mhaze]

There are disreputable types who use Greenpeace to characterise the environmentally-concerned position.

WTF is the left of science? Rhetorical :) .

Actually that's a pretty good point. What is left of science? Arguably that might be interpreting science in terms of public policy that was statist in method, while right of science might be the opposite. But then I was really commenting on this "Exxon conspiracy" document's orientation, and that it was promulgated by UCS. So I did not review their website with the perspective of counting issues on which their take on public policy was more say, statist vs. individualist, or left vs. right (note that those are not very similar, too)

So I am not sure my comment had any merit. Because the one document was on the website, can we make a statement about UCS as a whole? No.

Plus UCS is on my bandwagon being pro-nuclear power so they are "the good guys".

Just to kick the IPCC dead horse one final time -

The one version of the IPCC Summary with sea level rise in "meters per century", millenia etc. is here (http://forums.randi.org/www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/media/4th_spm2feb07.pdf) -


www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/media/4th_spm2feb07.pdf

The version that can be currently downloaded from the website with sea level rise in "mm per year" is here (http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf).

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

One last google search this curiosity came up.

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/assets/200731222360.39IPCCErrorsMonckton.pdf

"Errors Covertly Corrected by the IPCC After Publication and Uncorrected Errors by Al Gore" by Mockton. (http://www.climatescience.org.nz/assets/200731222360.39IPCCErrorsMonckton.pdf)

Mockton says that he brought these errors to the IPCC attention and that resulted in the correction.

Sheessh.... We have no version control here? No problem with versions but it's pretty basic to enumerate them and state the differences between them.
I am moving on from the 20 foot sea level thingy. Doesn't mean I've conclusively demonstrated who said/when they said etc., just that I got tired of it.....:D

[mhaze]

It's impossible not to generalize when dealing with a complex topic in limited space. I think it's fitting that there is a lot of debate over the details of forumlating the IPCC report and the predictions it makes. I don't see much disagreement in the IPCC on the big picture item, that CO2 and other human activity are warming the planet.

Its true there is no real agreement and many unknowns on Greenland melt rates. What is agreed on is that much of the Greenland ice cap has melted with temperatures about 3 deg warmer then today and that would raise sea levels by about 6 meters (20 feet). 3 deg is also within the range of predictions due to CO2 warming. There is little agreement on how fast this melting could occur and the 3 deg of warming starts to get far enough into the future that there is a lot of uncertainty in the models.

Will it happen? It seems a likely possibility, but there is no agreement on when or how quickly so it doesn’t make the final reports predictions for sea level rise (and rightly so). Given the potential damage it’s still a risk that needs to be taken into account when deciding public policy.


You are also correct in pointing out that there is a lot of uncertainty about aerosols, but there is also a lot of agreement that they have a much shorter term effect then CO2. This means that CO2 warming, on which there is a lot of agreement, will continue to rise, while aerosol induced cooling of which there is a lot of uncertainty will be fairly stable. (This was part of the global cooling vs global warming debate in the 70's, both effects were known at the time but there was a lot if uncertianty over which was stronger. Today most people agree CO2 has a greater long term effect due to it's longer lifespan in the atmosphere.)

Let me use an air conditioned/central heated home as an analogy to the planet.

We've got some thermometers scattered around the house and they read differently within a range. We know if we add some insulation the house will retain more heat in the winter or keep it out in the summer. The exact change in a thermometer on going from 3" to 6" insulation isn't known, but everyone would agree there would be a change. We can calculate what the result should be but we also know from practical experience that the actual results will differ.

co2 == insulation.

Our central AC/heating unit has output measured in BTUs or watts. The thermometers only give us an indirect measure of the effectiveness of the "Insulation" on the BTUs.

Now consider the usefulness or lack of in proxies - tree rings, ice cores, etc. Scientists do their best to derive "temperature" from these proxies. So we have an estimate of past temperature (an indirect measure of heat capacity of the system) being compared with current thermometer readings (plus adjustments but let's not go down that road for now).

I'm thinking temperature is the wrong metric for global climate. Actual heat capacity in the system is the metric, right?

So why are scientists trying to get temperature proxies?:confused:

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I was among the firsts to tell Varwoche about that error in his claims, but apparently he was unable to read that because he used the "moron who confuses degrees with radians" argument for months after that.

Just a point of note here, because there is often a confusion about it.

McIntyre never confused degrees with radians. The research with that confusion was done by McKitrick and Michaels. (Also an "M&M")

You will often see forum and blog posters making this error but something even more disgusting is that supposed "media" articles try to link McIntyre in with the mistake through insinuation, if not being outright inaccurate. They begin by mentioning McIntyre and McKitrick's paper and then roll right into the error with McKitrick and Michaels paper.

Even on this forum one heavy-handed AGW proponent fell for this confusion when he tried to cast this aspersion at McIntyre and his blog. Instead of admitting to his mistake when it was pointed out, he cast even more aspersions to the character of McIntyre and at me as well.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

RECALL :I recall this claim. Reviewing the threads made apparent my mistake, it was not Varwoche and not in this forum. Apologies to him (but just for this one)


I was among the firsts to tell Varwoche about that error in his claims, but apparently he was unable to read that because he used the "moron who confuses degrees with radians" argument for months after that.

[varwoche]

I was among the firsts to tell Varwoche about that error in his claims, but apparently he was unable to read that because he used the "moron who confuses degrees with radians" argument for months after that. [/URL]Oh please. It's true that I confused the two in a discussion we had about M and M, and it's also true that I quickly acknowledged my mistake. [URL="http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1465138#post1465138"]Get over it (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1465138#post1465138).

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

See my previous message.
[/URL]Oh please. It's true that I confused the two in a discussion we had about M and M, and it's also true that I quickly acknowledged my mistake. [URL="http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1465138#post1465138"]Get over it (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1465138#post1465138).

[a_unique_person]

Let me use an air conditioned/central heated home as an analogy to the planet.

We've got some thermometers scattered around the house and they read differently within a range. We know if we add some insulation the house will retain more heat in the winter or keep it out in the summer. The exact change in a thermometer on going from 3" to 6" insulation isn't known, but everyone would agree there would be a change. We can calculate what the result should be but we also know from practical experience that the actual results will differ.

co2 == insulation.

Our central AC/heating unit has output measured in BTUs or watts. The thermometers only give us an indirect measure of the effectiveness of the "Insulation" on the BTUs.

Now consider the usefulness or lack of in proxies - tree rings, ice cores, etc. Scientists do their best to derive "temperature" from these proxies. So we have an estimate of past temperature (an indirect measure of heat capacity of the system) being compared with current thermometer readings (plus adjustments but let's not go down that road for now).

I'm thinking temperature is the wrong metric for global climate. Actual heat capacity in the system is the metric, right?

So why are scientists trying to get temperature proxies?:confused:

Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.

[David Rodale]

Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.

There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875

Let the ad hom attacks begin!

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875

Let the ad hom attacks begin!
Let's say....
His biotype is like an Oil Indudstry Businessman.
He has white hair.
He wears glasses.
He is from Alabama University, for god's sake!

How can you take him seriously.

[JoeEllison]

There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875

Let the ad hom attacks begin!
No need. It IS interesting to note the overlap between anti-AGW proponents and Intelligent Design proponents. It isn't cause to dismiss everything a person says out of hand, but it should be cause to stop and consider whether the person should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".
No need. It IS interesting to note the overlap between anti-AGW proponents and Intelligent Design proponents. It isn't cause to dismiss everything a person says out of hand, but it should be cause to stop and consider whether the person should be taken with a grain of salt.

[mhaze]

Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.

Because my simple analogy uses largely convective rs. radiative, the issue of the correct metric charges?

how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just tha

that is energy balance (BTUs) not temp right?

So the measure from proxies should be which?

[joobz]

Because my simple analogy uses largely convective rs. radiative, the issue of the correct metric charges?

how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just tha

that is energy balance (BTUs) not temp right?

So the measure from proxies should be which?
I do not think that a pure energy balance would give you the whole story either. You are correct that total heat of the system is important (not of all earth, but of the surface where we live). This is not the heat capacity. Heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to raise a material 1 degree of temperature(whatever unit you prefer).

the only way that total heat doesn't scale with temperature is if we have a reason to assume that the heat capacity of the environment has changed. This may be an interesting question, and one that may have been addressed.

But even if it wasn't addressed, the temperature actually aslo makes a difference as well. temperature relates to the speed of molecular motion/vibration. Higher temperatures relate to increased reaction kinetics due to increased energy of collisions. A reaction at equal temperature in medium of two different heat capacities are not expected to possess a significant difference in reaction rate. However, a reaction at two different temperatures will.

[JoeEllison]

Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".What's interesting is that you completely missed my point.

[lomiller]

Errors found in NASA temperature records.

Who was it again that said Steve McIntyre was not a "scientist"? Ha! Once again a statistician finds the errors. The question is, how many more "errors" are there?

These errors affect several details, including 1998 not being the warmest year in U.S. recorded history as well as decadal rankings.


What does this mean? Not a lot since we're talking about tenths of a degree, but the public (including forums such as this) has been inundated with "the hottest _______ since ________" mantra. Can we be spared that at least? Yes it's been warm, but nothing beyond natural variation. Higher temperatures wouldn't be either. What is especially interesting is NASA is scrambling right now and the finger pointing has likely already begun.

And just as a small jab, who is in charge of all this? That's right, Dr. James Hansen.

That’s what the peer review process is for, finding and fixing errors. The fact that errors are found does not reflect poorly on the process, and in this case the errors that were found don’t change the picture at all.

This only effects US temperatures to the tune of 0.15 deg C and global temperatures to the tune of 0.003 deg C. The topic is *global* warming and globally the warmest year on record remains 1998, or 2005 depending on what data set you use.

The bigger news this week is the fact that we have already matched the shocking lows established for Arctic sea ice in 2005. Those lows were huge news when they were announce and we already reached them with 6 weeks of melting left and are well ahead of the fastest melting predicted by global climate models.

This means we are on pace to see an ice free artic well before 2050, which was previously thought to be the soonest reasonable date.

[lomiller]

He has done climate science a great service on more than one occasion, and inspite of not being a climate scientist, is now well respected by most of
the field. An official reviewer of the IPCC's fourth assessment report, and is now responsible for finding a major problem with NASA's publicly accessable climate data from the year 2000 to the present (a Y2K bug.)

I have no doubt that he will prove to be a notable figure in history. There are several climate scientists who wish he would just go away but its really their fault that their work is so shoddy.


It’s not a Y2K bug. The data needs to be corrected for things like tome of day in order to be useful, but there was an issue with the way this correction was applied in the US data from 2000-2006 resulting in a small error in the mean temperature during that time. The error had negligible effect on the calculation of global mean.

IOW it changes nothing as far as the global climate debate goes other then to give people the opportunity to throw ad-hominems at one of the worlds leading climate researchers.

My question is why are people touting this if it has no impact on global temeprature calculations?

[lomiller]

Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".

There really isn’t many anti-AGW appearing in peer reviewed literature. Anyone who scans the major peer review journals will easily note the lack of anti-AGW papers. Lindzen is actually a good example, but not in the way you think. He hasn’t published on climate change in a peer review journal in over a decade.

Oreskes-2004 In a paper itself published in Science she reviewed 10 years of papers published in Science with the words “climate change” of the 928 papers not one was anti-AGW while 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the view that climate change was occurring and was caused by humans. Peer review came up with a handful of papers which may have vaguely been ant-AGW, but this still pales in comparison to the 100s on the other side.

In other words the peer review literatrue is very hevily weighted to one side in this debate. Hence the claim "our work is being surpressed" but how often have we hears that from people peddling fake science?

[mhaze]

I do not think that a pure energy balance would give you the whole story either. You are correct that total heat of the system is important (not of all earth, but of the surface where we live). This is not the heat capacity. Heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to raise a material 1 degree of temperature(whatever unit you prefer).

the only way that total heat doesn't scale with temperature is if we have a reason to assume that the heat capacity of the environment has changed. This may be an interesting question, and one that may have been addressed.

But even if it wasn't addressed, the temperature actually aslo makes a difference as well. temperature relates to the speed of molecular motion/vibration. Higher temperatures relate to increased reaction kinetics due to increased energy of collisions. A reaction at equal temperature in medium of two different heat capacities are not expected to possess a significant difference in reaction rate. However, a reaction at two different temperatures will.

No kidding. Here in Texas depending on the color, an item left outside in the sun can have a surface temperature ranging in the summer from 140 to 180 degrees. No GW needed!

But you and AUP may have missed my point so let me restate it.

Current method -
1. It is desirable to compare the past with the present.
2. So we analyze ice core and tree rings very carefully.
3. From that analysis we know the energy balance of that era measured.
4. From that we infer temperature.
5. Now we can compare the indirect measurement of energy balance indirectly transformed to temperature to modern temperature.

Preferred
1,2,3 as above.
4. Compare historical energy balance with present.

Right or wrong ("WTF? Who knows" also a possible response:))

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

That wouldn't be the first time. What was your point?.

What's interesting is that you completely missed my point.

[mhaze]

That’s what the peer review process is for, finding and fixing errors. The fact that errors are found does not reflect poorly on the process, and in this case the errors that were found don’t change the picture at all.

This only effects US temperatures to the tune of 0.15 deg C and global temperatures to the tune of 0.003 deg C. The topic is *global* warming and globally the warmest year on record remains 1998, or 2005 depending on what data set you use.

The bigger news this week is the fact that we have already matched the shocking lows established for Arctic sea ice in 2005. Those lows were huge news when they were announce and we already reached them with 6 weeks of melting left and are well ahead of the fastest melting predicted by global climate models.

This means we are on pace to see an ice free artic well before 2050, which was previously thought to be the soonest reasonable date.

No disrespect intended, but this does sound like a rehash of Gavin (spelling??)'s take on the matter over at Realclimate.

But what exactly is this that we should worry about concerning sea ice? I thought the final nail on Greenland's coffin was hammered shut around page 6 or 7 in this thread. Granted there is more ice up there than Greenland, but why is this reallly important?

[rockoon]

The error had negligible effect on the calculation of global mean.


What does that have to do with anything?


IOW it changes nothing as far as the global climate debate goes other then to give people the opportunity to throw ad-hominems at one of the worlds leading climate researchers.


Lets give bad science on one issue a pass because it doesnt significantly effect a different issue. :rolleyes:

It is clear that climate science needs independent auditing since many problems have been discovered via independent auditing. Agreed?

How can the peer review process even begin to work when the scientists involved in a paper obstruct attempts to gather the data they used, even though the policy of the publication they are submitting to is infact that their data must without question be archived and made available?

This is a clear problem with the peer reiew process in climate science. The scientists dont even have to follow the policies which are meant to allow the peer review process to work. Some of the scientists are guilty of not complying with these policies (Jones et al, for example), and most of these publications are guilty of not enforcing their own policies.

I would dare say that many of these "peer reviewed" papers were NEVER peer reviewed because it simply was not possible to peer review them at the time of publication.

As far as NASA, they still refuse to reveal their methodology for making "corrections" to their data. Any paper which uses the data cannot be in compliance with peer review standards which require this methodology to be open.

Now, how many papers do you suppose used the inaccurate data? How many papers cited papers that used the uncorrected data? How many papers cited those papers? and so on.. a tangled web with bad data at the core. You might want to dismiss the problem, but real science doesn't.

A lot of work needs to be revisited, and rightly so, because of an "oil executive"


My question is why are people touting this if it has no impact on global temeprature calculations?

Headline Whores.

Something to consider though is that if problems like these are common enough to be found by an "oil executive" but not by "real scientists" then there is a very good chance that there are many more problems to be discovered and we have to wonder about the veracity of those "real scientists"

[mhaze]

Suppose someone wants to verify a study that used the old NASA data.

Oops. That data seems to have vanished. There is no data retention policy.

But, hey, surely they realize this and will fix it?:boxedin:

[a_unique_person]

Suppose someone wants to verify a study that used the old NASA data.

Oops. That data seems to have vanished. There is no data retention policy.

But, hey, surely they realize this and will fix it?:boxedin:

Would you do me a favour? Go through all the papers published in all the journals over the past 100 years in all areas of science, and see how many sets of source data are still available for them.

[Rob Lister]

Would you do me a favour? Go through all the papers published in all the journals over the past 100 years in all areas of science, and see how many sets of source data are still available for them.

Do me a favor, go through all the dendroclimatology papers published in the last 20 years and see how many complete sets of source data have ever been made available. Ditto for detailed methodology.

[mhaze]

There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875


Looking at the review, and not having access to the actual article, it is indeed interesting. They've studied cirrus clouds under a proxy of global warming, a 30-60 day tropical weather cycle. Going from memory here (being currently disgusted with the IPCC reports I ain't looking stuff up therein) the computer models don't deal with clouds very well, but presume cirrus is a positive feedback in GW, while low level cumulus is a negative feedback-which sounds roughly reasonable.

Spencer asserts that there may be little or no positive feedback from cirrus, hence clouds would predominately create negative feedbacks. That in turn implies that if temperatures go up, clouds moderate that temperature increase, instead of accelerating it.

[mhaze]

Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".

LR, you had linked to a number of studies on solar influences.

Have you read the recent paper by Lockwood et al (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf)that asserts the net influence of solar in the last couple of decades is nil? Also the rebuttals to that paper. This is a paper that many have thought put an end to the subject of solar as a recent primary driver of warming.

I've got the several rebuttals downloaded but didn't save the links because they were in the discussion at www.climateaudit.org. That's currently got DOS attacks followed by having been slashdotted and linked through by Instapundit.com. Maybe it's time to offer to set up a mirror site.

Anyway, in a day or two I can get the rebuttals links back, if no one else has them.

[Rob Lister]

I've got the several rebuttals downloaded but didn't save the links because they were in the discussion at www.climateaudit.org. That's currently got DOS attacks followed by having been slashdotted and linked through by Instapundit.com. Maybe it's time to offer to set up a mirror site.

A bit off topic but it could be there was no actual DOS attack. Not only did Steve and CA get slashdotted and instapundited, they got Rush L'ed (13m+ listeners) and Brit Hume'd (1.9m+ watchers). It's no wonder they're down. His [hosted] servers were nowhere near ready for that kind of traffic.

[mhaze]

A bit off topic but it could be there was no actual DOS attack. Not only did Steve and CA get slashdotted and instapundited, they got Rush L'ed (13m+ listeners) and Brit Hume'd (1.9m+ watchers). It's no wonder they're down. His [hosted] servers were nowhere near ready for that kind of traffic.

:eek:

Well tell them all to go away so I can get my links.

[fortuneteller]

I guess if every scientist doesn't agree 100% with every other scientist, then the bulk of the evidence can be thrown out?

You sound like one of those "evolution is a theory in crisis" creationists.

telling yourself a thing isnt so doesnt make it go away ...:rolleyes:

[JoeEllison]

telling yourself a thing isnt so doesnt make it go away ...:rolleyes:
That's what I'm saying. The anti-AGW position is wrong, and pretending that there is strong scientific evidence against reality doesn't make that position any less wrong. Being resistant to the reality of AGW has taken on cult-like status for some folks, and for most of them it has certainly clouded their judgment.

Oh well... I can't un-brainwash Scientologists or Creationists either.

[Rob Lister]

The anti-AGW position is wrong, ...

Depending on the exact nature of the position, that may or may not be the case.

For example, one "anti-AGW" position might be that 1998 was not the warmest year of the century. Is that position wrong?

[varwoche]

Depending on the exact nature of the position, that may or may not be the case.

For example, one "anti-AGW" position might be that 1998 was not the warmest year of the century. Is that position wrong? News flash: Globally, its still the case that it's either 1998 or 2005. The tempest in a teapot (which Mcintyre deserves credit for notwithstanding) involves only US temperature records.

[Rob Lister]

News flash: Globally, its still the case that it's either 1998 or 2005. The tempest in a teapot (which Mcintyre deserves credit for notwithstanding) involves only US temperature records.

News flash: I am aware of that but the point remains. There are many positions. Each position must be weighed on its own merit...independently of the person stating the position.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

You mean "Professor Lindzen who is is a dynamical meteorologist with interests in the broad topics of climate, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, and hydrodynamic instability. His research involves studies of the role of the tropics in mid-latitude weather and global heat transport, the moisture budget and its role in global change, the origins of ice ages, seasonal effects in atmospheric transport, stratospheric waves, and the observational determination of climate sensitivity. He has made major contributions to the development of the current theory for the Hadley Circulation, which dominates the atmospheric transport of heat and momentum from the tropics to higher latitudes, and has advanced the understanding of the role of small scale gravity waves in producing the reversal of global temperature gradients at the mesopause. He pioneered the study of how ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and dynamics interact with each other. He is currently studying the ways in which unstable eddies determine the pole to equator temperature difference, and the nonlinear equilibration of baroclinic instability and the contribution of such instabilities to global heat transport. He has also been developing a new approach to air-sea interaction in the tropics, and is actively involved in parameterizing the role of cumulus convection in heating and drying the atmosphere. He has developed models for the Earth's climate with specific concern for the stability of the ice caps, the sensitivity to increases in CO2, the origin of the 100,000 year cycle in glaciation, and the maintenance of regional variations in climate. In cooperation with colleagues and students, he is developing a sophisticated, but computationally simple, climate model to test whether the proper treatment of cumulus convection will significantly reduce climate sensitivity to the increase of greenhouse gases. Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, and AGU's Macelwane Medal. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, a member of the NRC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and a Fellow of the AAAS1. He is a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60, Harvard University)"
(http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm) ?

There are many papers, as I listed. I guess that if the "climate" for dissenting scientist were more friendly you could find more, as you do in chinese and russian P.R. magazines.
I can compile a lists of first class meteorologists and climate scientists who dissent about AGW but I'm pretty sure that it would be ignored as usual and it can be seem as an appeal to autority, so what's the point?

And about the social scentist Oreskes, I'd rather look at Benny Peiser.


There really isn’t many anti-AGW appearing in peer reviewed literature. Anyone who scans the major peer review journals will easily note the lack of anti-AGW papers. Lindzen is actually a good example, but not in the way you think. He hasn’t published on climate change in a peer review journal in over a decade.

Oreskes-2004 In a paper itself published in Science she reviewed 10 years of papers published in Science with the words “climate change” of the 928 papers not one was anti-AGW while 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the view that climate change was occurring and was caused by humans. Peer review came up with a handful of papers which may have vaguely been ant-AGW, but this still pales in comparison to the 100s on the other side.

In other words the peer review literatrue is very hevily weighted to one side in this debate. Hence the claim "our work is being surpressed" but how often have we hears that from people peddling fake science?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I read the paper and what is amazing is that the closest model to the recent descent in temperature is the one by the two chinese guys I posted before. Piers Corbyn (I expect the ad-homs to begin now) have a interesting view on that, but it would be great if you can posts the links you mention.
Climate audit is still down, I guess that "an Oil corporation" can restore the site ASAP, but it seems that the "millions of dollars" they dedicate to "distort science" aren't working.


LR, you had linked to a number of studies on solar influences.

Have you read the recent paper by Lockwood et al (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf)that asserts the net influence of solar in the last couple of decades is nil? Also the rebuttals to that paper. This is a paper that many have thought put an end to the subject of solar as a recent primary driver of warming.

I've got the several rebuttals downloaded but didn't save the links because they were in the discussion at www.climateaudit.org. That's currently got DOS attacks followed by having been slashdotted and linked through by Instapundit.com. Maybe it's time to offer to set up a mirror site.

Anyway, in a day or two I can get the rebuttals links back, if no one else has them.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I just got my eyes about a delicious article by Orson Scott Card (ad homs start here) .....


All in a Good Cause
By Orson Scott Card

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.

An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."

The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.

Well, that's not acceptable.............

Full article at http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/070313goodprint.html

[varwoche]

the recent descent in temperature Is this the "recent descent" you refer to...?

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_225846b35451642ea.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7428)

Of course during this "recent descent" we have the warmest 6 years in the past century, those being 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 1998. link (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html) link (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/) :confused:

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Amazing, I tought you was in agreement with sentences like "climate is not weather".....and that "model's can't forecast a particular year of temperature".
I guess that there is a needed recheck of the graphs you are using. For details go to the last link on my signature.

[varwoche]

Amazing, I tought you was in agreement with sentences like "climate is not weather".....and that "model's can't forecast a particular year of temperature".
I guess that there is a needed recheck of the graphs you are using. For details go to the last link on my signature. No sale LR. You're the one who posted "recent descent". What in Odin's name is this based on?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

wAIT - ...... 15 MINUTES

[CapelDodger]

Actually that's a pretty good point.

Is a rhetorical question a "point"? Let's not get into that.

What is left of science?

Plenty, despite some people's best efforts.

Arguably that might be interpreting science in terms of public policy that was statist in method, while right of science might be the opposite. But then I was really commenting on this "Exxon conspiracy" document's orientation, and that it was promulgated by UCS.

Exxon's activites have also prompted a letter from the Royal Society

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business.

Is the Royal Society on the left, as you understand (and used) the term? It was de facto radical back when established society was grounded on unscientific principles, but not so much today, when it isn't. Not least because of such institutions as the Royal Society. Respect.

(Notice how the sub-editor's paw-marks are all over the above referenced piece. The Royal Society "tells" a jumped-up colonial corporation to behave. In the teaser (usually a sub's contribution, even when the writer provides a perfectly good one) it "challenges" Exxon. In the next paragraph - the writer's own teaser, and better than the sub's, quelle surprise - it "demands" that Exxon not continue to promote the misrepresentation of science.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm pretty dubious about any institution - from religion, through corporation, to web-site - which is in bad odour with the Royal Society. It's a rule-of-thumb sort of thing.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I first posted a reference but the source was linked from a non-respectable source (f*cking ID'rs) . It seems that the NASA corrected datasets found by McIntyre aren't available yet (for Global temperature, for just US they are updated and now shows something interesting http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/09/hot-news-nasa-fixes-flawed-temperature-data-1998-was-not-the-warmest-year-in-the-millenium/). So for now I'll post some datasets who shows that the temperature is just stable:

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsRSS.html
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe-m.html

[CapelDodger]

No sale LR. You're the one who posted "recent descent". What in Odin's name is this based on?

Was, 2006 was cooler than 2005, and the results for 2007 aren't in yet so it might be cooler than 2005. There are La Nina precursors, which are cooling, and a probable end to the Australian drought, which is also cooling. On the other side of the balance, Arctic ice is on the low-side, but that's likely to have less impact. After all, the Arctic is pretty damn' small and oblique and most of the impact will be directly on the Arctic Ocean, which can, of course, suck up a lot before it shows any signs of noticing.

Two years of not being warmer than 2005 would certainly be recent.


Global warming: Met Office predicts plateau then record temperatures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/10/weather.uknews


Powerful computer simulations used to create the world's first global warming forecast suggests temperature rises will stall in the next two years, before rising sharply at the end of the decade.


Looks like the 9 bad years for AGW is set to reach 11. If you have any faith in models, of course. Which these guys clearly do, with gusto. This is cock-on-the-block stuff. It's not Lindzen's sliding "cooling phase within a decade", this is straight-up short-term stuff. With a bit of luck we'll all be here to assess it in five years time.

My own prediction for 2012 is that Lindzen's decade will still be sliding away into the future, whereas Hansen's decade will have halved. And there'll be no more talk of existing cooling trends.

[CapelDodger]

No question bout one thing.

Reality is a lot stranger than fiction.

No, it isn't. Reality just keeps going on, and on a human level it's easily predictable. The strangeness of fiction is market-driven to some extent, but the extremes are best mapped against the mind-altering substances available and fashionable at any given time and place. Reality - on a day-to-day basis - just plods along. Historians 50 or 100 years up the line won't see anything strange in what's going on now. Peculiar yes, but everything's peculiar to its circumstances.

[a_unique_person]

Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".

Except that the actual papers that Lindzen has had published on anti AGW are as scarce as hen's teeth.

[mhaze]

Except that the actual papers that Lindzen has had published on anti AGW are as scarce as hen's teeth.

Straw men on both sides -

Show me either AGW or anti AGW

Grape Ripening as an Indicator of Past Climate
Full Carbon Account for Russia
Temperature trends in the lower Atmosphere
Greenhouse Molecules, their Spectrum and function In the Atmosphere

etc.

Aw/ anti AGW rhetoric is inappropriate in scientific articles!

[mhaze]

[FUN]

I just got my eyes about a delicious article by Orson Scott Card (ad homs start here) .....


Full article at http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/070313goodprint.html


:D:D:D

Should be required reading for high school students.

Then show'em Incon Truth.

[CapelDodger]

2007-9=1998, which includes 1998. Taking away the El Nino effect (not related to GW), and there was no warming. The temperatures have actually been trending downward.

So, if I understand you right, it's '98 with the El Nino effect for the "nine bad years" and '98 without the El Nino effect for "no warming since 1934"? That's in the contiguous United States (I think that's the correct term), of course.

In passing, how does one calculate the El Nino effect in order to take it away?

Just as 1998 was anomalous globally (because of the very strong El Nino), 1933-35 was anomalous in the US because of the great drought in the Mid-West and the dust-storms it generated. The vagaries of weather made 1934 the warmest, by the measurement standards of the time.

Get over it. The data was false, we aren't seeing "unprecedented" warming and your CO2 warming hypothesis has more holes than a Windows security patch.

That's quite a leap, from this small error in some US data to the collapse of the AGW theory, and of global warming in its entirety. Rather fanciful, IMO. You need to fill in some of the gaps. Such as, for example, where all that ice has gone if it hasn't melted.

[CapelDodger]

Have you read the recent paper by Lockwood et al (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf)that asserts the net influence of solar in the last couple of decades is nil? Also the rebuttals to that paper. This is a paper that many have thought put an end to the subject of solar as a recent primary driver of warming.

So we have a peer-reviewed paper in one corner, and rebuttals that seem a bit too prompt to be peer-reviewed in the other corner.

I know which way the smart money's going.

[a_unique_person]

:D:D:D

Should be required reading for high school students.

Then show'em Incon Truth.

??? He has created a work of total fiction based purely on his opinion of what someone is 'really' thinking.

[mhaze]

??? He has created a work of total fiction based purely on his opinion of what someone is 'really' thinking.

I assume you meant the essay.

My opinion is the two are equal.:)

[a_unique_person]

I assume you meant the essay.

My opinion is the two are equal.:)

You are comparing a work of fiction to peer reviewed science?:confused:

[mhaze]

AUP, I wonder if we are communicating.

I was saying that the essay linked to, could be shown alongside of Gore's "documentary" . Surely that film is not considered by most to be peer reviewed or even...science.

[mhaze]

Exxon's activites have also prompted a letter from the Royal Society

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business.

Is the Royal Society on the left, as you understand (and used) the term? It was de facto radical back when established society was grounded on unscientific principles, but not so much today, when it isn't. Not least because of such institutions as the Royal Society. Respect.

(Notice how the sub-editor's paw-marks are all over the above referenced piece. The Royal Society "tells" a jumped-up colonial corporation to behave. In the teaser (usually a sub's contribution, even when the writer provides a perfectly good one) it "challenges" Exxon. In the next paragraph - the writer's own teaser, and better than the sub's, quelle surprise - it "demands" that Exxon not continue to promote the misrepresentation of science.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm pretty dubious about any institution - from religion, through corporation, to web-site - which is in bad odour with the Royal Society. It's a rule-of-thumb sort of thing.

I've seen it alleged that the Royal Society was on the left, but to me this is quite meaningless. Here's why. I could and did easily look up Union of Concerned Scientists and verified that by USA standards, they tilt to the left in their platforms and public policy recommendations. That's easy to do, if one is familiar with the various categories of zoo animals that inhabit both of the primary political parties. With Great Britian I would be an idiot to presume such familiarity. I don't have even a clear understanding of what "leftist" means in the context of your society.

But I believe this issue of the Exxon conspiracy myth goes beyond that and here's why. Assume that some years ago, a lot of people believed on what seemed plausible evidence that (a) the world was warming (b) we caused it (c) something like the Kyoto deal would fix it. Ergo, a "statist solution" not private enterprise was required. The Royal Society believed that. That put them immediately at odds with Exxon. Exxon obviously didn't believe in (c) at the minimum.

Now today, we have factual data on Kyoto's economic impact and lack of tangible results. The situation is different today, right? Reasonable "left leaners" Royal Society included one would think would be saying "Oh, Kyoto's a boondoogle, let's do something different and try to fix the problems".

But they don't. They keep right on promoting Kyoto, carbon credits, carbon offsets, higher taxes and higher utility bills, in the name of "solving global warming"...

That means it hard for me to equate the political position of AGW with "tax and spend", which even if one does not like it philosophically is understandable and a traditional leftist position.

Kyoto, carbon credits and offset trading are beginning to smell like just "tax and steal". Once the data comes in that these economic systems are flawed, then people who continue promoting them become suspicious.

And given that trillions of dollars of taxes and higher utility costs and offset/credits are implied, I have zero - zero - sympathy with any researcher that wants to obfuscate his research data or computational methods, or who refuses to reveal them very promptly.

The recent discovery by McIntyre of temp errors gives us all a chance to check the blogosphere - directly, say through checking DailyKos, Michel Malking, Rush Limbaugh, RC, etc or even more directly, through Technorati. This provides a way right now to see how the left and right slant and spin an issue related to AGW. There is in fact a huge difference there - it's quite obvious.

The Republicans are pro nuclear/anti Kyoto type deals, the Democrats are anti nuclear power/pro Kyto type deals. The conclusion seems irrefutable that of the two parties the one that can "fix AGW" is the Republicans, which is curiously non intuitive (and I'm sure this statement will evoke a lot of responses). That's US politics, and I don't want to dwell on strictly US stuff here, since we have contributors from all over.

Personally I've tried to apply an engineering mindset to the issue of AGW and I'm very much opposed to "alarmist AGW". Also anyone who would be unhappy if AGW was proven by science to be only 20% CO2 related and the rest being a mix of land useage, data errors and the like - such a person (bruised ego issues nonwithstanding), is one sick puppy.

We should all think it is a good thing if the planet is diagnosed healthy not with a chronic serious illness. But obviously some prefer the serious illness. And they are the ones that want to take our money....

So wasn't Exxon right, and the Royal Society wrong?:confused:

[lomiller]

AUP, I wonder if we are communicating.

I was saying that the essay linked to, could be shown alongside of Gore's "documentary" . Surely that film is not considered by most to be peer reviewed or even...science.

For the most part it agrees with the peer reviewed science. Most people doing peer reviewed science don’t belong on the political stage so if we ignore what people have to say just because they are bringing you someone else science rather then their own we will never get very far.

[CapelDodger]

I've seen it alleged that the Royal Society was on the left, but to me this is quite meaningless. Here's why. I could and did easily look up Union of Concerned Scientists and verified that by USA standards, they tilt to the left in their platforms and public policy recommendations. That's easy to do, if one is familiar with the various categories of zoo animals that inhabit both of the primary political parties. With Great Britian I would be an idiot to presume such familiarity. I don't have even a clear understanding of what "leftist" means in the context of your society.

Well over here we have the Labour Party, or as you'd describe them, the Socialists, and the Conservative Party or, as you'd describe them, the Socialists. In between, and slightly to one side, is another Socialist Party called the Liberal Democrats.

But I believe this issue of the Exxon conspiracy myth goes beyond that and here's why. Assume that some years ago, a lot of people believed on what seemed plausible evidence that (a) the world was warming (b) we caused it (c) something like the Kyoto deal would fix it. Ergo, a "statist solution" not private enterprise was required. The Royal Society believed that. That put them immediately at odds with Exxon. Exxon obviously didn't believe in (c) at the minimum.

Nobody has ever contended that Kyoto would fix the problem. The intention was to establish a principle and a framework under which some real impact would be possible in the future.

Kyoto sets targets, not policies. The policies that have been introduced are intended to recruit private enterprise and the market system - which is never without distortions - to the cause of meeting those targets.

Now today, we have factual data on Kyoto's economic impact and lack of tangible results. The situation is different today, right? Reasonable "left leaners" Royal Society included one would think would be saying "Oh, Kyoto's a boondoogle, let's do something different and try to fix the problems".

But they don't. They keep right on promoting Kyoto, carbon credits, carbon offsets, higher taxes and higher utility bills, in the name of "solving global warming"...

On what basis do you accuse the Royal Society of such advocacy?

That means it hard for me to equate the political position of AGW with "tax and spend", which even if one does not like it philosophically is understandable and a traditional leftist position.

As opposed to the traditional rightist "tax and give" position - tax the poor and give to the rich. Such a conversation is more appropriate to the Politics Forum, don't you think? I'm here for the science, really.

Kyoto, carbon credits and offset trading are beginning to smell like just "tax and steal". Once the data comes in that these economic systems are flawed, then people who continue promoting them become suspicious.

OK, I'll bite anyway : how is carbon-trading connected to tax?


And given that trillions of dollars of taxes and higher utility costs and offset/credits are implied, I have zero - zero - sympathy with any researcher that wants to obfuscate his research data or computational methods, or who refuses to reveal them very promptly.

Back to science and the fraud that, so you seem to think, lies at its very core. Which is bollocks, quite frankly. Only the pharmaceutical industry and the military keep their data secret.

The recent discovery by McIntyre of temp errors gives us all a chance to check the blogosphere - directly, say through checking DailyKos, Michel Malking, Rush Limbaugh, RC, etc or even more directly, through Technorati. This provides a way right now to see how the left and right slant and spin an issue related to AGW. There is in fact a huge difference there - it's quite obvious.

Since you've been good enough to do the work already, how does the anti-AGW left spin this minor error in US temperature measurements? Do they too claim, as some of the anti-AGW right do, that the whole edifice of climate science has come crashing down, glaciers are re-filling valleys as we speak, robins in Alaska are proven to be a rural myth, yadda-yadda? It wouldn't surprise me, I've had experience of such people.

The Republicans are pro nuclear/anti Kyoto type deals, the Democrats are anti nuclear power/pro Kyto type deals. The conclusion seems irrefutable that of the two parties the one that can "fix AGW" is the Republicans, which is curiously non intuitive (and I'm sure this statement will evoke a lot of responses). That's US politics, and I don't want to dwell on strictly US stuff here, since we have contributors from all over.

Responses to AGW aren't my bag (except personally and I'm comfortably insulated, so to speak), I'm on the case to help defend science against the slings and arrows of outrageous assault. From right and left.

Personally I've tried to apply an engineering mindset to the issue of AGW and I'm very much opposed to "alarmist AGW". Also anyone who would be unhappy if AGW was proven by science to be only 20% CO2 related and the rest being a mix of land useage, data errors and the like - such a person (bruised ego issues nonwithstanding), is one sick puppy.

We should all think it is a good thing if the planet is diagnosed healthy not with a chronic serious illness. But obviously some prefer the serious illness. And they are the ones that want to take our money....

Some who are already taking our money want to persuade us that the planet is perfectly healthy. The tobacco industry once tried the same thing on a more personal level, as in smoking not being a health issue. That's really when the industry-promoted assault on science began, and it's continued in much the same vein. it's even kept some of the original cast.

So wasn't Exxon right, and the Royal Society wrong?:confused:

See above for the Royal Society's stance on Kyoto - what is it, explicitly? Exxon don't give a toss about being right, they know which side their bread is buttered. Kyoto's on the other side. (Just as it is for Russia.) Exxon will promote anything that has status quo stamped on it - there's no warming, the warming's natural, Kyoto won't have any effect even if it isn't natural, it's a Marxist plot, it's a Western imperialist plot, whatever. Just think it up and apply to Exxon et al via the Heritage Institute or a host of other cut-outs.

The Royal Society's letter to Exxon was specifically about Exxon's funding of websites and lobbyists that deliberately misrepresent Science. They were right - morally - to do so, since the Royal Society exists to promote and defend Science. Exxon are wrong - morally - to promote such behaviour.

Science can take on religion, no problem. It's a lot harder when an integrated politico-industrial-media establishment sets itself to undermine the image of Science itself because, since the 50's, it's occasionally been an embarrassment to influential vested interests.

I'm here to add my little bit of weight to the Good Guys. I'm not here to argue policies because I don't care; apart from anything else, we're screwed anyway and events are going to drive policies in the near future. The only viable strategies will be coping strategies.

[CapelDodger]

AUP, I wonder if we are communicating.

I was saying that the essay linked to, could be shown alongside of Gore's "documentary" . Surely that film is not considered by most to be peer reviewed or even...science.

Your post didn't read that way at all. Al Gore seems to be the ghost at all your parties, but not everybody sees him.

The "essay", aka "polemical pamphlet" (the internet of their day), could be useful material in a high-school critical-thinking course. Somewhere around intermediate-level. "OK, kids, from what you've learned in the first four lessons, you have twenty minutes to kick this piece of pony to shreds."

[CapelDodger]

Being resistant to the reality of AGW has taken on cult-like status for some folks ...

There's definitely a cult-element in anti-AGW, often by extension from established cults such as Libertarianism or Leninism. AGW is pure poison to their world-constructs, so it must be rejected.

One give-away of a cult is its focus on minutiae as if blurring a few pixels can blow away the whole big picture. Another give-away - almost obligatory - is a conspiracy that's actively preventing the cult-view from becoming mainstream. From that stem the automatic claims of flaming and "I'm being suppressed!", like an Italian footballer's balletic dive as soon as he's inside the penalty box.

casebro once described me - me - as rabid. There's a cultist, no question. Diamond's an archetype. Anyone who only turns up to crow about some new ripple through the blogosphere - high risk of cultism.

I think the Truther cult is a better analogy than Creationism or Scientology. You get the same focus on minutiae - a few frames of video or a precise reconstruction of the US regional temperature a few years ago - and the same failure to register the big picture and its witnesses.

[Locri]

There's definitely a cult-element in anti-AGW, often by extension from established cults such as Libertarianism or Leninism. AGW is pure poison to their world-constructs, so it must be rejected.

Hopefully you'll forgive me for stepping in, especially on my first post here (Hi everybody!).

The problem I see with what you just said is I've picked up a lot of "cult feel" to the AGW movement as well. A lot of the earlier posts in this thread seem to all but scream "you don't agree with me, therefore you are wrong." without any explanation as to why. There are also quite a few instances of ad hom attacks without touching the posters points, which strike me as very similar to the way a lot of cult like people act when someone attacks their beliefs. Especially in a great many of the cases where people in the AGW "camp" almost always say something along the lines of "there is a consensus, why are we even bothering to talk about this?" I honestly don't see a consensus in the case of AGW (GW, yes... but I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that at this point anyway).

That said, I'm quite certain there are crazies on both sides of the issue as pretty much always seems to be the case.

On a different note, hopefully building up to something interesting when I have more time to post: Has there been any disagreement over the theory that in the past there has been an 800 year lag between Temperature and CO2? It was brought up a bit but I didn't see it touched much and I'm very interested in that aspect of the story for reasons I'll hopefully explain later.

One final general note on the topic for now:

I don't understand why humans are so egotistical to see a huge global change in something and automatically go: "Oh *****! What did we do now?"

[mhaze]

Hopefully you'll forgive me for stepping in, especially on my first post here (Hi everybody!).

The problem I see with what you just said is I've picked up a lot of "cult feel" to the AGW movement as well. A lot of the earlier posts in this thread seem to all but scream "you don't agree with me, therefore you are wrong." without any explanation as to why. There are also quite a few instances of ad hom attacks without touching the posters points, which strike me as very similar to the way a lot of cult like people act when someone attacks their beliefs. Especially in a great many of the cases where people in the AGW "camp" almost always say something along the lines of "there is a consensus, why are we even bothering to talk about this?" I honestly don't see a consensus in the case of AGW (GW, yes... but I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that at this point anyway).

That said, I'm quite certain there are crazies on both sides of the issue as pretty much always seems to be the case.

On a different note, hopefully building up to something interesting when I have more time to post: Has there been any disagreement over the theory that in the past there has been an 800 year lag between Temperature and CO2? It was brought up a bit but I didn't see it touched much and I'm very interested in that aspect of the story for reasons I'll hopefully explain later.

One final general note on the topic for now:

I don't understand why humans are so egotistical to see a huge global change in something and automatically go: "Oh *****! What did we do now?"

Here's a scientist (http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/people/indiv/iarc_all_staff.php?photo=sakasofu) that pretty much agrees with you. There are many others.

Welcome.:rolleyes:


Syun Akasofu

The purpose of my Notes on Climate Change (http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/index.php#notes) is to point out some serious deficiencies in the recent IPCC Report. I would like to emphasize: (i) natural components are important and significant, so that they should not be ignored, (ii) it is insufficient to study climate change on the basis of data only from the last 100 years, (iii) it is difficult to make conclusions about causes of the temperature rise since 1975 until we can understand the rise from 1910 to 1940, (iv) the present GCM modelings are an attempt to simulate the IPCC hypothesis that the present warming (0.7°C/100years) is caused by the greenhouse effect, and thus, (v) because of these deficiencies, their future prediction is unreliable and uncertain.


If most of the present rise is caused by the recovery from the Little Ice Age (a natural component) and if the recovery rate does not change during the next 100 years, the rise expected from the year 2000 to 2100 would be roughly 0.5°C. Multi-decadal changes would be either positive or negative in 2100. This rough estimate is based on the recovery rate of 0.5°C/100 years during the last few hundred years. Note that this value is comparable with what IPCC hypothesize as the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect shown by GCMs should be carefully re-evaluated, if the present rise (0.7°C/100 years) contains significant natural components, such as those I suggest.


I have been emphasizing the importance of “natural components” during the last few years, but it seems that it is too vague to be getting the attention of many climatologists, GCM scientists, and IPCC scientists. I thought that a more concrete term is needed for this purpose. This is why I used the term “Little Ice Age”. I did not talk about causes of the Little Ice Age, because it is out of my own field. As far as the solar effects are concerned, I find many conflicting results in the literature.


I was director of the UAF Geophysical Institute for 13 years and then director of the International Arctic Research Center for 7 years. Although I am not a climatologist, it has been interesting to observe climatology from the point of view of an arctic scientist. In order for the field of climatology and IPCC to be healthy, I want to provide a few criticisms, which I hope are constructive.


Since I am not a climatologist, all the data presented in my Notes on Climate Change (http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/index.php#notes) can be found in papers and books published in the past; that is why I do not want to publish Notes on Climate Change as a paper in a professional journal. It is very important for climatology to include some aspects of archaeology and anthropology in studying earth’s climate change, not just computer science. The IPCC climatology is a sort of ‘instant’ climatology. Old data, however inaccurate they maybe, could be more valuable in predicting future changes than the most accurate (instant) data from satellites. Finally, when I sent an early version of my Notes on Climate Change (http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/index.php#notes) to several distinguished climatologists for their comments, one of them responded that his graduate student is now estimating the “rebounding rate” from the Little Ice Age, thus I suggested that his student should publish it at the earliest opportunity.


Regards,
Syun Akasofu

[mhaze]

There's definitely a cult-element in anti-AGW, often by extension from established cults such as Libertarianism or Leninism. AGW is pure poison to their world-constructs, so it must be rejected.

One give-away of a cult is its focus on minutiae as if blurring a few pixels can blow away the whole big picture. Another give-away - almost obligatory - is a conspiracy that's actively preventing the cult-view from becoming mainstream. From that stem the automatic claims of flaming and "I'm being suppressed!", like an Italian footballer's balletic dive as soon as he's inside the penalty box.

casebro once described me - me - as rabid. There's a cultist, no question. Diamond's an archetype. Anyone who only turns up to crow about some new ripple through the blogosphere - high risk of cultism.

I think the Truther cult is a better analogy than Creationism or Scientology. You get the same focus on minutiae - a few frames of video or a precise reconstruction of the US regional temperature a few years ago - and the same failure to register the big picture and its witnesses.

Rabid? Naw... but seeing how many times you have subscribed to the "We're Doomed" slant on the subject, I might be towards the phrase -

WarmingDoomer.:D

[Cainkane1]

The entire solar system is warming up. This is easily observed on mars where the CO2 ice is melting at a rapid rate.

[mhaze]

And Exxon was Right, and the Royal Society Wrong.

[lomiller]

The entire solar system is warming up. This is easily observed on mars where the CO2 ice is melting at a rapid rate.

badastronomy did a pretty thorough debunking of that a while back.


So where does that leave us? When I look at all of this, I see a handful of the 100 large solar system bodies showing some evidence of local warming (Jupiter’s spot), some evidence of systemic warming with known causes that are a lot more likely than the Sun heating up (like well-understood orbital variations), and some evidence that any warming experienced by these bodies is possibly being exaggerated in the reporting.

I also see cherry-picking, with no mention of the other planets and moons in the solar system.



The only thing they really miss is that direct measurement of the Sun doesn’t show it’s heating up, if anything it’s cooling slightly.

[mhaze]

For the most part it agrees with the peer reviewed science. Most people doing peer reviewed science don’t belong on the political stage so if we ignore what people have to say just because they are bringing you someone else science rather then their own we will never get very far.

I agree completely.

Hansen needs to get off the political stage, stop taking large amounts of money from left wing political candidates, stop advising Al Gore on how to insert alarmist lies into "documentaries", stop producing alarmist "20 foot sea level rise" comments to news reporters, and concentrate on not making errors in basic data and methods that are so ridiculous they can be found by amateur bloggers.

Clean your own ship up.

[mhaze]

The entire solar system is warming up. This is easily observed on mars where the CO2 ice is melting at a rapid rate.

That's believed to be local Martian weather causing the CO2 to sublimate to gas. Solar effects though are not constrained to just the overall net irradiance, but numerous other effects both direct, indirect, immediate and somewhat delayed, including sunspot patterns, solar wind, and the interaction of the solar wind with the earth's magnetic field. Some of these are not well understood.

A recent paper by Lockwood 2007 has been bragged about much by the warmers and doomwarmers as having "nailed the lid shut on the sun" as far as it's influence on the recent global temperature rises. Others have disputed this, and Lockwood's comments indicate that he is something of an alarmist warmer in general.

[lomiller]

I agree completely.

Hansen needs to get off the political stage, stop taking large amounts of money from left wing political candidates, stop advising Al Gore on how to insert alarmist lies into "documentaries", stop producing alarmist "20 foot sea level rise" comments to news reporters, and concentrate on not making errors in basic data and methods that are so ridiculous they can be found by amateur bloggers.

Clean your own ship up.

I find it interesting that you neither want scientists on the political stage nor politicians presenting the findings of those scientist. It sounds like you are just looking for reasons not to hear the science at all.


A recent paper by Lockwood 2007 has been bragged about much by the warmers and doomwarmers as having "nailed the lid shut on the sun" as far as it's influence on the recent global temperature rises. Others have disputed this, and Lockwood's comments indicate that he is something of an alarmist warmer in general.


Are you seriously suggestion we discount people who think global warming is a problem on the basis that they think global warming is a problem?

BTW, I presume you have links proving there is a left wing conspiracy to donate massive sums of money to NASA under the table?

[CapelDodger]

Hopefully you'll forgive me for stepping in, especially on my first post here (Hi everybody!).

This is far from being a private conversation :) . Come on down and say your piece, daunting though the prospect may seem.

The problem I see with what you just said is I've picked up a lot of "cult feel" to the AGW movement as well. A lot of the earlier posts in this thread seem to all but scream "you don't agree with me, therefore you are wrong." without any explanation as to why.

You'll find the actual screamers in the anti-AGW camp.

There are also quite a few instances of ad hom attacks without touching the posters points, which strike me as very similar to the way a lot of cult like people act when someone attacks their beliefs.

Do you have any examples of this? Schneibster is a tad combative on occasion but he does address any scientific points that are made. varwoche can by spiky but never avoids other people's points. JoeEllison tends to the acerbic, but his specialist subject is more the way the the anti-AGW case is argued (and by whom) than the science itself. aup's hardly a monster. My own behaviour is impeccable, utterly pukka, officer and gentleman, what? And we can all plead provocation.

Especially in a great many of the cases where people in the AGW "camp" almost always say something along the lines of "there is a consensus, why are we even bothering to talk about this?" I honestly don't see a consensus in the case of AGW (GW, yes... but I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that at this point anyway).

There really is a massive scientific consensus, despite the great efforts being made to obfuscate it. You only have to notice how few are the scientists (and weathermen) whose names regularly come up in the vast panoply of contrarian websites to confirm that.

That said, I'm quite certain there are crazies on both sides of the issue as pretty much always seems to be the case.

Well, there's Diamond crazying for one side, but I'm lost for a local example on the Science side :) .

On a different note, hopefully building up to something interesting when I have more time to post: Has there been any disagreement over the theory that in the past there has been an 800 year lag between Temperature and CO2? It was brought up a bit but I didn't see it touched much and I'm very interested in that aspect of the story for reasons I'll hopefully explain later.

It's been done to death over the years, yet refuses to die. interesting in palaeoclimate terms, but not relevant to AGW. In the past CO2-levels have responded to climate-change - thus the lag when warming occurs by other means. Traditionally, CO2 acts as a positive feedback, just as water-vapour acts as a positive feedback to the CO2 feedback.

In the current case, where CO2-levels are being increased by other means - human, aka anthropogenic, means - the climate is responding to the CO2-change.

This is an entirely new phaenomenon.

One final general note on the topic for now:

I don't understand why humans are so egotistical to see a huge global change in something and automatically go: "Oh *****! What did we do now?"

Humans have, by their activities, raised atmospheric CO2 from about 290ppm to 385ppm in century and a half. That's an observable fact, not narcissism. This is not something that any species has been known to do before, not even something HomSap has done before, although we did it the first chance we got. Not deliberately, of course, and if CO2 wasn't invisible perhaps we wouldn't have done it at all. But there it is, we did it, and we're doing it some more as we speak.

You're actually voicing the established scientific world-view of the last couple of centuries and more. Basically, that catastrophism and anthropocentrism are out, gradualism and get-over-yourself are in. Science is often presented as being biased towards AGW, but the opposite is true. AGW has had to swim against the tide, and yet it has become the scientific consensus because it stands up scientifically. We have to get over getting over ourselves and realise that we really are awesome. The way a bull in a china shop is awesome.

[CapelDodger]

Rabid? Naw... but seeing how many times you have subscribed to the "We're Doomed" slant on the subject, I might be towards the phrase -

WarmingDoomer.:D

I stick to the Schneibster formulation of "We're screwed". Make of that what you will.

And we are screwed. Shafted, even. Nothing's going to stop that, but it's not as terminal as "doom". I've been shafted enough times to confirm that, and I doubt I'm a lone example :mad: .

[mhaze]

Hmm...

"Wescreweddoomers"

"shafteddoomers"

both sound derogatory

I was just seeking an accurate descriptive phrase of the mindset that AGW is 100% real and will result is catastrophic consequences even if we all "changed our behavior now".

Doomwarmers or warmdooomers?

By the way we a re in partial agreement insofar as I hold "we're screwed" if we submit to the trillion dollar tax schemes of which "Kyoto was only a first step!"

[CapelDodger]

A recent paper by Lockwood 2007 has been bragged about much by the warmers and doomwarmers as having "nailed the lid shut on the sun" as far as it's influence on the recent global temperature rises. Others have disputed this, and Lockwood's comments indicate that he is something of an alarmist warmer in general.

Of course "some others" have disputed the Lockwood paper, which as I understand it is a meta-study of direct solar observations by dedicated satellite. Those "others" have been touting solar influences as a mainstay of their anti-AGW argument, and one has to ask : where's the data they based this on, and the code they used to interpret it? And whatever did happen to Lindzen's Iris Theory?

What lines are "some others" arguing against the paper? Apart from Lockwood's alarmist tendencies. Have you ever considered that opinions and predictions you find alarming might actually be correct?

To misuse Kipling, if you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs, it could be that you haven't grasped the situation.

[mhaze]

I find it interesting that you neither want scientists on the political stage nor politicians presenting the findings of those scientist. It sounds like you are just looking for reasons not to hear the science at all.




Are you seriously suggestion we discount people who think global warming is a problem on the basis that they think global warming is a problem?

BTW, I presume you have links proving there is a left wing conspiracy to donate massive sums of money to NASA under the table?

Don't duck the question I posed to you about sea ice, then twist words and meaning on other subjects.

So what's that about sea ice we all needed to worry about?

I need to know if I need to worry about sea ice. And you have some science on that, right? :)

[mhaze]

I’m unsure what relevancy either has but:

Quote:
one night below freezing ruins all crops...

Not true. Many crops have no problem surviving a one night freeze. Even sensitive crops like citrus don’t automatically die just because the temperature falls below zero.

Quote:
To be more precise, which IPCC scenario exactly?


If you don’t think we need to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions then it’s pretty obvious we select the worst case. After all, all the other scenarios suggest some moderation of our CO2 emissions, something many people seem to be claiming isn't necessary.

I'm moving this here because it fits better than is the statistics thread.

FYI I think there are a lot of what are loosely called "deniers" who would say they did not want to see C02 of 2000 Ppm. Others would say that even if there was a substantial co2 effect, the proposed measures to "cure the patient" are worse than the disease.

[Locri]

This is far from being a private conversation :) . Come on down and say your piece, daunting though the prospect may seem.


Thanks for the greetings mhaze and CapelDodger :)


Do you have any examples of this? Schneibster is a tad combative on occasion but he does address any scientific points that are made. varwoche can by spiky but never avoids other people's points. JoeEllison tends to the acerbic, but his specialist subject is more the way the the anti-AGW case is argued (and by whom) than the science itself. aup's hardly a monster. My own behaviour is impeccable, utterly pukka, officer and gentleman, what? And we can all plead provocation.


For the sake of simplicity and time I'll just stick with the first one I ran into:

Wouldn't that be best addressed by a mental health professional, one trained in dealing with persecution complexes and conspiracy theory delusions?

Seriously.


Generally I find that implying a person with a certain viewpoint has a mental issue is rather insulting, don't you?


There really is a massive scientific consensus, despite the great efforts being made to obfuscate it. You only have to notice how few are the scientists (and weathermen) whose names regularly come up in the vast panoply of contrarian websites to confirm that.


And most of this scientific consensus seems to be all based around the IPCC, an organization for which the entire point of it's existence is to find evidence of climate change. Frankly, even if there is a consensus I'm not sure it matters... just because a minority of the scientific population doesn't agree doesn't immediately mean they are wrong. Keep in mind that there have been similar instances of the majority being wrong in the past.

One other thing that hasn't been brought up a lot is something I'm well aware happens A LOT in academia... favouritism. There are a great number of fields including many scientific studies where if you are a student you can't pass a class without agreeing with a professor (even if you don't agree with him you have to fake it) or you are unable to get funding because people don't like where your experiments are heading. I work in academia currently and I see this all the time and it is very depressing as it greatly stifles the conflict that drives us to find out what the actual truth of something is.

I know some people would disagree with this, but considering the hype and the known liberal bias of most universities, it would not surprise me in the least if people proposing projects and research that could potentially go against their views (of AGW) would somehow just not happen to get funding for their project. I've seen it in many other less hyped areas of academia and I doubt that climate studies are any different.

Another thing that concerns me are the accusations that it is difficult to get access to some of the methods and data from some studies used in the IPCC reports. I'm not sure how true this is, but if people like McIntyre are truly having difficulty getting very important pieces of information like how Hansen adjusts data from temperature recording stations, I immediately become a bit concerned. Science should be about openness and discussion, right?

If not, we fall into the same trap as many religions in saying "We won't tell you how we know this, we just do."


It's been done to death over the years, yet refuses to die. interesting in palaeoclimate terms, but not relevant to AGW. In the past CO2-levels have responded to climate-change - thus the lag when warming occurs by other means. Traditionally, CO2 acts as a positive feedback, just as water-vapour acts as a positive feedback to the CO2 feedback.

In the current case, where CO2-levels are being increased by other means - human, aka anthropogenic, means - the climate is responding to the CO2-change.

This is an entirely new phaenomenon.


Well... follow me on this here... I'm going to try to use a bit of logic:

First, we know that there has for several tens of thousands of years been an 800 year gap between temperatures rising and CO2 rising.

From this, we can discern that there was something non-CO2 related that triggered the Earth to warm. Have we even figured out what that might be other than natural cycles of the sun or volcanos temporarily cooling the earth (in the case of it getting cooler)?

Why are we so quick to throw out such a long history of climate change for the sake of what's happened in the last 100 years (if that!)? There might be very important things in there that we are missing and if we don't know what caused the climate changes back then, how can we prove that those same factors aren't causing it now and making the CO2 appear to be the main factor as the AGW people are suggesting?

Also, considering that there is this 800 year lag there have been times that CO2 has been high without sending us into some sort of constant spiral up in temperature like scientists are saying it will now... if this didn't happen in the past at one point there had to have been some sort of negative feedback to keep the climate from getting stuck in a constant positive loop of warming.

If that's the case, wouldn't it be possible that that same mechanism might kick into gear in this case too?

There is really a lot that we don't know about the interactions of the climate yet and to pretend that we are so all knowing as to say that it is most likely our fault for the majority of the warming seems quite narrow minded.

Bah, ok.. that was way more than I expected to write. Anyway, I'm interested to hear your responses.

[CapelDodger]

I was just seeking an accurate descriptive phrase of the mindset that AGW is 100% real and will result is catastrophic consequences even if we all "changed our behavior now".

Again with the language. Why is it always "catastrophe" and "doom" with you? It's almost as if you're alarming yourself. AGW is real, and it will have significant effects. To some folk, they will be catastrophic. What they will be to everybody is significant.

By the way we a re in partial agreement insofar as I hold "we're screwed" if we submit to the trillion dollar tax schemes of which "Kyoto was only a first step!"

Now that is alarmist. Could you lead us through the reasoning that absolutely makes trillion dollar tax schemes the only possible next step? Cap-and-trade seems to be the favoured route. That's been the response to Kyoto, and is some way up a steep learning-curve. OK, it's been a fiasco up to now, but any new market germinates in the compost of fiascos. Governments like it because the detailed work is shunted off to the market sector. Politicians like it because it's not a tax, most proles don't have a clue what it is, and it's "taking action". Diplomats and lawyers love it for obvious reasons. Finance loves it.

Sleep easy over these tax schemes. Ignore the scaremongers. Your money's as safe as any dollar is these days. Nobody's proposing trillion dollar tax schemes in your neighbourhood - aka, Planet Earth.

[Locri]

-URL DELETED, check original post- Here's a scientist that pretty much agrees with you. There are many others.

Welcome.:rolleyes:


Thanks for the link mhaze... I definitely want to read his further reports when I have some more time. Syun has some pretty interesting material there that goes quite along the same lines as what I've been thinking trying to sort out this stuff.

Edit: *laughs* apparently even if I'm quoting someone who linked to something I can't post it :rolleyes:

[CapelDodger]

For the sake of simplicity and time I'll just stick with the first one I ran into:

Generally I find that implying a person with a certain viewpoint has a mental issue is rather insulting, don't you?

Yes, that's what I'd use it for. I thought when I read it, "Hey Joe, that's gonna come back at you". In principle I frown :mad: upon such contributions since they are seized on as distractions. Can I help it if I enjoy them :) ?

And most of this scientific consensus seems to be all based around the IPCC ...

No, it's a great deal wider than that, in fact the IPCC is a very minor body in the scientific world.

... an organization for which the entire point of it's existence is to find evidence of climate change.

The IPCC was created to review the existing climate science and present a coherent summation and consensus opinion on the subject of AGW to the International Community. Which really really didn't want to hear was that it was a problem. The International Community was sufficiently concerned by the incoherent but persuasive scientific arguments to create the IPCC. The IPCC is more a creation of diplomats, lawyers and politicians than it is of Science. It was created in the hope that it would make AGW go away

Frankly, even if there is a consensus I'm not sure it matters... just because a minority of the scientific population doesn't agree doesn't immediately mean they are wrong. Keep in mind that there have been similar instances of the majority being wrong in the past.

Would you like to drum up an equivalent? Pasteur was in a minority, but mainstream within a decade because his science was sound. AGW has been a concern for decades and the contrarian position has become increasingly confined.

One other thing that hasn't been brought up a lot is something I'm well aware happens A LOT in academia... favouritism.

And much more along that vein.

Seek what comfort you can, but the science of AGW is sound. Events are bearing it out. AGW isn't just a prediction, as it was in the 80's, it's happening. Just as predicted.

The "science" of anti-AGW has always depended on speculation and attacks on the real science. Nobody new in science is embracing AGW to further their careers, they're taking it as a given because observation bears out prediction. The science of AGW is sound.

The "science" of anti-AGW is top-heavy with post-career scientists who aren't influenced by academic favouritism. They do like the attention, though.

[mhaze]

Now that is alarmist. Could you lead us through the reasoning that absolutely makes trillion dollar tax schemes the only possible next step? Cap-and-trade seems to be the favoured route. That's been the response to Kyoto, and is some way up a steep learning-curve. OK, it's been a fiasco up to now, but any new market germinates in the compost of fiascos. Governments like it because the detailed work is shunted off to the market sector. Politicians like it because it's not a tax, most proles don't have a clue what it is, and it's "taking action". Diplomats and lawyers love it for obvious reasons. Finance loves it.

Yep. And the banker says

"Trust me."

Your above paragraph is all about how to take everyone's money away, and acknowledges it is a fiasco. Except for those who have made countless millions in the carbon trading rackets.


The IPCC was created to review the existing climate science and present a coherent summation and consensus opinion on the subject of AGW to the International Community. Which really really didn't want to hear was that it was a problem. The International Community was sufficiently concerned by the incoherent but persuasive scientific arguments to create the IPCC. The IPCC is more a creation of diplomats, lawyers and politicians than it is of Science. It was created in the hope that it would make AGW go away
Really?:)

Seems like I have about 8000 pages here somewhere of IPCC scheme implementation. But isn't Armstrong all one really needs to know to understand the IPCC? .

The Armstrong and Green paper is available in full text. The authors used the Forecasting Audit Software (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/forecastingaudit.html) available on the Forecasting Principles site to evaluate the IPCC forecasting procedures.
Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts (http://forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/WarmAudit31.pdf) (Forthcoming in Energy and Environment).
Forecasting Audit Software output (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/Forecasting_Audit_combined2.pdf)Climate scientist Jos de Laat of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute wrote of the paper: “I very much agree with your statement that 'the forecasts in the report ... present the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing', I don't think that many climate scientists are willing to admit this… I was quite surprised, even a little bit disturbed, to learn that there exists a research field devoted to the science of prediction. I have a formal education in climate science (University degree, BS in physics, MS in Meteorology and Oceanography, PhD in climate science), so I've been around for some time now, yet I don't recall anyone ever mentioning your research area.”
Or perhaps ICECAP (http://icecap.us/), this article. (http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path=/2007/august/13/letter4/&c=1)

More? Or can we just move on from this ridiculous bunch of clowns?

[mhaze]

More? Or can we just move on from this ridiculous bunch of clowns?

Clarifying: Ipcc clowns

And this is how bad the forecasts of Gore, Hansen, Mann and their IPCC doomwarmer buddies actually are-

Scott Armstrong (http://sosforests.com/) Says:
June 29th, 2007 at 9:58 am (http://www.sosforests.com/?p=554#comment-25073) There are many situations where forecasting methods produce substantial gains. Those are described in the Principles of Forecasting handbook.
Better methods might also help in climate forecasting. I expect that they will.
My bet is based on the fact that the climate forecasting models use poor methodology. Thus, even an assumption of complete ignorance should do better.

[BobK]

Here is an article that may be useful to some as food for thought.
HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY (http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf)

[Megalodon]

Review

Nature 416, 389-395 (28 March 2002) | doi:10.1038/416389a
Ecological responses to recent climate change

Gian-Reto Walther, Eric Post, Peter Convey, Annette Menzel, Camille Parmesan, Trevor J. C. Beebee, Jean-Marc Fromentin, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Franz Bairlein

Abstract

There is now ample evidence of the ecological impacts of recent climate change, from polar terrestrial to tropical marine environments. The responses of both flora and fauna span an array of ecosystems and organizational hierarchies, from the species to the community levels. Despite continued uncertainty as to community and ecosystem trajectories under global change, our review exposes a coherent pattern of ecological change across systems. Although we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already clearly visible.


Nature 421, 57-60 (2 January 2003) | doi:10.1038/nature01333; Received 12 September 2002; Accepted 26 November 2002
Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants

Terry L. Root, Jeff T. Price, Kimberly R. Hall, Stephen H. Schneider, Cynthia Rosenzweig and J. Alan Pounds

Correspondence to: Terry L. Root1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to T. R. (e-mail: Email: troot@stanford.edu).

Over the past 100 years, the global average temperature has increased by approximately 0.6 °C and is projected to continue to rise at a rapid rate1. Although species have responded to climatic changes throughout their evolutionary history2, a primary concern for wild species and their ecosystems is this rapid rate of change3. We gathered information on species and global warming from 143 studies for our meta-analyses. These analyses reveal a consistent temperature-related shift, or 'fingerprint', in species ranging from molluscs to mammals and from grasses to trees. Indeed, more than 80% of the species that show changes are shifting in the direction expected on the basis of known physiological constraints of species. Consequently, the balance of evidence from these studies strongly suggests that a significant impact of global warming is already discernible in animal and plant populations. The synergism of rapid temperature rise and other stresses, in particular habitat destruction, could easily disrupt the connectedness among species and lead to a reformulation of species communities, reflecting differential changes in species, and to numerous extirpations and possibly extinctions.

Nature 421, 37-42 (2 January 2003) | doi:10.1038/nature01286; Received 5 March 2002; Accepted 22 October 2002
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems

Camille Parmesan and Gary Yohe

Correspondence to: Camille Parmesan1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.P. (e-mail: Email: parmesan@mail.utexas.edu).

Abstract

Causal attribution of recent biological trends to climate change is complicated because non-climatic influences dominate local, short-term biological changes. Any underlying signal from climate change is likely to be revealed by analyses that seek systematic trends across diverse species and geographic regions; however, debates within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveal several definitions of a 'systematic trend'. Here, we explore these differences, apply diverse analyses to more than 1,700 species, and show that recent biological trends match climate change predictions. Global meta-analyses documented significant range shifts averaging 6.1 km per decade towards the poles (or metres per decade upward), and significant mean advancement of spring events by 2.3 days per decade. We define a diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial 'sign-switching' responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends. Among appropriate long-term/large-scale/multi-species data sets, this diagnostic fingerprint was found for 279 species. This suite of analyses generates 'very high confidence' (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.

OK, now please someone explain how the International Conspiracy of Marxist Climate Scientists managed to shift biological patterns in a way that is consistent with the predicted warming that is not happening because Exxon was right... or something...

Or at least find me a blogger who will put reality back in place by saying that the authors don't know what they're saying... a construction worker will do...

[mhaze]

Here is an article that may be useful to some as food for thought.
HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY (http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf)

Interesting group; I just subscribed to their list. This appeared while I was reading your ref from Dyson - a sort of commentary on his ideas.

THE CHANGING ARCTIC: A RESPONSE TO FREEMAN DYSON'S "HERETICAL THOUGHTS" (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html)
By Alun Anderson [8.14.07]

[mhaze]

OK, now please someone explain how the International Conspiracy of Marxist Climate Scientists managed to shift biological patterns in a way that is consistent with the predicted warming that is not happening because Exxon was right... or something...

Or at least find me a blogger who will put reality back in place by saying that the authors don't know what they're saying... a construction worker will do...

A construction worker? How about an Aleut native that would love to have an actual job in construction? Like this one. After things warm up a bit he might actually be able to get a job, instead of being dirt poor, no job.

Found this at a really good source, "How to talk to a Climate Sceptic" - you know, one of those places you get your scripts and instructions on how to insult and ridicule Deniers - Gristmill. (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/175028/329)

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/175028/329

Oops...there's a comment section that's not censored (like that at RealClimate). John Bailo's comment -

Warmer..and Loving It !

I was channel surfing between breaks in football Sunday and caught a few minutes of a Global Warming scare flick (I mean, PBS documentary). This one was about arctic ice melting.

First the narrator says that the ice of some lake was frozen "year round". But then the guide for the explorers says it was free "a few months a year". Well, never mind, because now it's ice free almost all year round. And guess what -- the native people there love it! Now they have free passage and trade.

The funny part is the hapless "environmentalists" who go through the village trying to get someone to say what a bad thing it is...and yet, everyone of the Aleuts seems to be liking the warm weather and open water!

There's one fellow, who they really try to arm twist. He says how its getting warmer and warmer there every year.
"Well, how do you feel about that?" says the environmentalist, a foot from the guy's face, with his enviro-buddies right behind him...looking like a bunch of hoods asking "you want this loan, don't cha?".

The guy nonchalantly says "oh, I think it's good. We're poor and warm weather means we'll spend less on fuel".

"But, but" sputters the environmentalist, "what about the polar bear!?!"
"Oh", says the Aleut, "he can go North...to where it's colder".

See, this was the first time I ever had sympathy with a tunda person, because he reacted and spoke like every other person that I know -- he likes warm weather and he likes to save money. He didn't go into some epileptic fit about "Shamanadoda" and start decrying the spirit of the Polar Bear.

Nope. He wanted to sip pina coladas and watch the ice melt!

[Locri]

OK, now please someone explain how the International Conspiracy of Marxist Climate Scientists managed to shift biological patterns in a way that is consistent with the predicted warming that is not happening because Exxon was right... or something...


And what exactly was the point of those articles? All you are doing is misdirecting. The argument here is not so much whether global warming has been happening but more so whether or not it's anthropological global warming or natural.

The only thing these articles say is that things are happening because of global warming, but that tells us nothing about whether we are causing it.

Also... I would probably take you a lot more seriously if you didn't infer that anyone who disagreed with you and is anti-AGW is a conspiracy nutjob. Comments like that are generally typical of people who are just denying something outright without any consideration as to the arguments laid out.

[Megalodon]

And what exactly was the point of those articles? All you are doing is misdirecting. The argument here is not so much whether global warming has been happening but more so whether or not it's anthropological global warming or natural.

It is? Talk to Diamond... he seemed to have missed the memo.

And mhaze seems quite troubled with is opinion also...

The only thing these articles say is that things are happening because of global warming, but that tells us nothing about whether we are causing it.

And your point is? I though someone might like the information, but I did notice a certain aversion to facts around here...

Also... I would probably take you a lot more seriously if you didn't infer that anyone who disagreed with you and is anti-AGW is a conspiracy nutjob.

I don't... but even if I did, it doesn't change reality.

Comments like that are generally typical of people who are just denying something outright without any consideration as to the arguments laid out.

What arguments? All arguments have been done to death in this and others threads. There are still those who grasp at imaginary straws, but there are also those who have trouble with the concept of Evolution.

[mhaze]

It is? Talk to Diamond... he seemed to have missed the memo.

And mhaze seems quite troubled with is opinion also...

And your point is? I though someone might like the information, but I did notice a certain aversion to facts around here...

I don't... but even if I did, it doesn't change reality.

What arguments? All arguments have been done to death in this and others threads. There are still those who grasp at imaginary straws, but there are also those who have trouble with the concept of Evolution.

Not misdirecting? Then...

Please clarify which of the prior messages, let's say from 321 to 337 (page 9) of this thread, discuss the reality and projections of global warming - as opposed to human caused global warming.

Or have you genuinely misunderstood the discussion and the intent of my and others' postings?:confused:

[varwoche]

And most of this scientific consensus seems to be all based around the IPCC Not so (http://gwstudies.blogspot.com/search/label/AGW).

NASA, Scripps, Woods Hole, NOAA, British Antarctic Survey, Hadley Centre, Columbia U, U Exeter, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, U. Southampton, World Radiation Centre, Bristol U, Brazil Natl Inst for Space Research, US Natl Snow and Ice Data Center, Potsdam U, National Center for Atmospheric Research, U.Washington, McGill U., Heliophysics, Max Planck Inst for Astrophysics, Florida State, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, U Arizona, National Academy of Science, MIT, Penn State, Wageningen U, Berkeley National Lab, DOE, UC Berkeley, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, UC Santa Cruz, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Rutgers U, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab, Natl Ocean Data Center, Air Resources Lab ... I could go on.

[mhaze]

Not so (http://gwstudies.blogspot.com/search/label/AGW).

NASA, Scripps, Woods Hole, NOAA, British Antarctic Survey, Hadley Centre, Columbia U, U Exeter, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, U. Southampton, World Radiation Centre, Bristol U, Brazil Natl Inst for Space Research, US Natl Snow and Ice Data Center, Potsdam U, National Center for Atmospheric Research, U.Washington, McGill U., Heliophysics, Max Planck Inst for Astrophysics, Florida State, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, U Arizona, National Academy of Science, MIT, Penn State, Wageningen U, Berkeley National Lab, DOE, UC Berkeley, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, UC Santa Cruz, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Rutgers U, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab, Natl Ocean Data Center, Air Resources Lab ... I could go on.

A list of the some institutions with arthors who have published articles and papers that support AGW.

I particularly like this one -

http://gwstudies.blogspot.com/2007/05/dams-emit-methane.html

Obviously, we should tear down all dams.

Oops, that article doesn't line up with the CO2-from-our-SUVS-is-ruining-the-planet theory.

[Locri]

No, it's a great deal wider than that, in fact the IPCC is a very minor body in the scientific world.


Ok, between you and varwoche I can definitely see something there. I will note, however, that despite that they might be very minor in the scientific world, they are absolutely huge in the political world (which might be, like many other things in politics, where things get messed up).


Would you like to drum up an equivalent? Pasteur was in a minority, but mainstream within a decade because his science was sound. AGW has been a concern for decades and the contrarian position has become increasingly confined.


Aside from the obvious one of the general belief long ago that the Earth was the center of the universe, there is one more I can think of off the top of my head. Just a short few hundred years ago the scientific community believed that all the spaces in the world (nay, universe) were filled with a substance called "ether"


(From Wikipedia)
"# A substance (aether) once thought to fill all space that allowed Electromagnetic waves to pass through it and interact with matter, without exerting any resistance to matter or energy (disproved by Einstien in his Theory of Relativity)."


It had a fair consensus in its time (although a few smaller competing theories, if I recall, were there as well... I don't have my sources in front of me since I'm at work).


Seek what comfort you can, but the science of AGW is sound. Events are bearing it out. AGW isn't just a prediction, as it was in the 80's, it's happening. Just as predicted.


I would agree that the science is sound insofar as (like John Christy) it would be completely impossible to dump so much stuff into the atmosphere without having some effect on the climate. Where I vary from the mainstream is I'm not quite convinced that it is having as profound of an effect as the AGW community would like us to believe. Again, I bring up the point that the seem to be ignoring much of the historical data in favor of saying "We know it's different this time, really we do." Something which I am not quite so arrogant to attempt to do... the Earth has been around for several billion years and seems to have an amazing capability for self-balancing.

Also, as I have mentioned before, whenever I see people hiding the methodology of studies that are very important to a theory (Mann, Hansen, et al) I instantly become a bit skeptical. The point of science is to gradually come to truths about things through experimentation and questioning including questioning of the methods that scientists are using so we can prove that we have a solid reason to think the things we do.

No matter what aspect of science you are talking about, if you act like you have something to hide, there is a good chance that you do have something to hide.


The "science" of anti-AGW has always depended on speculation and attacks on the real science. Nobody new in science is embracing AGW to further their careers, they're taking it as a given because observation bears out prediction. The science of AGW is sound.


But this is science we are talking about, is it so wrong to not take something as a given? Why are so many of the AGW people so against questioning it as seems to be the case? If something is questioned and the argument against is proven wrong, that only makes the case stronger. If the question leads to the realization that the theory is wrong, it leads us to a better grasp on the truth. Science, in purest form without the egos of the people involved, is an amazing method for figuring things out.


The "science" of anti-AGW is top-heavy with post-career scientists who aren't influenced by academic favouritism. They do like the attention, though.

Are you saying that not being influenced by academic favouritism is a bad thing? And if you are talking about attention, I'm quite sure scientists on both sides are enjoying the attention. Particularly the AGW side because the attention has allowed them to get tons of grants and funding in order to further their studies.

I also noticed that you avoided replying to my thoughts on the 800 year gap and some of it's consequences. Any thoughts on that?

[Locri]

It is? Talk to Diamond... he seemed to have missed the memo.

And mhaze seems quite troubled with is opinion also...


Well, it is quite possible that they have different opinions than me on that. I generally feel along the same lines as John Christy on the topic... if you need me to tell you what his views are I'd be happy to.


And your point is? I though someone might like the information, but I did notice a certain aversion to facts around here...


If you have to ask me what my point is here, you are definitely missing something. I'll break it down for you in formal logic:

If
A causes C
B causes C
Therefore:
A or B causes C

C causes D

Now, the articles you pointed out basically just say that C causes D, but doesn't comment on the status of whether A or B (or both) is causing C. The main thing that I'm interested in (I'm not sure about others) is which of A or B is causing C or (probably more appropriately) what mix of A and B is causing C. Focusing on only the C causes D part of it ignores the truth values of A and B.

Does that make more sense now? It's fairly simple really.


I don't... but even if I did, it doesn't change reality.


So, saying things like:


International Conspiracy of Marxist Climate Scientists


Isn't a patronizing way of saying that Anti-AGW people are conspiracy theorists? That's how it came across to me... as a very condescending phrase.


What arguments? All arguments have been done to death in this and others threads. There are still those who grasp at imaginary straws, but there are also those who have trouble with the concept of Evolution.

Ok then, maybe you could discuss my thoughts on the 800 year gap that I posted above and the apparent reluctance to open up research methods in some cases for starters? I'm fairly new here so I might have missed some of the threads that might have covered that.

And I don't know if the argument of Evolution is really similar in this case... last I recall there are no supernatural elements getting involved in this discussion. (Ok, yeah.. I know they post ID as scientific, but that doesn't really fly well... but all of that is a different topic for a different thread.)

Anyways, read my comments to CapelDodger that I just posted... we shouldn't be afraid of people questioning our ideas in science as in theory it'll only lead to a better grasping of the truth. Sadly, some AGW people react very harshly to the idea that people would even think to question them.

[lomiller]

And most of this scientific consensus seems to be all based around the IPCC, an organization for which the entire point of it's existence is to find evidence of climate change. Frankly, even if there is a consensus I'm not sure it matters... just because a minority of the scientific population doesn't agree doesn't immediately mean they are wrong. Keep in mind that there have been similar instances of the majority being wrong in the past.



The IPCC is a massive literature review, probably the largest ever undertaken. As such it simply reflects scientific opinion on climate change and acts as a single point for accessing all the major literature relevant to the topic. It’s one sided because the source literature is one sided.

Go back to the first page in this thread where it’s explained:

1) CO2 does allow visible light to pass through untouched.
2) CO2 does absorb certain frequencies of the thermal radiation emitted when that visible light hits the earth
3) Those frequencies are in bands and locations where that thermal radiation would have otherwise escaped into space
4) We are dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere
5) Thermodynamics tells us this must result in higher surface temperatures.

There is very little room to dispute any of this, so at best you can argue the degree or warming not the warming itself. We can observe warming actually taking place and the degree of warming is in good agreement with the predictions being made. This is just about as rock solid a case as you will get in any scientific endeavor. Yes there is always the possibility it will be overturned, but that’s the case with any science.

To overturn it you’d need a couple of things. First you’d need to demonstrate some previously unknown phenomenon to counter the known warming effect of CO2. Second you’d need to come up with an alternate explanation for the warming that is taking place. Neither of these has appeared in a viable form in peer reviewed literature





Well... follow me on this here... I'm going to try to use a bit of logic:

First, we know that there has for several tens of thousands of years been an 800 year gap between temperatures rising and CO2 rising.

From this, we can discern that there was something non-CO2 related that triggered the Earth to warm. Have we even figured out what that might be other than natural cycles of the sun or volcanos temporarily cooling the earth (in the case of it getting cooler)?

Why are we so quick to throw out such a long history of climate change for the sake of what's happened in the last 100 years (if that!)? There might be very important things in there that we are missing and if we don't know what caused the climate changes back then, how can we prove that those same factors aren't causing it now and making the CO2 appear to be the main factor as the AGW people are suggesting?

Also, considering that there is this 800 year lag there have been times that CO2 has been high without sending us into some sort of constant spiral up in temperature like scientists are saying it will now... if this didn't happen in the past at one point there had to have been some sort of negative feedback to keep the climate from getting stuck in a constant positive loop of warming.




I believe most thinking is that initial warming is triggered by regular variations in the earths orbit. This warming reduces the oceans ability to hold CO2, and the resulting release acts as a positive feedback driving up temperatures until they once again hit a stable point.

The current warming doesn’t fit with this historical pattern on two fronts. First, the going by the history we should be approaching another cooling cycle in the next few thousand years not a warming cycle. Second, the CO2 rise is occurring before the temperature rise suggesting that the mechanics behind that previous change doesn’t apply here.

It’s also worth pointing out that the earth was undergoing an upward spiral of temperature during this period, and while positive feedback effects like rising CO2 and decreasing albedo due to ice retreat didn’t start the process there is every reason to believe they played a major role in making the temperature swing as large as it was.



Another thing that concerns me are the accusations that it is difficult to get access to some of the methods and data from some studies used in the IPCC reports. I'm not sure how true this is, but if people like McIntyre are truly having difficulty getting very important pieces of information like how Hansen adjusts data from temperature recording stations, I immediately become a bit concerned. Science should be about openness and discussion, right?

Since it is a literature review, the source information comes from the original papers. IMO McIntyre is seriously misrepresenting the openness of the process. The raw data in publicly available, the methods being used are documented in the relevant papers in sufficient detail to reproduce the work.

After these things were pointed out McIntyre moved onto “but the code isn’t available”. While there are cases where making the code available is desirable it certainly isn’t required. The point of peer review is to allow independently reproducing the results. If you use the same code, you get the same errors and you haven’t really accomplished anything.

What McIntyre is really looking for is the look over the shoulder of every researcher whose results he doesn’t agree with and to tell them how to conduct their research. He’s looking to make a nuisance of himself. The code Hansen is using can apparently be replicated with “two pages in MatLab” which is nothing. A decade ago as an undergraduate I had bi-weekly projects that required as much.

Rather then doing this work for himself, however, McIntyre wants to “review” Hansen’s work so he can say “look Hansen was wrong!” without ever having to provide a correct result of his own. The corrected result McIntyre doesn’t want to produce would almost certainly still support Hansen’s claims. IMO this makes McIntyre's motives very suspicious as it's far more spin then science.

[lomiller]

It had a fair consensus in its time (although a few smaller competing theories, if I recall, were there as well... I don't have my sources in front of me since I'm at work).



The aether was shot down by experimental evidence and a sound competing theory. The lesson to take away here isn’t that “science has been wrong in the past so we shouldn’t trust it” but rather that the way to refute a scientific theory is to come up with a better explanation and to properly document its superiority.

[varwoche]

A list of the some institutions with arthors who have published articles and papers that support AGW. Exactly (save for the spelling ;))

(1) Obviously, we should tear down all dams. (2) Oops, that article doesn't line up with the CO2-from-our-SUVS-is-ruining-the-planet theory. What a goofy nitpick... (1) Pure straw. Just because dams emit methane doesn't mean that anyone is suggesting they be torn down. (2) Blatant non-seq. The study has no bearing on CO2 and SUVs.

[varwoche]

Isn't a patronizing way of saying that Anti-AGW people are conspiracy theorists? That's how it came across to me... as a very condescending phrase. My sentiments exactly! Surely there's nobody who is suggesting (on a skeptical forum no less!) that climate scientists are part of a Marxist cabal. Right? (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2600979#post2600979) ;)

[mhaze]

The IPCC is a massive literature review, probably the largest ever undertaken. .... ..... .... IMO this makes McIntyre's motives very suspicious as it's far more spin then science.

Nonsense. You have numerous misrepresentations of fact in these paragraphs. All you have to do to correct them is to look at McIntyre's site once it is back up, so it might be wise to wait a few days before producing more paragraphs on someone that you obviously do not know much about.

Alternately, if you like, we could discuss the specifics of M&M's article debunking of the hockey stick, vs. the original hockey stick Mann et. al. I'm certain there would be lots of goodies therein.

I'm still waiting for loads of stuff to worry about on sea ice.

[mhaze]

Exactly (save for the spelling ;))

What a goofy nitpick... (1) Pure straw. Just because dams emit methane doesn't mean that anyone is suggesting they be torn down. (2) Blatant non-seq. The study has no bearing on CO2 and SUVs.

Well, let's see. Converting the entire world's fleets of cars to Prius hybrids would cut greenhouse gas emissions due to man less than 2%. Destroying all dams would do 4%, according to the article.

Hmm....Maybe I better not pursue that road, there might be some of those radical environmentalists reading this.

[David Rodale]

The IPCC is a massive literature review, probably the largest ever undertaken. As such it simply reflects scientific opinion on climate change and acts as a single point for accessing all the major literature relevant to the topic. It’s one sided because the source literature is one sided.

Go back to the first page in this thread where it’s explained:

1) CO2 does allow visible light to pass through untouched.
2) CO2 does absorb certain frequencies of the thermal radiation emitted when that visible light hits the earth
3) Those frequencies are in bands and locations where that thermal radiation would have otherwise escaped into space
4) We are dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere
5) Thermodynamics tells us this must result in higher surface temperatures.

........................

1) CO2 does allow visible light to pass through untouched.
2) CO2 does absorb certain frequencies of the thermal radiation emitted when that visible light hits the earth
3) Those frequencies are in bands and locations where that thermal radiation would have otherwise escaped into space
4) We are dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere
5) Thermodynamics tells us this must result in higher surface temperatures.

What percentage of total GHG is alleged to have been contributed by "us"?

Is it true there is no observational evidence supporting the hypothesis of CO2 being responsible for 20th century warming? If there is, please cite.

This paper, one of several, is diametrically opposed to your assertions. Comment?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

Is it true that atmospheric CO2 residence time (life cycle) of ~120-200+ years as quoted by IPCC has no supporting evidence, no observational evidence and is contrary to several research papers assigning a ~5-10 year maximum life cycle? Please cite references to the contrary.

What is the statistical correlation between CO2 and temperature rise for the last 100 years? What is it for solar and other related factors?

Is it true that observational evidence is contrary to climate model predictions? Isn’t it also true climate models cannot in full or in part account for solar, cloud cover, precipitation, UHI, land use change and other factors that may affect climate? References available upon request.

Do you think it wise or possible to qualitatively measure atmospheric CO2 whilst sitting on a volcano? There is controversy on methodology used to gauge global CO2.

To overturn it you’d need a couple of things. First you’d need to demonstrate some previously unknown phenomenon to counter the known warming effect of CO2. Second you’d need to come up with an alternate explanation for the warming that is taking place. Neither of these has appeared in a viable form in peer reviewed literature.
It doesn’t need overturning as it has never been proven! Previously unknown? Currently not well understood are factors such as solar, cloud cover/formation and precipitation, wouldn’t you agree? IPCC has chosen to ignore literature opposing its views. Neither satellite or surface station data (as unreliable as it may be), show warming for the last several years. Even Met O is conceding that point.
Discussion on an article concerning clouds and precipitation: http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/15/important-new-paper-on-cloud-precipitation-interactions-by-roy-spencer-and-colleagues/ Comment?



What McIntyre is really looking for is the look over the shoulder of every researcher whose results he doesn’t agree with and to tell them how to conduct their research. He’s looking to make a nuisance of himself. The code Hansen is using can apparently be replicated with “two pages in MatLab” which is nothing. A decade ago as an undergraduate I had bi-weekly projects that required as much. How then could such a simple minded mistake occur at NASA? Of course now it is said to be insignificant as it went in the direction unfavorable to AGW. One can only imagine another Newsweek edition proclaiming the egregious error had it been on the other foot.
Since apparently you don’t follow what’s going on at Climate Audit, it might be of benefit to do so and you can contribute to the discussions since what he’s doing is “nothing”?


After these things were pointed out McIntyre moved onto “but the code isn’t available”. While there are cases where making the code available is desirable it certainly isn’t required. The point of peer review is to allow independently reproducing the results. If you use the same code, you get the same errors and you haven’t really accomplished anything. [QUOTE]
Publicly funded research requires public access in the UK to my knowledge. So, if, as was the case of Michael Mann, a researcher can conceivably use corrupted code, nobody would be the wiser and that is fine with you? The reason McIntyre found the errors was he obtained the code without Mann’s approval as it was stored in an obscure file on the internet. It is getting to the point where peer review is becoming more of an editorial safe house than rigorous scientific scrutiny. In essence what you are suggesting is if computer code is reliant on testing a hypothesis it doesn’t really matter as long as the results agree with the peer review? That’s the impression you’re inferring.

[QUOTE]Rather then doing this work for himself, however, McIntyre wants to “review” Hansen’s work so he can say “look Hansen was wrong!” without ever having to provide a correct result of his own. The corrected result McIntyre doesn’t want to produce would almost certainly still support Hansen’s claims. IMO this makes McIntyre's motives very suspicious as it's far more spin then science.
Again, go to Climate Audit and contribute. The bottom line is the error was found, NASA acknowledged it, corrected it and credited Steve McIntyre for it. Where’s the spin? It sounds to me you don’t like the idea of auditing and would rather just let things sit was it were, right or wrong. What happened this week is just the beginning, so get used to it.

I believe most thinking is that initial warming is triggered by regular variations in the earths orbit. This warming reduces the oceans ability to hold CO2, and the resulting release acts as a positive feedback driving up temperatures until they once again hit a stable point.

The current warming doesn’t fit with this historical pattern on two fronts. First, the going by the history we should be approaching another cooling cycle in the next few thousand years not a warming cycle. Second, the CO2 rise is occurring before the temperature rise suggesting that the mechanics behind that previous change doesn’t apply here.

It’s also worth pointing out that the earth was undergoing an upward spiral of temperature during this period, and while positive feedback effects like rising CO2 and decreasing albedo due to ice retreat didn’t start the process there is every reason to believe they played a major role in making the temperature swing as large as it was.
Evidence is coming forth that negative feedbacks rule, not positive. Why hasn’t there been runaway warming in the past or present? We are approaching another cooling cycle; it might help to review the literature. The correlation between CO2 and temperature for the last 100 years is extremely weak, statistically speaking. You’re right though, the current warming doesn’t fit because it’s not warming!

There is nothing outside natural variation. It is no warmer today than other periods in recent history. A somewhat humorous side note:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063
D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."
The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
SOS, different decade.

Please cite specific papers that support the AGW hypothesis of CO2 being the main driver of climate change. Thus far all I've seen are scripted “how to talk to a denier” retorts, ad hom attacks, opinions, long speeches, lists of supporters and links to journal editorials, news headlines and IPCC.

[mhaze]

I'll break it down for you in formal logic:

If
A causes C
B causes C
Therefore:
A or B causes C

C causes D

Now, the articles you pointed out basically just say that C causes D, but doesn't comment on the status of whether A or B (or both) is causing C. The main thing that I'm interested in (I'm not sure about others) is which of A or B is causing C or (probably more appropriately) what mix of A and B is causing C. Focusing on only the C causes D part of it ignores the truth values of A and B.

Does that make more sense now? It's fairly simple really.



Cool! That's what I used to teach in college.

And From ICECAP...

Newsweek Editor Calls Mag’s Global Warming ‘Deniers’ Article ‘Highly Contrived’
Newsweek Debunks Itself!. Washington DC - Robert J. Samuelson, a contributing editor of Newsweek, slapped down his own Magazine for what he termed a “highly contrived story” about the global warming “denial machine.” Samuelson, writing in the August 20, 2007 issue of Newsweek, explains that the Magazine used “discredited” allegations in last week’s issue

Yep, and here is something Exxon -the good guys-those Anti-Kyoto realists-actually built. Or their "construction workers" built , those being a category of humanity some on this forum smugly feel quite superior to.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1422446c355b0c7b07.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7754)

Don't misunderestimate those guys.

[lomiller]

I'm still waiting for loads of stuff to worry about on sea ice.

I’m not a mind reader so I have no idea how I’m supposed to predict what is important to you personally. What is important is that sea ice loss in the Artic is changing 7.5 million sq Km from Ice, which reflects 90% of the light hitting it to water that absorbs 70% of the light hitting it.

This has the potential to disrupt weather patterns across much of the Northern hemisphere. Even if it doesn’t, however, the much warmer temperatures mean short term winters and no opportunity to bring in supplies to the people who live in those areas. In the Canadian Artic alone that’s 100 000 people who no longer have access to food unless it’s flow in at great expense.

There is also considerable economic damage. Just like the local residents, most of the economic endeavors in northern areas depend heavily on winter roads to bring in supplies and get products to market. Reduced seasons for hauling have already begun to cut into viability of a number of mines.

There are also issues like all that extra energy being pumped into the arctic causing faster melting in Greenland and therefore higher sea level globally.

[mhaze]

What percentage of total GHG is alleged to have been contributed by "us"?


I can quote the assertions from the IPCC, of course, but that belies several questions.

1. Demonstration of a connection between CO2 level and climate or temperature - based on known estimates of fossil fuel use and other pollutants - for these following time periods.

a) 1830 - 1910.
b) 1910 - 1940.
c) 1940 - 1970.

That should be done. Then we could listen to an argument about CO2 as a climate driver for the current time period

d) 1970 - 2007.

What I'd like is not a construction of words and grammer, but actual numbers, formulas, variables, you know, the old "Inputs-outputs", right?
Such a thing should be done in a fashion that was auditable, eg, we should be able to prove that it was correct.

Anyone know where is this analysis?

[CapelDodger]

Yep. And the banker says

"Trust me."

Your above paragraph is all about how to take everyone's money away, and acknowledges it is a fiasco. Except for those who have made countless millions in the carbon trading rackets.

Again with the drama : everyone's money (implicitly all of it) being taken? By whom? More specifically to my original point, cap-and-trade is not a trillion dollar tax scheme. You don't answer my question re what they are and who's proposed them, but that's OK, I don't like to press people unless I really need an answer.

People have made and lost money in speculative carbon-trading which they freely entered into. These are people (and institutions) that would be speculating in something else if they didn't have this new toy to play with. Being new, it was untested and there were major glitches. The same was true for the stock market back in the day - South Sea Bubble, Bank of France, the Railway frenzy, that Angola scam - but stock-trading matured very rapidly.

Really?:)

Yes, really. The IPCC is a UN agency (or close equivalent) established to collate the science available on AGW, review it, and report on it for the benefit of the (broadly) scientifically illiterate decision-makers of the world.

Seems like I have about 8000 pages here somewhere of IPCC scheme implementation.

Diplomats and lawyers. What do you expect? Brevity? We're talking chargeable hours here, plus expenses.

But isn't Armstrong all one really needs to know to understand the IPCC? .

Between knowing nothing but Armstrong and knowing nothing, knowing nothing wins out. Buying into Armstrong is a long step backwards, intellectually.

The Armstrong and Green paper is available in full text.

I don't doubt it. Armstrong's no shrinking violet. This is the guy with the universal smarts, yeah? Smartness which can be applied to forecasting any subject, with no need of detailed (or any) understanding of its details. I've come across the same sort of smartness in MBA warriors - every business is essentially the same :rolleyes: . Life is not that simple.

The authors used the Forecasting Audit Software (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/forecastingaudit.html) available on the Forecasting Principles site to evaluate the IPCC forecasting procedures.

Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts (http://forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/WarmAudit31.pdf) (Forthcoming in Energy and Environment).
Forecasting Audit Software output (http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/Forecasting_Audit_combined2.pdf)

Good old Energy and Environment. And Forecasting Audit Software sounds impressive. Can you find a copy of the code for me? I used to do some programming, so I could check it out for you.


Climate scientist Jos de Laat of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute wrote of the paper:“I very much agree with your statement that 'the forecasts in the report ... present the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing', I don't think that many climate scientists are willing to admit this… I was quite surprised, even a little bit disturbed, to learn that there exists a research field devoted to the science of prediction. I have a formal education in climate science (University degree, BS in physics, MS in Meteorology and Oceanography, PhD in climate science), so I've been around for some time now, yet I don't recall anyone ever mentioning your research area.”

The reason Armstrong's pretty obscure is that obscurity was his destiny before he and the anti-AGW gravy-train discovered each other. He's not alone in that. I think it was varwoche who did a citation search on Armstrong; the only person who cites Armstrong is ... Armstrong. As references in his own papers.

Or perhaps ICECAP (http://icecap.us/), this article. (http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path=/2007/august/13/letter4/&c=1)

You call that an article?

More? Or can we just move on from this ridiculous bunch of clowns?

Armstrong and McIntyre, you mean? Suits me. If you want to stop bringing up the IPCC, that's good too. Would it be asking a bit much that you stop bringing up Al Gore as well?


By the way, that "trillion dollar tax scheme" thing of yours - does that not strike you as alarmist? It sounds alarming, but what are the chances? (I'm thinking "trillion dollar" in the traditional sense of "serious money".)

[mhaze]

I’m not a mind reader so I have no idea how I’m supposed to predict what is important to you personally. What is important is that sea ice loss in the Artic is changing 7.5 million sq Km from Ice, which reflects 90% of the light hitting it to water that absorbs 70% of the light hitting it.

This has the potential to disrupt weather patterns across much of the Northern hemisphere. Even if it doesn’t, however, the much warmer temperatures mean short term winters and no opportunity to bring in supplies to the people who live in those areas. In the Canadian Artic alone that’s 100 000 people who no longer have access to food unless it’s flow in at great expense.

There is also considerable economic damage. Just like the local residents, most of the economic endeavors in northern areas depend heavily on winter roads to bring in supplies and get products to market. Reduced seasons for hauling have already begun to cut into viability of a number of mines.

There are also issues like all that extra energy being pumped into the arctic causing faster melting in Greenland and therefore higher sea level globally.

This article (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html) goes into some speculation about the changing economics and the consequences up north. I found it rather interesting. As my previous story about the Aleut indicated, a lot of those changes will be good changes.

Greenland was pretty seriously discussed in this thread back perhaps on pages 4-6. I think everyone pretty much reached agreement that we don't need to worry about Greenland.

But as you have noted, changing sea ice will change the Artic. In my opinion, for the better for the people in that area. You can of course disagree, but I see them having DSL connections and the teenagers playing with PS3s.... Not poverty, sickness, ignorance, and long winters literally stuck in the cabin.

The total of Artic ice icluding Greenland is a small percentage of the total ice mass of the planet. Some areas are gaining some are losing. You have some speculations about positive feedbacks due to the loss of Artic ice. It is important to recognize that those are just that, speculations.

Recent articles indicate that soot maybe a major factor in less ice; separately, "brown clouds" on the asian side (basically, smog from cities) may be responsible for a large amount of Artic ice melting, IFFC 50%. Not CO2.

THE CHANGING ARCTIC: A RESPONSE TO FREEMAN DYSON'S "HERETICAL THOUGHTS" (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html)

[CapelDodger]

OK, now please someone explain how the International Conspiracy of Marxist Climate Scientists managed to shift biological patterns in a way that is consistent with the predicted warming that is not happening because Exxon was right... or something...


The conspiracy is nebulous, implied rather than specified, nudge-wink what about the fame and fortune, eh? Only on the extremes, out in shiny-hat territory, is it defined as Marxist or Imperialist (as it is by some Marxists).

The biosphere is part of the Big Picture, but it's clearly invalid to introduce it to the AGW discussion. If warming is anthropogenic then the argument must be anthropocentric. All this stuff about butterflies and ticks and who knows how many other prole species who've never even heard of Al Gore (damn, Gored myself again) is deliberate obfuscation.

As a born-and-bred gardener of mature years I have no problem with the Big Picture; I've had my current garden for nearly twenty years and the change in just that period is startling. (I'm not easily alarmed, but I can still be startled :) .) But that's an outdoor experience; the AGW argument is an indoor occupation. It's in the nature of "indoors" to exclude the actual climate, to some degree.

[BeAChooser]

Humans have, by their activities, raised atmospheric CO2 from about 290ppm to 385ppm in century and a half. That's an observable fact, not narcissism.

Just curious what you think about this:

***********

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/historical_CO2.htm

June 21, 2005

One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth's historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective - understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly "catastrophically high." Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.

Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that's a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current 'guesstimations' of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol's irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?"

**************

[CapelDodger]

This article (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html) goes into some speculation about the changing economics and the consequences up north. I found it rather interesting. As my previous story about the Aleut indicated, a lot of those changes will be good changes.[/quotes]

Good by whose value judgement? Yours? Or theirs? Does "good" mean becoming more like you? More modern, more advanced?

If the economic consequences up north are positive, people will move there to take advantage. That's not likely to be good for the locals. Never is.

But as you have noted, changing sea ice will change the Artic. In my opinion, for the better for the people in that area. You can of course disagree, but I see them having DSL connections and the teenagers playing with PS3s.... Not poverty, sickness, ignorance, and long winters literally stuck in the cabin.

Long winters in the cabin with a plump wife, no end of firewood, the smoked bounty of a summer's hunting away from the wife hanging from the rafters, the pots of vodka and the trinkets for the wife you get for the furs, plus some coin, maybe some opium ... it's not all bad. Russians really know how to build comfy cabins from wood.

The total of Artic ice icluding Greenland is a small percentage of the total ice mass of the planet. Some areas are gaining some are losing. You have some speculations about positive feedbacks due to the loss of Artic ice. It is important to recognize that those are just that, speculations.

It's informed speculation with regard to the Arctic. The albedo of ice and open water are well-established from observation, there's more information about the response of Arctic ice to global warming coming in every day, so that's where my money goes.

The Arctic is small in global terms, but it is a bit special.

Recent articles indicate that soot maybe a major factor in less ice; separately, "brown clouds" on the asian side (basically, smog from cities) may be responsible for a large amount of Artic ice melting, IFFC 50%. Not CO2.

The "brown clouds" are about the Tibetan Plateau, and have you ever looked at Arctic ice and thought "that looks kinda grey"?

[quote]THE CHANGING ARCTIC: A RESPONSE TO FREEMAN DYSON'S "HERETICAL THOUGHTS" (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html)


"Heretical" would be alarming if I didn't know it was hysterical.

[mhaze]

[quote=mhaze;2871701]This article (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson07/anderson07_index.html) goes into some speculation about the changing economics and the consequences up north. I found it rather interesting. As my previous story about the Aleut indicated, a lot of those changes will be good changes.[/quotes]

Good by whose value judgement? Yours? Or theirs? Does "good" mean becoming more like you? More modern, more advanced?

Are we going down the road here of "let's maintain these pristine native ecologically sound native cultures?" Surely not. Are you opposed to sound economic development? How about powerplants? Cell phone towers? High speed data backbones? Hospitals?

If the economic consequences up north are positive, people will move there to take advantage. That's not likely to be good for the locals. Never is.

Long winters in the cabin with a plump wife, no end of firewood, the smoked bounty of a summer's hunting away from the wife hanging from the rafters, the pots of vodka and the trinkets for the wife you get for the furs, plus some coin, maybe some opium ... it's not all bad. Russians really know how to build comfy cabins from wood.

You're surely not serious.

And what is that hanging from the rafters, the minimum 18 large game (elk, moose) per person that it would take to barely survive per person (smoked, mind you, with a circle of wolves all the time.

Or is it the wife, strung up in a noose, after cabin fever set in?

Would by chance you have read L'amour, "The Last of the Breed"?":D

[CapelDodger]

Just curious what you think about this:

***********

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/historical_CO2.htm

June 21, 2005

One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth's historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective - understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly "catastrophically high." Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.

Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that's a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current 'guesstimations' of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol's irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?"

**************

A classic example of taking refuge in the past. "What's going on has never happened before, so why should it be any different this time?"

The Ordovician is a bit of a reach; time was the Medieval Warm Period was a close enough refuge, before that the Little Ice Age seemed safe. A 1934 Warm Period has recently emerged, but will prove as fleeting as a Perseid meteor. The refuge trend is strongly into the past and away from the present and future.

The only relevant period is the current inter-glacial, during which stable climatic period the human race has blossomed into a population of six and a bit billion dependent on an agriculture which is tuned to that stable climate.

It doesn't take a big spanner in the works to screw that up pretty horribly. Just wait and watch.

[CapelDodger]

Are we going down the road here of "let's maintain these pristine native ecologically sound native cultures?"

Surely not.

I'm asking why you think you're the judge of what's good for these people, and what you base that judgement on.

Are you opposed to sound economic development?

Sound on what basis? GDP? Greater integration with the money economy?

Are you opposed to the idea that the Aleuts could reject incomers and gain all the benefits for theselves?

How about powerplants? Cell phone towers? High speed data backbones? Hospitals?

It's always all or the other with you, isn't it?



You're surely not serious.

And what is that hanging from the rafters, the minimum 18 large game (elk, moose) per person that it would take to barely survive per person (smoked, mind you, with a circle of wolves all the time.

Or is it the wife, strung up in a noose, after cabin fever set in?

Would by chance you have read L'amour, "The Last of the Breed"?":D

What you seem to have missed is that I was referring to Russians, not the New World's raw recruits. Eighteen moose in six months for two adults and the kids? Tell me where you eat, I'll buy shares. Better yet, tell me who delivers to you, you can't be mobile.

Apart from the game you've hauled back, there's the vegetables, fish, and preserves the wife has sorted out while she's been catching up with the goss and you've been flexing your pecs with the lads and dropping in on those Estonian lasses ... it's not all bad.

The fundamental problem with modern family life is that it's every bloody day. That's not what we're built for. "Wait till your father gets home!" means something when it has a few months to ferment.

[BeAChooser]

It doesn't take a big spanner in the works to screw that up pretty horribly. Just wait and watch.

What I'm watching are the outer planets warming due to solar heating and computer models that don't account for that heating.

What I'm watching is the bulk of Antarctica growing colder, not warmer and the main accumulation of ice growing thicker, not melting.

What I'm watching is scientific literature that historically shows changes in temperature precede changes in carbon dioxide.

What I'm watching are predictions based on computer models that are all over the map and whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown.

What I'm watching are folks who can't even accurately predict the weather next week telling me what the climate will be a half century from now.

What I'm watching are bogus claims by the Al Gore faction that "zero percent" of scientists disagree on global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals trying to get the US to shoulder the burden for stopping global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals even blaming us for China's unrestrained growth in CO2 emissions.

What I'm watching are liberals like Congressman Dingel calling for draconian global warming taxes that would certainly cripple the economy.

Yes, I am watching ...

[mhaze]

What I'm watching are the outer planets warming due to solar heating and computer models that don't account for that heating.

What I'm watching is the bulk of Antarctica growing colder, not warmer and the main accumulation of ice growing thicker, not melting.

What I'm watching is scientific literature that historically shows changes in temperature precede changes in carbon dioxide.

What I'm watching are predictions based on computer models that are all over the map and whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown.

What I'm watching are folks who can't even accurately predict the weather next week telling me what the climate will be a half century from now.

What I'm watching are bogus claims by the Al Gore faction that "zero percent" of scientists disagree on global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals trying to get the US to shoulder the burden for stopping global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals even blaming us for China's unrestrained growth in CO2 emissions.

What I'm watching are liberals like Congressman Dingel calling for draconian global warming taxes that would certainly cripple the economy.

Yes, I am watching ...


You must have them eyes open.:D

[CapelDodger]

Ok, between you and varwoche I can definitely see something there. I will note, however, that despite that they might be very minor in the scientific world, they are absolutely huge in the political world (which might be, like many other things in politics, where things get messed up).

The IPCC was created by the political world to convey the existing science to them in a way they could understand. Sort of. It's a conduit between the scientific world and the political. Naturally, the media clamps onto the political end rather than the scientific end. Science is a turn-off, but everybody thinks they understand politics.

Aside from the obvious one of the general belief long ago that the Earth was the center of the universe, there is one more I can think of off the top of my head. Just a short few hundred years ago the scientific community believed that all the spaces in the world (nay, universe) were filled with a substance called "ether"

There's also phlogiston to explain combustion, but that theory was blown away by thermodynamics and the redox principle when the subject became economically significant. The ether thing had to wait on Marconi before it really mattered in practical terms.

Lots of blanks have been filled in since those days. There's not much space left for surprises to jump out at us.

[mhaze]

What you seem to have missed is that I was referring to Russians, not the New World's raw recruits. Eighteen moose in six months for two adults and the kids? Tell me where you eat, I'll buy shares. Better yet, tell me who delivers to you, you can't be mobile.

Apart from the game you've hauled back, there's the vegetables, fish, and preserves the wife has sorted out while she's been catching up with the goss and you've been flexing your pecs with the lads and dropping in on those Estonian lasses ... it's not all bad.

The fundamental problem with modern family life is that it's every bloody day. That's not what we're built for. "Wait till your father gets home!" means something when it has a few months to ferment.

Okay, the wild is a paradise for you.

I'll take a couple of these up North, and see what happens then.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1422446c3a1ecb2970.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7768)

[Pipirr]

What I'm watching are the outer planets warming due to solar heating and computer models that don't account for that heating.

What I'm watching is the bulk of Antarctica growing colder, not warmer and the main accumulation of ice growing thicker, not melting.

What I'm watching is scientific literature that historically shows changes in temperature precede changes in carbon dioxide.

What I'm watching are predictions based on computer models that are all over the map and whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown.

What I'm watching are folks who can't even accurately predict the weather next week telling me what the climate will be a half century from now.

What I'm watching are bogus claims by the Al Gore faction that "zero percent" of scientists disagree on global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals trying to get the US to shoulder the burden for stopping global warming.

What I'm watching are liberals even blaming us for China's unrestrained growth in CO2 emissions.

What I'm watching are liberals like Congressman Dingel calling for draconian global warming taxes that would certainly cripple the economy.

Yes, I am watching ...


The word you want might in fact be 'cherry picking'.

[BeAChooser]

The word you want might in fact be 'cherry picking'.

As opposed to 'lying' which is what Al Gore and his supporters have been doing?

[a_unique_person]

What percentage of total GHG is alleged to have been contributed by "us"?



What increase above what had been a system in relative balance, is the question.

The answer, pretty well all of it.




How then could such a simple minded mistake occur at NASA? Of course now it is said to be insignificant as it went in the direction unfavorable to AGW. One can only imagine another Newsweek edition proclaiming the egregious error had it been on the other foot.
Since apparently you don’t follow what’s going on at Climate Audit, it might be of benefit to do so and you can contribute to the discussions since what he’s doing is “nothing”?



If you compare the two global temperature graphs for the period, they are still pretty well identical.



Please cite specific papers that support the AGW hypothesis of CO2 being the main driver of climate change. Thus far all I've seen are scripted “how to talk to a denier” retorts, ad hom attacks, opinions, long speeches, lists of supporters and links to journal editorials, news headlines and IPCC.

Have you even read the IPCC report yet? It cites every claim it makes.

[a_unique_person]

As opposed to 'lying' which is what Al Gore and his supporters have been doing?

Al Gore has been telling people the worst case scenario. It may not happen, but if you are managing risk, it's always worth knowing what that is. Given the extremely rapid melting in the Arctic circle, worst case may well be on the cards. (Bush could have done with a little of that caution in Iraq). Gore, however, is irellevant to the science.

[a_unique_person]

Subsequently, James Annan, who works with the Data Assimilation group at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change (http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/eng/#), noted the "bet" and emailed Lindzen about setting up an actual bet. Annan and Lindzen engaged in an exchange but were unable to settle on a mutually acceptable bet. Annan summarizes (http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/betting.html#lindze) their exchange on his blog, claiming that Lindzen would take only 50 to 1 odds on global temperatures in 20 years being lower than they are now.
Obviously, I feel responsible for getting this whole thing started. I contacted Lindzen, who insisted that I had misquoted him. Given the rancor that sometimes accompanies the debate over climate change I try to be very careful about what I report. I've looked again at the notes of my phone interview with Lindzen and they say what I reported in my November column. At this point, I can only conclude that when I was taking down my notes during our conversation, I somehow misheard or misunderstood Lindzen. My mistake.
So, for the record, what does Lindzen actually believe? This is how Lindzen responded to Annan: "The quote [at Reason Online] was out of context. I think the odds are about 50-50. I said that if anyone were willing to give warming much higher odds than that, I would be tempted to take the bet." Lindzen and Annan subsequently haggled a bit over what would be a fair bet. From Lindzen's point of view, any such bet would be between people like Annan, who are convinced by climate model projections that average global temperatures should be increasing about 0.3C per decade, and people who think it's even odds that temperatures will be lower than they are now in 20 years.






Lindzen doubts that AGW is proven, but what odds does he call it at? 50/50! He is willing to bet the house on those odds?

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34976.html

[varwoche]

What I'm watching is the bulk of Antarctica growing colder, not warmer and the main accumulation of ice growing thicker, not melting ... Yes, I am watching...You need to watch with more care as these claims are bogus.
the ice sheet's mass has decreased significantly from 2002 to 2005 ... The estimated mass loss was enough to raise global sea level about 1.2 millimeters article (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_06085_arctic_ice.html)
A new analysis of the past 30 years of records from nine research stations, including Amundsen-Scott at the South Pole, reveals that the air above the entirety of Antarctica has warmed by as much as 0.70 degree Celsius per decade during the winter months ... warming trend is consistent across data from multiple stations run by multiple countries using multiple types of instruments. article (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=0009B968-6067-142C-A06783414B7F0000)

[BeAChooser]

Al Gore has been telling people the worst case scenario.

No, Gore has been LYING when he's told people that there are "zero percent" of scientists who disagree with his version of global warming.

Gore, however, is irellevant to the science.

But he and the other liberals pushing his agenda are not irrelevant to our response to science. Doing what folks like Gore and Dingel are pushing would be highly irresponsible and would seriously damage this country.

[BeAChooser]

You need to watch with more care as these claims are bogus.

Perhaps.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N45/C2.jsp " Wingham, D.J., Shepherd, A., Muir, A. and Marshall, G.J. 2006. Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 364: 1627-1635. The authors "analyzed 1.2 x 108 European remote sensing satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003." This survey, in their words, "covers 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet," which together comprise "72% of the grounded ice sheet." ... snip ... Wingham et al. report that "overall, the data, corrected for isostatic rebound, show the ice sheet growing at 5 ± 1 mm year-1." To calculate the ice sheet's change in mass, however, "requires knowledge of the density at which the volume changes have occurred," and when the researchers' best estimates of regional differences in this parameter are used, they find that "72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27 ± 29 Gt year-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm year-1." This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N35/C1.jsp " Van de Berg, W.J., van den Broeke, M.R., Reijmer, C.H. and van Meijgaard, E. 2006. Reassessment of the Antarctic surface mass balance using calibrated output of a regional atmospheric climate model. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: 10.1029/2005JD006495 ... snip ... Van de Berg et al. report that "the SMB integrated over the grounded ice sheet (171 ± 3 mm year-1) exceeds previous estimates by as much as 15%." The largest differences between their results and those of others, according to them, are "up to 1 m year-1 higher in the coastal zones of East and West Antarctica, which are without exception in areas with few observations.""

http://www.physorg.com/news4180.html " May 20, 2005, East Antarctic Ice Sheet Gains Mass and Slows Sea Level Rise, Study Finds ... snip ... in a study to appear in this week's online edition of Science, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass. From 1992 to 2003, Curt Davis, MU professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team of researchers observed 7.1 million kilometers of the ice sheet, using satellites to measure changes in elevation. They discovered that the ice sheet's interior was gaining mass by about 45 billion tons per year, which was enough to slow sea level rise by .12 millimeters per year."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5730/1898 "Snowfall-Driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-Level Rise, Curt H. Davis,1* Yonghong Li,1 Joseph R. McConnell,2 Markus M. Frey,3 Edward Hanna4, Satellite radar altimetry measurements indicate that the East Antarctic ice-sheet interior north of 81.6°S increased in mass by 45 ± 7 billion metric tons per year from 1992 to 2003. Comparisons with contemporaneous meteorological model snowfall estimates suggest that the gain in mass was associated with increased precipitation. A gain of this magnitude is enough to slow sea-level rise by 0.12 ± 0.02 millimeters per year."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020130074839.htm "January 30, 2002, Scientists Detect Thickening Of West Antarctic Ice Sheet ... snip ... Assistant professor of Earth sciences Slawek Tulaczyk and Ian Joughin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used satellite radar images to map the flow of ice in the ice sheet and estimate how its mass is changing. They reported their findings in the January 18 issue of the journal Science. "The West Antarctic ice sheet has been retreating for several thousand years, so to look now and see that it is growing is staggering to me," Tulaczyk said. "Within the past 200 years, the ice sheet seems to have switched fairly rapidly from a negative mass balance to a positive mass balance."

But even if the study you cite is correct, scientists didn't know it until last year. Prior to that all the studies showed the ice mass growing. But that didn't alter the claims of the Gore and the global warming contingent, did it? What's that say?

By the way, concerning the Grace based study ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201712.html "But some scientists remain unconvinced. Oregon state climatologist George Taylor noted that sea ice in some areas of Antarctica is expanding and part of the region is getting colder, despite computer models that would predict otherwise."

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060308.html "Recent analysis of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data indicate that the Antarctic ice sheet might have lost enough mass to cause the worlds' oceans to rise about 1.2 millimeters, on the average, from between 2002 and 2005. Although this may not seem like much, the equivalent amount of water is about 150 trillion liters, equivalent to the amount of water used by US residents in three months. Uncertainties in the measurement make the mass loss uncertain by about 80 trillion liters."

Oh ... and one more thing ...

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9902/03/antarctic.ice.sheet/ NASA animates 20,000 years of Antarctic ice history ... snip ... The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has developed 3-D computer animation showing the retreat of the west Antarctic ice sheet over 20,000 years, speeded up into a few minutes of dramatic video footage. ... snip ... "During the last 20,000 years, the west Antarctic ice sheet lost two-thirds of its mass and raised the sea level 10 meters. It still contains enough ice to raise the sea level by another 5 meters if it were to lose the remainder of its mass,' ... snip ... there is evidence that the west Antarctic ice sheet may have melted and reformed several times during the past 11 million years."

Did Man do that? :D

[varwoche]

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N45/C2.jsp " Wingham, D.J., Shepherd, A., Muir, A. and Marshall, G.J. 2006.
...
This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica." Either CO2 Science (agenda-driven propagandists/doofuses) spun the facts beyond recognition, or else study authors Wingham & Shepherd have done an about face...

After a century of polar exploration, the past decade of satellite measurements has painted an altogether new picture of how Earth's ice sheets are changing. As global temperatures have risen, so have rates of snowfall, ice melting, and glacier flow. Although the balance between these opposing processes has varied considerably on a regional scale, data show that Antarctica and Greenland are each losing mass overall. link (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1529)

I'll take a look at your other cites once you acknowledge that your first cite has been refuted by the authors themselves. Fair enough? (I won't waste my time on your other CO2 Science cite though, for obvious reasons.)

[Megalodon]

Not misdirecting? Then...

Please clarify which of the prior messages, let's say from 321 to 337 (page 9) of this thread, discuss the reality and projections of global warming - as opposed to human caused global warming.

Or have you genuinely misunderstood the discussion and the intent of my and others' postings?:confused:

I can't misunderstand what are schizoid posts to begin with... I can't understand them either, if that makes you feel better.

I one breath you say that you think the globe is warming, and in the next you congratulate Exxon for funding sites that deny it. Then you start raving about a leftist cabal to "tax and spend", obvious missing the meaning of the words "leftist" and "tax", in the least.

Sometimes you are fun to engage, and we saw before we agree in a number of things. Some other times, you get carried away ;)

[Megalodon]

Well, it is quite possible that they have different opinions than me on that. I generally feel along the same lines as John Christy on the topic... if you need me to tell you what his views are I'd be happy to.

So that is your problem... you thought I was targeting you! Silly newbie, you're not that important ;)

Now, the articles you pointed out basically just say that C causes D, but doesn't comment on the status of whether A or B (or both) is causing C. The main thing that I'm interested in (I'm not sure about others) is which of A or B is causing C or (probably more appropriately) what mix of A and B is causing C. Focusing on only the C causes D part of it ignores the truth values of A and B.

The important part of the above is bolded. Don't take personally posts that are obviously general. Don't assume that every post is directed at you. Your blood pressure will be all the better for it...

Isn't a patronizing way of saying that Anti-AGW people are conspiracy theorists? That's how it came across to me... as a very condescending phrase.

Yes, it is. I intended it that way, and it was stamped and addressed. If you don't know enough about a forum's history, don't assume things. See varwoche's post above...

Ok then, maybe you could discuss my thoughts on the 800 year gap that I posted above and the apparent reluctance to open up research methods in some cases for starters? I'm fairly new here so I might have missed some of the threads that might have covered that.

In previous times (and still today), cycles of warming and cooling are mainly influenced by known orbital variations (the Milankovitch cycles). These alter the amount of solar energy received by the Earth, resulting in glacial and interglacial periods. the end of a glaciation would drive up the co2 content of the atmosphere, with the lag that you talk about.
Presently, we decided to remove from the soil the co2 that was stored during the Carboniferous and Permian and gush it into the atmposphere. This resulted in an unprecedented scenario, which we'll have to deal with. We left the last glaciation 11 000 years ago (give or take a Dryas), and are not due for the next one for 50 000 years, if memory serves me right.


And I don't know if the argument of Evolution is really similar in this case... last I recall there are no supernatural elements getting involved in this discussion. (Ok, yeah.. I know they post ID as scientific, but that doesn't really fly well... but all of that is a different topic for a different thread.)

Yes, and an old one at that. The comparison fares very well.

Anyways, read my comments to CapelDodger that I just posted... we shouldn't be afraid of people questioning our ideas in science as in theory it'll only lead to a better grasping of the truth. Sadly, some AGW people react very harshly to the idea that people would even think to question them.

Nobody is afraid of new ideas. We are tired of the old ones, constantly rehashed in face of all the evidence and previous discussion. It's sad that you feel wronged in this discussion, but the search function is your friend.

Cheers

[rockoon]

Either CO2 Science (agenda-driven propagandists/doofuses) spun the facts beyond recognition, or else study authors Wingham & Shepherd have done an about face...


My opinion of you sinks every single time I read one of your posts. For someone who is supposedly well read on the subject of climate science, you are wrong so often it is unbelievable. You are a liar for suggesting that the paper in question suggests anything but what the co2science abstract states. I cannot link to the actual paper (its on IEEE) but I can link to a harvard abstract of the paper:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006RSPTA.364.1627W


I'll take a look at your other cites once you acknowledge that your first cite has been refuted by the authors themselves. Fair enough? (I won't waste my time on your other CO2 Science cite though, for obvious reasons.)


Now I politely suggest that you look at his other cites without waiting for a response from him because your problem with this cite is imaginary.

I don't like liars and I don't like people who refuse to do the simplest bit of checking before they spout off about what they claim to "know" - you apparently don't know much about climate science because I've caught you time and again armed with lies and ignorance. Your claim to fame is collecting a bunch of links on global warming, and I suggest that your next step should be to actualy read them.

[mhaze]

I can't misunderstand what are schizoid posts to begin with... I can't understand them either, if that makes you feel better.

I one breath you say that you think the globe is warming, and in the next you congratulate Exxon for funding sites that deny it.

Looks like you forgot to mention Exxon's 2002 $100M grant to fund in Stanford's Global Science and Energy Project.


Sometimes you are fun to engage, and we saw before we agree in a number of things. Some other times, you get carried away ;)Ah yes.....but we had a similar conversation before in this very thread, back around #32-38 IFFC....let's see...here was where you brought in the "MARXIST CONSPIRACY" line - Originally Posted by Megalodon http://forums.randi.org/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=2778590#post2778590)
You would be right...

Is this going to turn into a "it's a international enviro-socialist conspiracy to sink the US" argument? If it is, I have more important things to do with my time.

What does that have to do with the science?

I have not seen Gore's movie, but given your persistent entumescence for the guy, forgive me if I take this with a grain of salt.

As I said, haven't seen the movie.



And here was my response.Suit yourself, but you are welcome to show that I am wrong; for example show me where children in schools are taught that sea level rise is 2-3 mm per year, after they see Gore's movie. Curriculums are published, that should not be a problem right? So can you show where the actual science is taught and not the Alarmism?

RE "what does it have to do with the science", and "environ-conspiracy", I am a bit puzzled that the answers are not obvious. So here are just a couple answers.

1. What, exactly, do you tell people to change their behavior on? (determined by science, not alarmism)
2. What, exactly, do you spend public money and do reasearch on?
3. What changes, exactly, do cities make to have less adverse environmental impacts?
4. What is the focus of policy toward the third world?
5. Are carbon credits and carbon offsets good? Should they be implemented? How about straightout emissions taxes? (Based on science right?)

Here is your chance to show you have more of a brain than Joe the construction worker working out there on that rig for Exxon.

[a_unique_person]

No, Gore has been LYING when he's told people that there are "zero percent" of scientists who disagree with his version of global warming.



If you round it off, it's damn close. He was talking about the published science as being representative of the scientific view, which is a reasonable position to take. You wouldn't trust an open heart operation to an gynacologist.



But he and the other liberals pushing his agenda are not irrelevant to our response to science. Doing what folks like Gore and Dingel are pushing would be highly irresponsible and would seriously damage this country.


I can think of some excellent reasons why reducing US dependence on carbon based fuels would be of a great benefit to the country.

[Megalodon]

Looks like you forgot to mention Exxon's 2002 $100M grant to fund in Stanford's Global Science and Energy Project.

And that would be relevant exactly how?

Suit yourself, but you are welcome to show that I am wrong; for example show me where children in schools are taught that sea level rise is 2-3 mm per year, after they see Gore's movie. Curriculums are published, that should not be a problem right? So can you show where the actual science is taught and not the Alarmism?

Well, as I said before, I don't care about your swelling for the former VP. I don't care about the movie, and I'm not really that interested in US high-school curricula either. Since I've explicitly said that I haven't seen the movie, and would not comment on it, your question is pointless.

Now, about the rest

1. What, exactly, do you tell people to change their behavior on? (determined by science, not alarmism)

You transmit them the science. How you do it is anyone's guess, and several attempts have and will be made.

Paying for people to lie is not the way though... although exxon really got the value of their money.

2. What, exactly, do you spend public money and do reasearch on?
A multitude of subjects. You seem not to be familiar with the strategy of research funding. Nobody threw file cabinets out the window while proclaiming "that's it, from now on, only global warming projects".

And no, there isn't a bias towards the AGW related projects. Most projects I've seen actually tend to omit the anthropogenic, since is irrelevant if you're merely looking at the effects of warming, and might lead to problems on the political side.

But it's not such a big sample, I admit.

3. What changes, exactly, do cities make to have less adverse environmental impacts?

What cities? New York or Ayamonte? Moskow or Oldenburg?

You do realize your question is silly, mainly the "exactly" in it...

4. What is the focus of policy toward the third world?

Whose policy? See what I mean? You're all over the place... Take a deep breath and start over, with smaller bites this time.

5. Are carbon credits and carbon offsets good? Should they be implemented? How about straightout emissions taxes? (Based on science right?)

Since carbon credits and offsets are a market reply to the problem, I thought you would like it :).

The short reply is yes and yes. And hefty fines for the ones who fail to curb their emissions, and a generalized movement towards other energy sources, namely alternatives (for a small percentage of usage), fission (temporary, and under extremely strict security and environmental rules) and fusion (closer than most think, if we can get the physicists to stop jerking around with the fundamental science and getting to the point).

Here is your chance to show you have more of a brain than Joe the construction worker working out there on that rig for Exxon.

OMG! My intelectual prowess has been challenged by an anonymous poster in the internet! Who actually thinks that Exxon are the "good guys" regarding the GW debate... See me shiver...

[mhaze]

Since carbon credits and offsets are a market reply to the problem, I thought you would like it :).

The short reply is yes and yes. And hefty fines for the ones who fail to curb their emissions, and a generalized movement towards other energy sources, namely alternatives (for a small percentage of usage), fission (temporary, and under extremely strict security and environmental rules) and fusion (closer than most think, if we can get the physicists to stop jerking around with the fundamental science and getting to the point).

OMG! My intelectual prowess has been challenged by an anonymous poster in the internet! Who actually thinks that Exxon are the "good guys" regarding the GW debate... See me shiver...

If your intellectual prowness has been questioned, did not you bring it on yourself by your behavior? Want examples?

[dakotajudo]

My opinion of you sinks every single time I read one of your posts. For someone who is supposedly well read on the subject of climate science, you are wrong so often it is unbelievable. You are a liar for suggesting that the paper in question suggests anything but what the co2science abstract states. I cannot link to the actual paper (its on IEEE) but I can link to a harvard abstract of the paper:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006RSPTA.364.1627W

...
I don't like liars and I don't like people who refuse to do the simplest bit of checking before they spout off about what they claim to "know" - you apparently don't know much about climate science because I've caught you time and again armed with lies and ignorance. Your claim to fame is collecting a bunch of links on global warming, and I suggest that your next step should be to actualy read them.

Perhaps an apology is in order.

The abstract you link to states explicity that the article is published by the Royal Society, and you can click on the DOI link (http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2006.1792) to directly access the abstract at http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/ , and follow that to the full text at http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html

Then you can contrast the CO2Science summary
Contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more.

with the final statements of the authors


What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.



Really, this thread has turned into something of a train wreck, hasn't it?

FWIW, I tracked the citation through PubMed, and the related links there suggest to me that BeAChooser is cherry-picking. Which was varwoche was pointing out - a more recent reference by Wingham & Shepherd contradicts the citation above.

[mhaze]

Perhaps an apology is in order.

The abstract you link to states explicity that the article is published by the Royal Society, and you can click on the DOI link (http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2006.1792) to directly access the abstract at http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/ , and follow that to the full text at http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html

Then you can contrast the CO2Science summary


with the final statements of the authors




Really, this thread has turned into something of a train wreck, hasn't it?

FWIW, I tracked the citation through PubMed, and the related links there suggest to me that BeAChooser is cherry-picking. Which was varwoche was pointing out - a more recent reference by Wingham & Shepherd contradicts the citation above.

Good find. I was earlier noting that actual source articles were required, not abstracts (no matter what side of the train one is jumping off of):)

[varwoche]

My opinion of you sinks every single time I read one of your posts. For someone who is supposedly well read on the subject of climate science, you are wrong so often it is unbelievable. You are a liar for suggesting that the paper in question suggests anything but what the co2science abstract states. Odin help me. It's a good idea to actually read what's been posted before launching into yet another fact-challenged tirade. Here again, formatting added: Either CO2 Science (agenda-driven propagandists/doofuses) spun the facts beyond recognition, or else* study authors Wingham & Shepherd have done an about face


* I concede there is one more possibility -- maybe it's BeAChooser who spun the facts. Since I'm disinterested in consuming information via propagandists such as CO2 Science, either you or BeAChooser will need to sort it out. Add: Dakotajudo did the legwork (thanks!) and no surprise, the spin is courtesy of CO2 Science.

But in any case, it's clear that BeAChooser supported his claim that Antarctica ice mass is increasing by citing scientists who are on record (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1529):
Antarctica and Greenland are each losing mass overall.

I don't like liars and I don't like people who refuse to do the simplest bit of checking before they spout off about what they claim to "know" I heartily agree!

I welcome you to retract your dyspeptic tirade, breath not held.

[varwoche]

Mhaze, earlier in this thread we had this exchange...

And what's worse, free market bags of hot air such as Heartland -- DCI Group / Tech Central, George C. Marshall Institute, Malloy@junkscience, CO2 Science [guffaw], Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Cooler Heads Coalition come to mind -- are constantly cited here on a skeptical forum as if their blather should be taken seriously in science debates. This is patently absurd even if they weren't Exxon shills, but that doesn't stop true believers.
If they are factually correct their funding or orientation politically or otherwise does not matter. If cows could fly...

It should be painfully evident from dakotajudo's post the type of lies that CO2 Science propagates. To rely on this sort of agenda-driven, fact-challenged source without digging deeper is antithetical to critical thinking. Cites to CO2 Science and their ilk have no place on a skeptical forum, or anywhere else for that matter, regardless one's take on AGW.

[mhaze]

Odin help me. It's a good idea to actually read what's been posted before launching into yet another fact-challenged tirade. Here again, formatting added:


* I concede there is one more possibility -- maybe it's BeAChooser who spun the facts. Since I'm disinterested in consuming information via propagandists such as CO2 Science, either you or BeAChooser will need to sort it out. Add: Dakotajudo did the legwork (thanks!) and no surprise, the spin is courtesy of CO2 Science.

But in any case, it's clear that BeAChooser supported his claim that Antarctica ice mass is increasing by citing scientists who are on record (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1529):


I heartily agree!

I welcome you to retract your dyspeptic tirade, breath not held.


On reflection I come to the opinion - which some will not share no doubt - that anyone who wants to make a point based on evidence should provide it in a straight forward fashion. That means without some convoluted literature search by a third party coming in to locate the source article. It should not be so difficult to provide evidence to support one's position; I am personally going to disregard any assertions of evidence that point to pay-to-read articles. There are too many variations between the summary in a pop sci source (Varouche, yours are as faulty here as CO2science), the abstract, and the actual article.


Here is the actual closing paragraph from Wingham et. al. 2007. Bold is mine.

Food fight!:D

4. Conclusions
We show that 72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif29Gtyr-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower global sea levels by 0.08mmyr-1. The IPCC third assessment (Church & Gregory 2001 (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html#bib3)) partially offset an ongoing sea-level rise due to Antarctic retreat since the last glacial maximum (0.0-0.5mmyr-1) with a twentieth century fall due to increased snowfall (-0.2-0.0mmyr-1). But that assessment relied solely on models that neither captured ice streams nor the Peninsula warming, and the data show both have dominated at least the late twentieth century ice sheet. Even allowing a http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif30Gtyr-1 fluctuation in unsurveyed areas, they provide a range of -35-+115Gtyr-1. This range equates to a sea level contribution of -0.3-+0.1mmyr-1 and so Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise. In consequence, the data places a further burden on accounting (Munk 2003 (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html#bib6)) for the twentieth century rise of 1.5-2mmyr-1. What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.

[BeAChooser]

Either CO2 Science (agenda-driven propagandists/doofuses) spun the facts beyond recognition,

That doesn't appear to be the case since the results of the 2006 Wingham & Shepherd study are similarly described in other sources. For example:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/12/05/sea-level-rise-not-from-antarctic-melting/

Nice try ...

or else study authors Wingham & Shepherd have done an about face...

Perhaps that's true, but my point remains the same. Until about 2006-2007, the bulk (if not all, according to sources describing the GRACE work) of the studies said that Antarctica was overall gaining ice mass, not losing it. Yet, Al Gore and the global walarmists had been painting this dire picture of antarctic ice sheets meeting for years and years before that. So what's that make them? I think the answer is that phrase you used ... "agenda-driven propagandists/doofuses".

Furthermore, your link on the lastest Shepherd and Wingham study states they say "Our best estimate of their combined imbalance is about 125 gigatons per year of ice, enough to raise sea level by 0.35 millimeters per year. This is only a modest contribution to the present rate of sea-level rise of 3.0 millimeters per year. "

Why should a "modest contribution" be such a source of alarm?

Afterall, as noted in the CNN article I linked, NASA says during the last 20,000 years, the west Antarctic sheet, which is the one currently losing most of the mass (the east sheet may still be gaining mass and is three times the size of the west sheet) has lost 2/3rds of its mass and raised sea levels 10 meters. That works out to a rate of 10*1000/20000 = 0.5 mm per year, which is about the same as what your source says the current ice mass loss will do. Without Man being the cause at all. So why is everyone hysterical? Why are you so sure Man is the cause now?

Or look at it this way. At a rate 0.4 mm per year, it will take over 750 years to raise ocean levels just 1 foot. So what's the urgency in passing draconian legislation that will severely damage our economy? I don't see it. And I'm watching ...

And you didn't read all that the latest Wingham and Shepherd look at the data had to say. Here's more:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11396-ice-sheet-complexity-leaves-sea-level-rise-uncertain.html "Ice sheet complexity leaves sea level rise uncertain ... snip ... The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises."

By the way, the NASA source I cited indicated the uncertainty in the GRACE best estimate of 150 trillion liters of water equivalent lost is 80 trillion liters. That's a HUGE uncertainty. In fact, looking into this in more detail I find statements that:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4767296.stm "Overall, Dr Velicogna's group found an annual decrease in ice sheet mass of 152 cubic km. There is a clear loss in the west, whereas the mass of the East Antarctic sheet appears to be constant. ... snip ... Last year an altimeter study indicated that parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet were getting thicker, by about 1.8cm per year. ... snip ... But there is another issue which needs resolving. Grace is unable to discriminate between ice and rock. And the rock surface of Antarctica, below the ice sheet, is rising. The new research paper attempts to correct for this by estimating the rate of rise through computer models of the Earth's interior. But uncertainties in the models produce uncertainties in the team's estimates of changes to the ice: the annual loss could be as low as 72 cubic km, or as high as 232 cubic km."

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=2378 "By looking at data from Antarctica from April 2002 to August 2005, Velicogna calculates that Antarctica is losing something between 72 and 232 cubic kilometres of ice per year. ... snip ... The main reason for the relatively large uncertainty in how much ice is being lost is that with GRACE data it is hard to distinguish a change in mass due to extra snowfall from a change in mass due to shifts in the crust beneath, says Velicogna. The Antarctic is moving slowly upwards as it rebounds from the melting of glaciers that lay above it during the last ice age. As it shifts, the mass of the Earth's crust is redistributed. This has to be modelled and removed from the equation before the GRACE data can be used to show changes in ice mass. "They're getting the important answer that Antarctica is losing ice mass," says Jay Zwally, a glaciologist from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "But the numbers need more work done on them." Zwally and his colleagues recently used satellite data showing surface altitudes to work out the overall mass loss of Antarctica; they concluded it was losing a smaller 19-43 gigatonnes of ice per year, contributing 0.08 millimetres to sea-level rise.

What's that ... 0.08 millimeters per year? Why it would take 3800 years for the sea levels to rise one foot at that rate. Given such uncertainties and the apparent lack of understanding about what really is going on, don't you think it's a bit premature to be talking about 50 cent global warming taxes on gas like the democRATS are doing? Hmmmmm?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

One more thing, the new study really describes and documentates the fault of the IPCC alarmist report (wich is the core of the matter). Read again the relevant conclusion:

We show that 72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 2729Gtyr-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower global sea levels by 0.08mmyr-1. The IPCC third assessment (Church & Gregory 2001) partially offset an ongoing sea-level rise due to Antarctic retreat since the last glacial maximum (0.0-0.5mmyr-1) with a twentieth century fall due to increased snowfall (-0.2-0.0mmyr-1). But that assessment relied solely on models that neither captured ice streams nor the Peninsula warming, and the data show both have dominated at least the late twentieth century ice sheet. Even allowing a 30Gtyr-1 fluctuation in unsurveyed areas, they provide a range of -35-+115Gtyr-1. This range equates to a sea level contribution of -0.3-+0.1mmyr-1 and so Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise
The final conclusion , while may seem as contrary as CO2Science says actually reflects the fact that "Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise" and is coherent with the statement "Contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more."

[BeAChooser]

If you round it off, it's damn close.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175241,00.html "Rolling Stone calls NASA scientist James Hansen the “Paul Revere” of global warming as it was Hansen who famously sounded the alarm about global warming in his 1988 testimony before Congress. But Dr. Hansen’s predictions of global temperature increases have also been famously wrong. While Dr. Hansen predicted a 0.34 degrees Centigrade rise in average global temperatures during the 1990s, actual surface temperatures rose by only one-third as much (0.11 degrees Centigrade) and lower atmosphere temperatures actually declined. ... snip ... Dr. Robert Watson is extolled as “The Messenger” by Rolling Stone. Watson is lauded for leading the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in concluding that humans have already warmed the planet and that the Earth’s temperature will rise by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. But as pointed out in this column previously, the sort of crystal ball climate modeling that the IPCC report relies on has never been validated against historical temperatures, so it’s difficult to take its predictions of future temperatures too seriously. Moreover, global warming theory and its climate models say that atmospheric temperature increases should be 30 percent greater than surface temperature increases, but they’re not -- they’re actually less. As chairman of the IPCC, Watson was responsible for propagating the myth that only 1 or 2 percent of scientists did not believe humans were responsible for global warming. Watson, of course, overlooked at least 17,000 scientists who signed a petition cautioning against global warming alarmism – a petition compiled with the assistance of former National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president Dr. Frederick Seitz."

From http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DebraJSaunders/2006/06/13/global_warming_fever "Last month in The New York Times, Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution announced that he had converted from global-warming "skeptic to convert." Easterbrook noted that a 1992 survey found that a mere 17 percent of members of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society believed in greenhouse-gas climate change. Since then, scientists have found more evidence of the phenomenon. [/b]*Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming. [/b] Witness the survey cited above. *Now, he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community. There are a number of well-known scientists who don't believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic. Hurricane expert William Gray of Colorado State University believes the Earth will start to cool within 10 years. Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, told The Washington Post that global warming is "a hoax." Climate scientist Robert Lindzen of MIT believes that clouds and water vapor will counteract greenhouse gas emissions." ... snip ... Consider this exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- formerly of the Clinton-Gore administration -- who questioned Gore's prediction that global-warming could cause sea levels to rise 20 feet. "But the consensus is several inches over the next century. Right?" asked Stephanopoulos on June 4. "Not 20 feet?" "Not at all," Gore replied. He added that the scientists he talks to -- his disciples, if you will -- see it his way. He ignores the less catastrophic theories, which predict a rise of an inch per decade, or 3 feet over the next century. To Gore, the worst-case scenario is the only scenario."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/317/5834/28a): "Climate scientists are used to skeptics taking potshots at their favorite line of evidence for global warming. It comes with the territory. But now a group of mainstream atmospheric scientists is disputing a rising icon of global warming, and researchers are giving some ground. ... snip ... atmospheric scientist Robert Charlson of the University of Washington, Seattle, one of three authors of a commentary published online last week in Nature Reports: Climate Change. Instead, he and his co-authors argue that the simulation by 14 different climate models of the warming in the 20th century is not the reassuring success IPCC claims it to be. ... snip ... Twentieth-century simulations would seem like a straightforward test of climate models. In the run-up to the IPCC climate science report released last February (Science, 9 February, p. 754), 14 groups ran their models under 20th-century conditions of rising greenhouse gases. As a group, the models did rather well (see figure). ... snip ... But the group of three atmospheric scientists--Charlson; Stephen Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York; and Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, Sweden--says the close match between models and the actual warming is deceptive. ... snip ... To prove their point, the commentary authors note the range of the simulated warmings, that is, the width of the purple band. The range is only half as large as they would expect it to be, they say, considering the large range of uncertainty in the factors driving climate change in the simulations. Greenhouse-gas changes are well known, they note, but not so the counteracting cooling of pollutant hazes, called aerosols. Aerosols cool the planet by reflecting away sunlight and increasing the reflectivity of clouds. Somehow, the three researchers say, modelers failed to draw on all the uncertainty inherent in aerosols so that the 20th-century simulations look more certain than they should.[/b]

And what about the sun? Did they include that in their models?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html "In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s. The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does. "This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said. In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era. "Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today. ... snip ... A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said."

I can think of some excellent reasons why reducing US dependence on carbon based fuels would be of a great benefit to the country.

Except they don't have anything to do with global warming. They have to do with *his* and *your* agenda, which not all of us may agree with. The first question to ask is what the effect of a 50 cent gas tax would be on the economy. The second is to ask what they would do with the revenues. And I don't think I like the answer to either question. Perhaps you do, but then that is only indicative of your agenda.

[BeAChooser]

I concede there is one more possibility -- maybe it's BeAChooser who spun the facts.

I'm hurt. :p

[BeAChooser]

Here is the actual closing paragraph from Wingham et. al. 2007. Bold is mine.

Food fight!:D

4. Conclusions
We show that 72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif29Gtyr-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower global sea levels by 0.08mmyr-1. The IPCC third assessment (Church & Gregory 2001 (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html#bib3)) partially offset an ongoing sea-level rise due to Antarctic retreat since the last glacial maximum (0.0-0.5mmyr-1) with a twentieth century fall due to increased snowfall (-0.2-0.0mmyr-1). But that assessment relied solely on models that neither captured ice streams nor the Peninsula warming, and the data show both have dominated at least the late twentieth century ice sheet. Even allowing a http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif30Gtyr-1 fluctuation in unsurveyed areas, they provide a range of -35-+115Gtyr-1. This range equates to a sea level contribution of -0.3-+0.1mmyr-1 and so Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise. In consequence, the data places a further burden on accounting (Munk 2003 (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/38315t2244r5w3m4/fulltext.html#bib6)) for the twentieth century rise of 1.5-2mmyr-1. What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Oh my ... so was I right or wrong? Or is everything just *complicated* and *uncertain*, contrary to what Gore and his global walarmists would have us think? :D

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I also have lots of excelent reasons to reduce Global dependence on fossil fuel:
- It would turn Hugo Chavez into the small dictator he is , instead of the biggest social-imperialist force in South America.
- It would reduce the power and dependence America and Europa have of islamic countries, reducing their influence and blackmailing capacity.
- It would reduce contaminant emissions that are nocive for humans.
- It would lead to fundamental research and new enterprises challenging the old dominant ones.

The problem is that none of those advantages have anything to do with Global Warming.

[mhaze]

Mhaze, earlier in this thread we had this exchange...


If cows could fly...

It should be painfully evident from dakotajudo's post the type of lies that CO2 Science propagates. To rely on this sort of agenda-driven, fact-challenged source without digging deeper is antithetical to critical thinking. Cites to CO2 Science and their ilk have no place on a skeptical forum, or anywhere else for that matter, regardless one's take on AGW.

http://gwstudies.blogspot.com/search/label/AGW

This is the link you provided earlier. One look at this blog is all it takes for me to know that the summaries of the articles cannot be trusted to accurately reflect the content of the articles. How is this different than your complaint about CO2science?

I'm willing to read any articles linked to that support a view, and to change my opinions anytime reasonable evidence is presented. Obviously, few would consider a single scientific study's results sufficient, although there are exceptions.

Having said this about the basic science, this has nothing to do with the issues, merits or lack of, of the politically correct phrase "mitigation".

Or in my words which of course I prefer "trillions of dollars of taxes".:D

[lomiller]

One more thing, the new study really describes and documentates the fault of the IPCC alarmist report (wich is the core of the matter). Read again the relevant conclusion:


The final conclusion , while may seem as contrary as CO2Science says actually reflects the fact that "Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise" and is coherent with the statement "Contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more."

You seem to have omitted part of their conclusions. here it is


What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.


This is in complete opposition to your characterization of the paper. Your characterization is also in opposition to the Abstract of the newer paper in Science by the same Authors.

[mhaze]

I also have lots of excelent reasons to reduce Global dependence on fossil fuel:
- It would turn Hugo Chavez into the small dictator he is , instead of the biggest social-imperialist force in South America.
- It would reduce the power and dependence America and Europa have of islamic countries, reducing their influence and blackmailing capacity.
- It would reduce contaminant emissions that are nocive for humans.
- It would lead to fundamental research and new enterprises challenging the old dominant ones.

The problem is that none of those advantages have anything to do with Global Warming.

The political schemes being cast on the basis of Global Warming, including Kyoto and its looming BigBrothers, have actually, nothing to do with actually solving Global Warming either.

To understand this one has to just run the numbers....

[mhaze]

Oh my ... so was I right or wrong? Or is everything just *complicated* and *uncertain*, contrary to what Gore and his global walarmists would have us think? :D

Those actual scientists - You know, the real ones, with certified degreed brains? They don't seem quite as certain as the cheerleaders.:rolleyes:

No substitute for reading the actual sources.

[CapelDodger]

Okay, the wild is a paradise for you.

I'm actually a city boy. I don't find Alaska or the Irkutsk at all alluring. Some people, though, regard them as home and like them the way they are. You may think they can be improved, but it's not really your call, is it?

I'll take a couple of these up North, and see what happens then.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1422446c3a1ecb2970.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7768)

I recommend you sound out local opinion first. A lot of these folk carry rifles, you know, and you won't see them coming ... Don't bother to duck, apparently if you hear the shot it missed :eek: .

[CapelDodger]

Lindzen doubts that AGW is proven, but what odds does he call it at? 50/50! He is willing to bet the house on those odds?

I guess he's given up on the Iris Theory.

lindzen seems to have come down to "it's just a guess", which leaves him the "lucky" get-out if he lives long enough. Time was, as I recall, that he was definite about cooling kicking-in soon, but he's one of the saner anti-AGW pundits and won't have missed what's actually been going on over the last couple of decades. He backed the wrong horse once already, now he's trying to wriggle out of it. Which beats burrowing deeper into it, I guess :) .

I'm on record (yes, JREF Forums do count as "record", be afraid, be very afraid ...) as staking my intellectual reputation on the world being warmer than today in 2012. That's staked against nothing, not even a pinch of <rule 8>. Just to prove I've got the (metaphorical) stones for it. The geek version of flexing the pecs.

[CapelDodger]

Nobody [in the pro-Science camp] is afraid of new ideas. We are tired of the old ones, constantly rehashed in face of all the evidence and previous discussion.

Endorsed by me as modified, which I'm pretty sure reflects the spirit of it. Same old same old with the occasional fleeting new act, such as 1934 which is "big" on the "scene" right now, I gather.

There people who are terrified by new ideas, let alone new realities. I'm not talking alarm here, I'm talking deeply-felt existential threat. There are ideological convictions that cannot accomodate AGW, a relatively new idea. Some people's very identities are rooted in such cults.

We more blessed individuals welcome new ideas; some are stimulating, some we can demolish as an intellectual exercise, it's all good. There just aren't enough new ideas. Old ideas in a new coat don't cut it.

[mhaze]

I'm actually a city boy. I don't find Alaska or the Irkutsk at all alluring. Some people, though, regard them as home and like them the way they are. You may think they can be improved, but it's not really your call, is it?

I recommend you sound out local opinion first. A lot of these folk carry rifles, you know, and you won't see them coming ... Don't bother to duck, apparently if you hear the shot it missed :eek: .

I have not met an Alaskan who did not like the check he got from his state for his part of the oil drills producing up there; and who would not like that to be a bigger check. Last I heard it was about $1500 per year. So I think they'd like my plan.

Alaska is worth visiting in the good season. In the winter, it is rough.

Of course if we agree with your view, that may be improving. Now there are some others who think it may be warming up pretty soon.


Hansen full exposed - admits to being an alarmist!

"Huge sea level rises are coming - unless we act now!" (http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming--unless-we-act-now.html)

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming--unless-we-act-now.html (http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming--unless-we-act-now.html)

Direct quote from Hansen (bold is mine) -

I find it almost inconceivable that "business as usual" climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century. Am I the only scientist who thinks so?


Well, Gore agrees, but he is no scientist. The IPCC doesn't agree. And he's been a bad boy, Mr. Hansen has. He was out talking to reporters when he should have been double and triple checking his arithmetic.

Now, CP, I know Gore's a bit of an embarrassment for your team. I agree with that. I'd like to see him go away, too. In fact, maybe a bit of house cleaning is in order? Maybe a few others should go also?:D

[CapelDodger]

I also have lots of excelent reasons to reduce Global dependence on fossil fuel:
- It would turn Hugo Chavez into the small dictator he is , instead of the biggest social-imperialist force in South America.

Chavez is bigger man than Bushbaby, and just as elected. He even surfed a coup, which 'Murricans seem too pussy to contemplate, let alone launch. What would it take? Seriously? You people go on and on about the Second Amendment, you can afford to be armed to to the teeth, and yet ... nothing. Schwarzeneger? Pussy. California would have seceded by now otherwise.

Venezuela's regional energy-influence isn't subject to global demand. South America is ripe for endogenous growth, just as the US used to be.

(It's quite nostalgic to see "socialist-imperialist" again, I meet so few Trotskyists these days.)

[a_unique_person]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175241,00.html "Rolling Stone calls NASA scientist James Hansen the “Paul Revere” of global warming as it was Hansen who famously sounded the alarm about global warming in his 1988 testimony before Congress. But Dr. Hansen’s predictions of global temperature increases have also been famously wrong. While Dr. Hansen predicted a 0.34 degrees Centigrade rise in average global temperatures during the 1990s, actual surface temperatures rose by only one-third as much (0.11 degrees Centigrade) and lower atmosphere temperatures actually declined. ... snip ... Dr. Robert Watson is extolled as “The Messenger” by Rolling Stone. Watson is lauded for leading the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in concluding that humans have already warmed the planet and that the Earth’s temperature will rise by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. But as pointed out in this column previously, the sort of crystal ball climate modeling that the IPCC report relies on has never been validated against historical temperatures, so it’s difficult to take its predictions of future temperatures too seriously. Moreover, global warming theory and its climate models say that atmospheric temperature increases should be 30 percent greater than surface temperature increases, but they’re not -- they’re actually less. As chairman of the IPCC, Watson was responsible for propagating the myth that only 1 or 2 percent of scientists did not believe humans were responsible for global warming. Watson, of course, overlooked at least 17,000 scientists who signed a petition cautioning against global warming alarmism – a petition compiled with the assistance of former National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president Dr. Frederick Seitz."

I was talking about scientists who are actually researching the area. Like I said, you wouldn't want a gynacologist doing your heart transplant. This is the age of specialisation, it is very difficult for scientists or practitioners in areas that are not experts in a related field to offer more than an informed guess. Those actively researching the area mostly agree, it's warming, and something needs to be done to prevent massive change to the climate.

[mhaze]

I was talking about scientists who are actually researching the area. Like I said, you wouldn't want a gynacologist doing your heart transplant. This is the age of specialisation, it is very difficult for scientists or practitioners in areas that are not experts in a related field to offer more than an informed guess. Those actively researching the area mostly agree, it's warming, and something needs to be done to prevent massive change to the climate.

But isn't it correct that the very scientists who agree it is warming are not competent to discuss whether "something needs to be done to prevent massive change to the climate"? We've noted the cautions of Armstrong in this respect - that the IPCC doesn't do good forecasting.

The "something must be done" assertion goes not just into business and economics for validation - something has a risk reward payoff - but it goes for implementation, into engineering. Climatologists in a rare case may understand the engineering method and how to "actually get things done". But that would be a rare case. I certainly would not take the advise of climatologists on any such thing. For the economics, this is the "mitigation vs. adaptation" question.

One thing I've been trying to get across is the intrinsic fallacy of the "something's got to be done" argument....

[BeAChooser]

I'm on record (yes, JREF Forums do count as "record", be afraid, be very afraid ...) as staking my intellectual reputation on the world being warmer than today in 2012.

That just leaves me confused then. "warmer than today in 2012"???

If you meant "warmer in 2012 than today", I wouldn't disagree.

But how much warmer? And is a little warmer necessarily bad.

Heck, go out on the limb and tell us how you think today and 2050 will compare. Or 2100. Because that's when it really matters. But unfortunately, the farther one goes out, the more the uncertainty grows. As was pointed out in one of the articles I linked above, the leaders of this movement can't even get predictions ten years in the future correct. So should we be precipitously enacting draconian tax measures? They might do much more harm than good.

[CapelDodger]

I have not met an Alaskan who did not like the check he got from his state for his part of the oil drills producing up there; and who would not like that to be a bigger check. Last I heard it was about $1500 per year. So I think they'd like my plan.

That sort of thinking can get you into trouble.

$1500 a year? How cheap do you think these people are? Of course they like it, but how do they like the other stuff that's been going in recently, the climate-induced stuff? The oil footprint is tiny, but the climate impact is everywhere.

Alaska is worth visiting in the good season. In the winter, it is rough.

Siberia is worth visiting in the good season. In the summer, you get bitten to distraction by hungry bugs with a deadline.

"Good" is a relative term.

Of course if we agree with your view, that may be improving. Now there are some others who think it may be warming up pretty soon.

In Alaska people have been watching their houses tilt quite alarmingly as permafrost melts, and have been thinking "Here's that warming those guys were talking about". AGW is no longer a prediction, it's going on.


[quote]Hansen full exposed - admits to being an alarmist!

Churchill was called an alarmist in the 30's. And he was trying to alarm people about something he (and quite a few others) had reasonably concluded was alarming.

Hansen (and quite a few others) have reasonably concluded that what's in store for the human race is alarming. Have you considered the possibility that he (and quite a few others) are right?

Churchill (and quite a few others) were proved right, but rather late in the day.



Direct quote from Hansen (bold is mine) -

I find it almost inconceivable that "business as usual" climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century. Am I the only scientist who thinks so?

I rather doubt Hansen is alone. I doubt you have any good reason to think he's wrong.


Well, Gore agrees, but he is no scientist.

Were I uncharitable, I'd take that as the reason you think think Hansen's wrong. This fixation you have with Al Gore threatens to make you a laughing-stock, over time.

The IPCC doesn't agree.

Nobody gives a toss about Al Gore, the IPCC, or Kyoto. Present company excepted.

And he's been a bad boy, Mr. Hansen has. He was out talking to reporters when he should have been double and triple checking his arithmetic.

Is that the chorus from 1934?

Now, CP, I know Gore's a bit of an embarrassment for your team. I agree with that. I'd like to see him go away, too. In fact, maybe a bit of house cleaning is in order? Maybe a few others should go also?:D

You wouldn't like to make him go away at all. He's your refuge. The button marked "applause" that you grew up with.

We in the pro-Science camp care nothing for Al Gore, or the IPCC, or Kyoto. We're in it for Science. We are partisans for Science. Science has never let us down, it's done well by us in many, many ways, and we're up for defending it.

Can we help it if we sometimes enjoy it :) ?

[BeAChooser]

I was talking about scientists who are actually researching the area.

How do you know that a great many of these people aren't researching the area or qualified to weigh in on the topic?

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

[CapelDodger]

That just leaves me confused then. "warmer than today in 2012"???

If you'd checked the record you wouldn't be confused.

If you meant "warmer in 2012 than today", I wouldn't disagree.

2012 global average greater than 2007 global average. And greater than 1998 global average.

But how much warmer?

At least as much as it'll get warmer in the following five years, up to 2017. Same stake, same odds.

And is a little warmer necessarily bad.

We'll find out, won't we? Each of us by our own judgement.

A little warmer, followed by a little bit more, then another bit ... that's as close to inevitably bad for the vast majority of people as to brook no argument.

Heck, go out on the limb and tell us how you think today and 2050 will compare. Or 2100. Because that's when it really matters. But unfortunately, the farther one goes out, the more the uncertainty grows. As was pointed out in one of the articles I linked above, the leaders of this movement can't even get predictions ten years in the future correct. So should we be precipitously enacting draconian tax measures? They might do much more harm than good.

Tell me more of these draconian tax measures. I keep hearing about them, but it's all terribly vague. They're kind of floating out there like bogey-men or Freemasons, but they can't be pinned down. mhaze knows something of them but ain't telling (scared off, probably); are you of sterner stuff? Will you give it up for the greater good? We'll appreciate the sacrifice.

I don't bet outside my probable lifespan, what's the point of that? I've staked my intellectual reputation against nothing, it's a potlach sort-of-thing, Over five years, which I can reasonably hope to see out.

Care to do the same on the other side? Which is not to concede that your intellectual reputation is worth a pinch of <Rule 8> or, indeed, anything at all.


By "the leaders of this movement" I assume you're referring to Hansen and the lie that the Hansen et al model predicted a 0.3C global warming during the 90's. Where are you getting this crap from? You're clearly not making up the lie yourself, it's far too unoriginal.

[CapelDodger]

How do you know that a great many of these people aren't researching the area or qualified to weigh in on the topic?

http://www.oism.org/pproject/


We can tell. Trust us :) .

The Big Picture (now available in HD for subscribers), as modelled perfectly by the analogue system we call "home", skates over such distractions as Kyoto, Exxon, the UN, Mann et al , InterNet-recruited Petitions, yadda-yadda ...

Anybody that gets out much can see that the climate is changing, wherever they are.

[mhaze]

In Alaska people have been watching their houses tilt quite alarmingly as permafrost melts, and have been thinking "Here's that warming those guys were talking about". AGW is no longer a prediction, it's going on.

Hansen full exposed - admits to being an alarmist!

Well, I don't want to talk in the abstract about Alaska, which is an outstanding, amazing frontier. but my prior note about the Aleut who was looking forward to sipping his pina coladas, that is pretty accurate, IMHO.

Now please note regarding Hansen - He's the one saying he's alone, not I (although I'll be happy to confirm it). Send him an email. By all means, let him know there are others. I just pasted the article here because it looked interesting and pertinent.


Churchill was called an alarmist in the 30's. And he was trying to alarm people about something he (and quite a few others) had reasonably concluded was alarming.

Hansen (and quite a few others) have reasonably concluded that what's in store for the human race is alarming. Have you considered the possibility that he (and quite a few others) are right?

Churchill (and quite a few others) were proved right, but rather late in the day.But I'm an alarmist on the subject of the serious damage global warming alarmists can cause. Churchilll (.... same logic applies).

Concerning the issues of taxation, carbon credits and the entire sordid mess of non functional, proven worthless penalty systems to "change people's behavior" in the desperate attempt to create that radical green environmentalist's world, here is a serious and interesting study.

Study and model for global warming mitigation by Dr. Nordhaus.
a new study revealed that severe global warming reduction policies sought by GW activists would cost two to three times the benefits they would achieve. Yale University's Sterling Professor of Economics William Nordhaus, probably the world's foremost authority on the economic effects of climate change and climate policy, released the study July 24. The study assumes the reality of manmade warming and the IPCC's projections of the climate effects of rising greenhouse gases, then projects the economic effects of those climatic changes, and then projects the climate and economic effects of various policies proposed to reduce climate change.
Go here (http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/)

then here (http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/DICE2007.htm) and click on A, 1. for the downloadable paper (260+ pp) or download and run the model with your own parameters. I think that's what it said, will try it later. Basically....the people pay $27 trillion in taxes/higher costs, get $13 trillion in benefits.

Now that's if everything works exactly as the holy AGW script says. 100% GW caused by CO2.

If you think a risk factor must be assigned to that, say 20-40% GW caused by CO2 (rest by aerosols, land use, etc), then your numbers become....

20% $27 trillion, $2.6 trillion in benefits
40% $27 trillion spent, $5.2 trillion in benefits

That's only with assigned risk factor to one issue. And there are numerous issues to which they could be assigned.

It'd be a mistake to just shrug this kind of modeling off as being "anti-AGW". Same true for Armstrong as previously mentioned in this thread and others.

[BeAChooser]

Tell me more of these draconian tax measures. I keep hearing about them, but it's all terribly vague. They're kind of floating out there like bogey-men or Freemasons, but they can't be pinned down.

This specific enough for you?

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/08/08/dingells_tax_plan_targeting_gas_mansions/6309/ " ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., unveiled his plan to fight global warming this week through additional taxes on both gasoline and large U.S. homes. The Detroit Free Press said Wednesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman wants to end a mortgage tax deduction given to estates larger than 3,000 square feet and create a 50-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax under his environmental plan."

You realize, don't you, that Dingell is the House Energy Chairman?

I don't bet outside my probable lifespan, what's the point of that?

But isn't that exactly what the global warlarmists are insisting we must do? Act now to save the earth for future generations?

[Locri]

*sigh* as much as I like discussion, this is why I tend not to get sucked into stuff like this... I never have the time to reply to as much stuff and in as much depth as I want to.

Anyway, I'll hit what I can ^_^

The IPCC is a massive literature review, probably the largest ever undertaken. As such it simply reflects scientific opinion on climate change and acts as a single point for accessing all the major literature relevant to the topic. It’s one sided because the source literature is one sided.

Go back to the first page in this thread where it’s explained:

1) CO2 does allow visible light to pass through untouched.
2) CO2 does absorb certain frequencies of the thermal radiation emitted when that visible light hits the earth
3) Those frequencies are in bands and locations where that thermal radiation would have otherwise escaped into space
4) We are dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere
5) Thermodynamics tells us this must result in higher surface temperatures.

There is very little room to dispute any of this, so at best you can argue the degree or warming not the warming itself. We can observe warming actually taking place and the degree of warming is in good agreement with the predictions being made. This is just about as rock solid a case as you will get in any scientific endeavor. Yes there is always the possibility it will be overturned, but that’s the case with any science.


Going into something that I STILL don't understand that hasn't been explained to me is if CO2 always results in higher temperatures when it increases (as you seem to be saying, yes?) and increasing the overall temperature which releases even more CO2 from the vast oceans, why is it that it doesn't get stuck in a perpetual positive heat->CO2->heat cycle? Also, if the chart referenced later on in this topic is correct that the CO2 has been an order of magnitude higher in the past with similar temperatures, that still doesn't make sense.

Further, with the 800 year lag if CO2 always acted the way you describe in the environment it doesn't make sense that we'd see periods of high CO2 with low temperatures.

Considering that the Earth has been around for several billion years and hasn't gotten fried yet, it only seems logical that there are some natural processes that allow the Earth to stay cool even if the CO2 is high as it has in some past instances. Which is why I keep saying it's ridiculous to ignore the past 6 billion years.


What McIntyre is really looking for is the look over the shoulder of every researcher whose results he doesn’t agree with and to tell them how to conduct their research. He’s looking to make a nuisance of himself. The code Hansen is using can apparently be replicated with “two pages in MatLab” which is nothing. A decade ago as an undergraduate I had bi-weekly projects that required as much.


In that case, you should fully understand that some slight errors in code can create massive issues with output if you aren't careful enough. There are entire volumes of publications dedicated to training programmers how to keep bugs out of code and yet buggy code is still written all the time. It's perfectly reasonable to ask for code.


The aether was shot down by experimental evidence and a sound competing theory. The lesson to take away here isn’t that “science has been wrong in the past so we shouldn’t trust it” but rather that the way to refute a scientific theory is to come up with a better explanation and to properly document its superiority.


I would completely agree... my point isn't that we shouldn't trust science but that mistakes have been made in the past and therefore we can't just shout "scientific consensus" and use that as a valid argument.

[rockoon]

Perhaps an apology is in order.


Accepted.


Then you can contrast the CO2Science summary


Yes.. ok, we can contrast a summary of an entire paper..


with the final statements of the authors


..with a small portion of the paper.. a sentence that isnt even about the content of the paper but instead about further content of the data that goes unaddressed by the paper.

Really.. does that sound like a valid thing to do? Doesnt' that sound more umm... ohhh.... cherry picking?

The paper, taken in its entirety, declares Antarctica to be a likely sink of H2O.

You just cherry picked the final sentence. Why? Why not instead quote the final paragraph? Is it because the final paragraph states quite clearly that their findings is that Antarctica is a sink of water?


Really, this thread has turned into something of a train wreck, hasn't it?


Its turned into a big source of misinformation, and you just added to it by cherry picking. Thanks for the contribution.


FWIW, I tracked the citation through PubMed, and the related links there suggest to me that BeAChooser is cherry-picking. Which was varwoche was pointing out - a more recent reference by Wingham & Shepherd contradicts the citation above.

Seems that you are the one guilty of cherry picking.

[BeAChooser]

We can tell. Trust us

You misrepresented what those folks are saying. They are not saying "we can tell". They are saying *we can NOT tell" (i.e., your evidence is not sufficiently convincing", due to the uncertainties in the models, the data, and what we don't understand yet about the physics. And the folks saying "trust us" are the ones trying to tax us before we know these things.

Anybody that gets out much can see that the climate is changing, wherever they are.

Perhaps, but the issue is WHY it is changing. If increasing CO2 is not the real reason or at least not responsible for the majority of the change, then what Dingel and Al Gore want may just waste resources that will be needed to adapt to the change or stop it by other means.

[rockoon]

Odin help me. It's a good idea to actually read what's been posted before launching into yet another fact-challenged tirade. Here again, formatting added:


* I concede there is one more possibility -- maybe it's BeAChooser who spun the facts. Since I'm disinterested in consuming information via propagandists such as CO2 Science, either you or BeAChooser will need to sort it out. Add: Dakotajudo did the legwork (thanks!) and no surprise, the spin is courtesy of CO2 Science.


Your second sentence of the post I responded to clearly indicates that you knew full well that two of the authors of the paper had authored a later paper by themselves with different results. You infact demanded that this person admit this very specifically which is proof that you already knew full well that the summary was infact accurate.

Hence, your first sentence is nothing but an asinine attack on the creadability of an accurate summary of the paper thinly veiled by your "second alternative."

The fact that you used this asinine attack as an excuse to ignore all his other sources just shows us that you arent at all interrested in the truth.

I welcome you to retract your dyspeptic tirade, breath not held.

Once you retract your dishonesty and asinine tactics, I might consider being nicer to you in the future.

[Locri]

(On a comparison to Evolution)

Yes, and an old one at that. The comparison fares very well.


You know... maybe you are right, let me think about this:

Evolution talks of natural processes that take place over the several billion years on the existence of the Earth with somewhat self balancing aspects built into it and a fairly high tolerance for a dynamically changing environment. Evolution, while simple in basic concept is amazingly complex and is still not entirely understood but we uncover more each day and fit the pieces in.

Creationism on the other hand ignores evidence of the 4.5 billion or so years and posits that some intelligent being created something new in the very recent past (well, technically according to them the ONLY past that matters) and has little tolerance for change as everything has to be exactly as they say otherwise it's just flat out wrong. Creationism tends to simplify all the factors because the only real answer is that said intelligent being designed it to be like that and that's that. Nevermind those pesky little details of the vastly complex system we live in, right?

Gosh darn it, I think you are right. :D

On to other things :)


There people who are terrified by new ideas, let alone new realities. I'm not talking alarm here, I'm talking deeply-felt existential threat. There are ideological convictions that cannot accomodate AGW, a relatively new idea. Some people's very identities are rooted in such cults.


That is an interesting observation. I was thinking along similar lines too, but with an opposite conclusion... I find that many people seem to think of the world as a very static place that was basically built for us (again, humans have such huge egos) and therefore if anything is going to change it, it better damn well be us, shouldn't it? I've heard AGW believers that have said things along similar lines (although thankfully not on this board and not from any scientifically inclined people).


But isn't it correct that the very scientists who agree it is warming are not competent to discuss whether "something needs to be done to prevent massive change to the climate"? We've noted the cautions of Armstrong in this respect - that the IPCC doesn't do good forecasting.


I feel this is another one of those sad cases of double standards. If you are a scientist (not involved in climate related studies) for AGW, it's great that you agree and you are just this wonderful person that adds to that "scientific consensus", but if you disagree then your opinion obviously doesn't matter because you don't know what you are talking about.

Let us not forget that good old Einstein was basically a hobbyist scientist for a good portion of his life. Working in a Patent office doesn't really qualify you to make amazing physics discovers, but being a genius helps :D


Anybody that gets out much can see that the climate is changing, wherever they are.


Absolutely, the climate will always be changing... that's the beauty of it.

...but walking outside and noticing the climate is changing still doesn't prove that we did it. I'm just skeptical though :)

Geez... I'm going away for the weekend, I hate to see just how much stuff I'll have to catch up after that :eye-poppi

[varwoche]

Your second sentence of the post I responded to clearly indicates that you knew full well that two of the authors of the paper had authored a later paper by themselves with different results. You infact demanded that this person admit this very specifically which is proof that you already knew full well that the summary was infact accurate. I have no idea what this gibberish means. I do know, however, that your disjointed blather is not contributing to readers' knowledge about the science being discussed. I welcome you to stay on topic.

Hence, your first sentence is nothing but an asinine attack on the creadability of an accurate summary of the paper thinly veiled by your "second alternative." The fact that you used this asinine attack as an excuse to ignore all his other sources just shows us that you arent at all interrested in the truth. Once you retract your dishonesty and asinine tactics, I might consider being nicer to you in the future. Ditto.

[rockoon]

I have no idea what this gibberish means.


Are you unwilling or unable to see your dishonesty?

I will now quote you, to make it clear:


I'll take a look at your other cites once you acknowledge that your first cite has been refuted by the authors themselves. Fair enough? (I won't waste my time on your other CO2 Science cite though, for obvious reasons.)

That is the admission that you knew full well that your first sentence was asinine. You already clearly knew that the authors did infact do an "about face" as you like to call it, and that the abstract cited was infact accurate.

This is what I saw:

A) I saw you not liking the large number of cites he had on the subject in question, and as a response you tried to discredit the first cite with a dishonest and asinine statement about the abstract somehow being misrepresented.

B) I saw you then demand that the poster "admit" that his first cite was inaccurate, or else you would not consider any of the other cites, even when you full well knew that the first cite was infact accurate.


I do know, however, that your disjointed blather is not contributing to readers' knowledge about the science being discussed. I welcome you to stay on topic.

Ditto.

Currently I am contributing to the knowledge in this thread by policing a dishonest jerk. Thats you, buddy.

[Megalodon]

(On a comparison to Evolution)
You know... maybe you are right, let me think about this:

Evolution talks of natural processes that take place over the several billion years on the existence of the Earth with somewhat self balancing aspects built into it and a fairly high tolerance for a dynamically changing environment. Evolution, while simple in basic concept is amazingly complex and is still not entirely understood but we uncover more each day and fit the pieces in.

Creationism on the other hand ignores evidence of the 4.5 billion or so years and posits that some intelligent being created something new in the very recent past (well, technically according to them the ONLY past that matters) and has little tolerance for change as everything has to be exactly as they say otherwise it's just flat out wrong. Creationism tends to simplify all the factors because the only real answer is that said intelligent being designed it to be like that and that's that. Nevermind those pesky little details of the vastly complex system we live in, right?

Gosh darn it, I think you are right. :D


Try it like this:

A comparison between creationists and global warmer deniers

Both their hypothesis goes against scientific consensus
They both deny this scientific consensus
They both have articles in journals
They both lack articles in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals
They both have a persecution complex
They are both funded by specific interest groups
They both cherrypick their data to suit their hypothesis
They both rave like maniacs when confronted with the facts
They both have more influence in the White House than real scientists

BTW, since you didn't bother identifying the flavour of creationist you decided to use (YEC), I also didn't bother identifying the flavour I used (IDots)

Wait a minute...

[Megalodon]

Going into something that I STILL don't understand that hasn't been explained to me is if CO2 always results in higher temperatures when it increases (as you seem to be saying, yes?) and increasing the overall temperature which releases even more CO2 from the vast oceans, why is it that it doesn't get stuck in a perpetual positive heat->CO2->heat cycle?

As you were told before the major natural forcing of cooling and warming of the planet are it's own regular orbital cycles. this can and does counteract any warming resulting from high CO2 concentrations.

Considering that the Earth has been around for several billion years and hasn't gotten fried yet, it only seems logical that there are some natural processes that allow the Earth to stay cool even if the CO2 is high as it has in some past instances. Which is why I keep saying it's ridiculous to ignore the past 6 billion years.

Yes, there is a natural process, and you should be aware of it by now. It doesn't explain the current warming, and it offers no easy sollution for it.
I would also like to know why you think the past s being ignored.

I would completely agree... my point isn't that we shouldn't trust science but that mistakes have been made in the past and therefore we can't just shout "scientific consensus" and use that as a valid argument.

First of all, a scientific consensus is a valid argument, just not a final one. But I don't remember anyone using it, without further arguments, to stiffle discussion.

And if they did, this being page 11, they blew it...

[Megalodon]

Endorsed by me as modified, which I'm pretty sure reflects the spirit of it. Same old same old with the occasional fleeting new act, such as 1934 which is "big" on the "scene" right now, I gather.

There people who are terrified by new ideas, let alone new realities. I'm not talking alarm here, I'm talking deeply-felt existential threat. There are ideological convictions that cannot accomodate AGW, a relatively new idea. Some people's very identities are rooted in such cults.

We more blessed individuals welcome new ideas; some are stimulating, some we can demolish as an intellectual exercise, it's all good. There just aren't enough new ideas. Old ideas in a new coat don't cut it.

Stop being more eloquent than me :mad:

[a_unique_person]

Currently I am contributing to the knowledge in this thread by policing a dishonest jerk. Thats you, buddy.

:rolleyes:

[mhaze]

Try it like this:

A comparison between creationists and global warmer deniers

Both their hypothesis goes against scientific consensus
They both deny this scientific consensus
They both have articles in journals
They both lack articles in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals
They both have a persecution complex
They are both funded by specific interest groups
They both cherrypick their data to suit their hypothesis
They both rave like maniacs when confronted with the facts
They both have more influence in the White House than real scientists

BTW, since you didn't bother identifying the flavour of creationist you decided to use (YEC), I also didn't bother identifying the flavour I used (IDots)

Wait a minute...

You will find here (http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ermckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf) an extensive explanation of the "tight relationship" between arthors in climatology that has been alleged to cause the failure of the peer review process. This includes extensive analysis of social networking. These were US Senate hearings, by the way. So if we seem to have been having Senate hearings in the antics of "climatologists", well, we might have a little problem.

They resulted in the Wegman report . (http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/0607/07142006_Wegman_fact_sheet.pdf) Wegman, a board member of the American Statistical Association, assembled a committee of statisticians to review the Mann et. al. "hockey stick" work... "Mann et. al. misused certain statistical methods in their work which inappropriately produced hockey sticks"

"although the researchers use statistical methods, they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community"

You are on the side of some people who have had and continue to have documented problems.

Why not admit those problems exist and let's move forward?

groupthink Wikipedia Article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink)




Causes of groupthink

Highly cohesive groups are much more likely to engage in groupthink. The closer they are, the less likely they are to raise questions to break the cohesion. Although Janis sees group cohesion as the most important antecedent to groupthink, he states that it will not invariably lead to groupthink: 'It is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition' (Janis, Victims of Groupthink, 1972). According to Janis, (a) group cohesion will only lead to groupthink if one of the following two antecedent conditions is present: (b) Structural faults in the organisation: insulation of the group, lack of tradition of impartial leadership, lack of norms requiring methodological procedures, homogeneity of members' social backround and ideology. (c) Provocative situational context: high stress from external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulties on the decision-making task, moral dilemmas.
Social psychologist Clark McCauley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_McCauley)'s three conditions under which groupthink occurs:
Directive leadership.
Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.
Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis. Symptoms of groupthink

In order to make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms that are indicative of groupthink (1977).
A feeling of invulnerability creates excessive optimism and encourages risk taking.
Discounting warnings that might challenge assumptions.
An unquestioned belief in the group’s morality, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
Stereotyped views of enemy leaders.
Pressure to conform against members of the group who disagree.
Shutting down of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
An illusion of unanimity with regards to going along with the group.
Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting opinions.

[Megalodon]

You do get carried away, don't you?

Answer me these simple questions, please:

Do you think GW is happening?

Do you think CO2 is the main driver of this warming event?

Do you think that climatologists from all over the world work together to stiffle dissenting voices?

Do you think that scientists are trying to run the world economy through alarmism?


Now, I think I know what your answers are, based on your posts. But I really would appreciate if you would reply, in yes or no terms at first, but with further qualification if you feel necessary.

Thanks

[mhaze]

You do get carried away, don't you?

Answer me these simple questions, please:
Do you think GW is happening?
Do you think CO2 is the main driver of this warming event?
Do you think that climatologists from all over the world work together to stiffle dissenting voices?
Do you think that scientists are trying to run the world economy through alarmism?

Now, I think I know what your answers are, based on your posts. But I really would appreciate if you would reply, in yes or no terms at first, but with further qualification if you feel necessary.

Thanks

ynnn
By definition, though, politicians try to run economies.
To various degrees they may believe that is is their job;)

[mhaze]

You do get carried away, don't you?

Answer me these simple questions, please:

Thanks

It's always a good idea lo be seen one is not wasting his ti me dealing with an absolute nutcase.

Again.
You are on the side of some people who have had and continue to have documented problems. Why not admit those problems exist and let's move forward?

[mhaze]

You do get carried away, don't you?

Answer me these simple questions, please:

Thanks

It's always a good idea to be sure one is not wasting his time dealing with an absolute nutcase.:)

Again.
You are on the side of some people who have had and continue to have documented problems. Why not admit those problems exist and let's move forward?

I'm not meaning to be confrontational in asking this.

[BobK]

Oops!
Seems they left something out of the climate models. Like an entire supergyre in the ocean.
CSIRO (http://www.csiro.au/news/OceanSupergyre.html)
Australian scientists have identified the missing deep ocean pathway – or ‘supergyre’ – linking the three Southern Hemisphere ocean basins in research that will help them explain more accurately how the ocean governs global climate.

snip...
“Recognising the scales and patterns of these subsurface water masses means they can be incorporated into the powerful models used by scientists to project how climate may change,” he says.

Hmmm. Not incorporated yet, huh.

[lomiller]

But isn't it correct that the very scientists who agree it is warming are not competent to discuss whether "something needs to be done to prevent massive change to the climate"? We've noted the cautions of Armstrong in this respect - that the IPCC doesn't do good forecasting.




Armstrong’s background is in *economic* forecasting, a field which has a very poor track record as far as forecasting goes. Economic forecasters stack equations at historical data until they get a match and hope it continues to hold. Naturally this fails as often as is succeeds. Comparing that to someone working with a physical model is ridiculous. Armstrong may be one of the best in his particular specialty of forecasting but his specialty is miles behind almost every other type of forecasting in its effectiveness.

[lomiller]

We're in it for Science. We are partisans for Science. Science has never let us down, it's done well by us in many, many ways, and we're up for defending it.



exactly

[mhaze]

Armstrong’s background is in *economic* forecasting, a field which has a very poor track record as far as forecasting goes. Economic forecasters stack equations at historical data until they get a match and hope it continues to hold. Naturally this fails as often as is succeeds. Comparing that to someone working with a physical model is ridiculous.

May I suggest you read IPCC chapter 8, and Armstrong's critique? Your response seems to indicate a lack of understanding as to the content and intent of that section. I will discuss the subject based on its actuality.

[lomiller]

Going into something that I STILL don't understand that hasn't been explained to me is if CO2 always results in higher temperatures when it increases (as you seem to be saying, yes?) and increasing the overall temperature which releases even more CO2 from the vast oceans, why is it that it doesn't get stuck in a perpetual positive heat->CO2->heat cycle? Also, if the chart referenced later on in this topic is correct that the CO2 has been an order of magnitude higher in the past with similar temperatures, that still doesn't make sense.

Further, with the 800 year lag if CO2 always acted the way you describe in the environment it doesn't make sense that we'd see periods of high CO2 with low temperatures.

Considering that the Earth has been around for several billion years and hasn't gotten fried yet, it only seems logical that there are some natural processes that allow the Earth to stay cool even if the CO2 is high as it has in some past instances. Which is why I keep saying it's ridiculous to ignore the past 6 billion years.



Positive feedback doesn’t always result in a runaway condition, it can also result in converging on a value muck like an infinite series that converges on a finite value. We also have an example of runaway greenhouse effect right next door to us on the Planet Venus.

Those points aside there really are strong negative feedback elements in the Earth’s climate. Doubling of CO2 leads to somewhere between 1.5 – 4.5 deg C warming, so lets say ~3 deg C. To get 6 deg warming you need to have an 4X increase in CO2, and to get 9 deg you need an 8X increase. This diminishing return on increasing CO2 levels gives those negative feedback elements plenty of time to overtake CO2 in importance, just not until significant warming has already occurred.

While these negative feedback elements prevent runaway greenhouse effects they can’t reduce the warming from CO2 to zero as some people claim. Look at it this way, if temperature warms due to CO2, and this warming cases more clouds which reflect sunlight thus cooling the atmosphere what happens if you cool back to the original temperature? The cloud formation stops, the cooling effect disappears but the warming effect from CO2 is still present.

Clearly this doesn’t work. What really happens is that the climate finds a new equilibrium temperature where greater cloud formation balances the new warming effect from CO2. This temperature must be greater then the original temperature, but won’t be as great as if there was no negative feedback.

The way climate sensitivity is calculated actually includes negative feedback effects at their current values because the calculation is based on observed (closed loop) changes, rather then calculating a theoretical value for warming and feedback and merging them. Since climate isn’t linear this only works well for conditions near those you did the calculation for but it’s generally an acceptable approximation.




In that case, you should fully understand that some slight errors in code can create massive issues with output if you aren't careful enough. There are entire volumes of publications dedicated to training programmers how to keep bugs out of code and yet buggy code is still written all the time. It's perfectly reasonable to ask for code.



I also learned that if my results agreed with the independent results from rest of the people in the class there was little chance of a significant coding error. If is simply showed them my code, however the chances that the same coding error would be present in multiple projects was greatly increased. Showing my code also resulted in having to field many questions about why I did something a certain way, questions that were a moot point when independently written code produced identical results.

A logic error was certainly still possible if multiple people misunderstood the same point. The methodology needed to find such a logic error is already publicly available.

The fundamental problem I have with McIntyre’s approach is that it’s only capable of providing a negative answer. I.E. it can be used to say “this isn’t the case” but it can never say “this is”. It can never provide positive evidence. Furthermore, if pushed hard enough it can be used to claim anything is false. It’s a good tool for “falsifying” real science and a poor tool for drawing any real conclusions. Being able to provide strong positive evidence of something as good or better at explaining the phenomenon is question is a key part of any scientific debate.

[lomiller]

May I suggest you read IPCC chapter 8, and Armstrong's critique? Your response seems to indicate a lack of understanding as to the content and intent of that section. I will discuss the subject based on its actuality.

If you have something to say please way it rather then dropping vague references meant to imply something significant and sending people on wild goose chases to try and figure out what you may be thinking.

[mhaze]

If you have something to say please way it rather then dropping vague references meant to imply something significant and sending people on wild goose chases to try and figure out what you may be thinking.

Fine. You agree with Ch.8 contents, methods and conclusions as written?

[David Rodale]

If you have something to say please way it rather then dropping vague references meant to imply something significant and sending people on wild goose chases to try and figure out what you may be thinking.

Does this help?
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

How many more would you like?

[mhaze]

Does this help?
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

How many more would you like?

Nice... not just abstracts...yummy. . . fresh meat...:D

[varwoche]

That is the admission that you knew full well that your first sentence was asinine. You already clearly knew that the authors did infact do an "about face" as you like to call it, and that the abstract cited was infact accurate. Wrong yet again. I wasn't sure, and in fact I'm still not sure.

But even if your statement is correct, this means you are admitting that my "or else" was correct and yet you called it a lie. Go figure. (an accusation that you constantly bandy about -- a practice I have no respect for whatsoever)

This is what I saw... Though I don't expect you to believe me, I'll just say in all sincerity that you saw dead wrong.

Currently I am contributing to the knowledge in this thread by policing a dishonest jerk. Thats you, buddy. I'll conclude our little chat with an offering, now that I get that you're not really as you seem, but are simply engaging in self-effacing parody. ;) Here's a new avatar for you:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/225846c5cd70b9af0.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7805)

[Rob Lister]

I'll conclude our little chat with an offering, now that I get that you're not really as you seem, but are simply engaging in self-effacing parody. ;) Here's a new avatar for you:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/225846c5cd70b9af0.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7805)

That was a pretty desperate attempt, varwoche. From my perspective, you've had your ass handed to you in this thread.

[varwoche]

From my perspective, you've had your ass handed to you in this thread. Vague input like this is no help whatsoever in helping me to see any mistakes I may have made. :confused: I welcome you to point out specifically what I'm not seeing. In summary:

(1) (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2872178#post2872178) BeAChooser claimed that on Antarctica "the main accumulation of ice growing thicker, not melting", true or false?

(2) (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2872933#post2872933) I cited a study from NASA indicating otherwise, true or false?

(3) (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2873179#post2873179) BeAChooser cited a study (via CO2 Science) supporting his original claim, true or false?

(4) (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2873236#post2873236) I cited a 2007 study from the same scientists that BeAChooser cited claiming that overall, Antarctic ice is in retreat, true or false?

[BeAChooser]

I welcome you to point out specifically what I'm not seeing. In summary:

I believe your *summary* leaves out quite a bit that is pertinent. :D

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

UPDATE : Thanks to millions and millions of dollars from Exxon and evil corporations, www.climateaudit.org is on line again spreading their missinformation and false science.
:D

[JoeEllison]

UPDATE : Thanks to millions and millions of dollars from Exxon and evil corporations, www.climateaudit.org is on line again spreading their missinformation and false science.
:D

You'd think they'd spend some of that money on real scientists... except all the real climate scientists(who aren't close to retirement) agree with the general scientific consensus, so they have to hire economists and oil executives to pretend to be climate scientists instead.

Luckily, they don't have to pay the rest of the cult... they work for free!:jaw-dropp

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Funny, you are saying that there are real climate scientists that don't agree with the settled science of AGW? That's a good way to not look at their findings. I guess that being close to retirement is a guarantee that their work is driven by money from evil corporations.

Also, the fact that McIntyre is neither a meteorologist nor a climate scientist is a valid reason to dump it's findings. Maybe NASA has commited a tremendous error acknowledging the work of that oil businessman.

(I feel a strange deja vu about the way of science was treated in Stalin's USSR, the "capitalist science" was banned in favour of "proletarian science")

PS. I'm missinforming me right now reading http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1929#comments)

You'd think they'd spend some of that money on real scientists... except all the real climate scientists(who aren't close to retirement) agree with the general scientific consensus, so they have to hire economists and oil executives to pretend to be climate scientists instead.

Luckily, they don't have to pay the rest of the cult... they work for free!:jaw-dropp

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

For those interested in the anti-science spreaded by McIntyre, go to
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1885
It seems that Hansen'ss error has a global effect and could be in fact a discovery of lots of fabrications (http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm, among others ) wich have effect on the global picture.
I guess the next months (with revised datasets from Europe and Asia) cand bring interesting conclussions.

Just one more thing: Until now no AGW'r here has acknowledged the fact that the IPCC report has been invalidated by Loockwood.......interesting

[Pipirr]

PS. I'm missinforming me right now reading http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1929#comments)


That one got a smile out of me :)

[mhaze]

That one got a smile out of me :)

Linking through to Townhall.com's article (balanced) to NASA's press releases, hey, Houston, we gotta problem!

HANSEN'S DOING WHAT? Just making this stuff up?
2007

2007-05-30: Research Finds That Earth's Climate is Approaching 'Dangerous' Point (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070530/)
2007-05-09: NASA Study Suggests Extreme Summer Warming in the Future (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070509/)
2007-03-15: Global 'Sunscreen' Has Likely Thinned, Report NASA Scientists (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070315/)
2007-02-12: NASA Study Finds Warmer Future Could Bring Droughts (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070212/)
2007-02-08: 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/)

2006

2006-10-24: NASA Looks at Sea Level Rise, Hurricane Risks to New York City (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20061024/)
2006-09-25: NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060925/)
2006-03-14: NASA Study Links "Smog" to Arctic Warming (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060314/)
2006-03-09: NASA Finds Stronger Storms Change Heat and Rainfall Worldwide (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060309/)
2006-02-28: Scientists Confirm Historic Massive Flood in Climate Change (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060228/)
2006-01-30: Keeping New York City "Cool" is the Job of NASA's "Heat Seekers" (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060130/)
2006-01-24: 2005 Was Warmest Year in Over a Century (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060124/)

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

There are interesting ways to maintain "consensus":

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=04373015-802a-23ad-4bf9-c3f02278f4cf
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA553_GlobalWarming_Intolerance.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200701/CUL20070123a.html

[BlackKat]

There are interesting ways to maintain "consensus":

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=04373015-802a-23ad-4bf9-c3f02278f4cf
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA553_GlobalWarming_Intolerance.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200701/CUL20070123a.html

Your first example is of someone who works for the a right wing propaganda "think tank" being called out for working for a right wing propaganda "think tank".

The other three come from people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

None of those people strike me as some sort of oppressed scientist. But more as people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

[CapelDodger]

Your first example is of someone who works for the a right wing propaganda "think tank" being called out for working for a right wing propaganda "think tank".

The other three come from people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

None of those people strike me as some sort of oppressed scientist. But more as people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

Now you're trying to politicise a scientific issue. Shame on you :cool: .

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Let's suppose what you say is true (but I didn't know that MIT - Where Linzend works- was a Right wing propaganda think tank) . How does it change the way "consensus" is made?

I guess you missed some examples:

Skeptical State Climatologist in Oregon has title threatened by Governor
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_news_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html
(February 8, 2007)
Excerpt: “[State Climatologist George Taylor] does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change…So the [Oregon] governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint. In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor.

Skeptical State Climatologist in Delaware silenced by Governor
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/02/gb.01.html
(May 2, 2007)
Excerpt: Legates is a state climatologist in Delaware, and he teaches at the university. He`s not part of the mythical climate consensus. In fact, Legates believes that we oversimplify climate by just blaming greenhouse gases. One day he received a letter from the governor, saying his views do not concur with those of the administration, so if he wants to speak out, it must be as an individual, not as a state climatologist. So essentially, you can have the title of state climatologist unless he`s talking about his views on climate?


Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32ABC0B0-802A-23AD-440A-88824BB8E528
(January 17, 2007)
Excerpt: The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.


Have you read Lindzen's article?
In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

Apparently, those "right wing think tanks" are everywhere......


Your first example is of someone who works for the a right wing propaganda "think tank" being called out for working for a right wing propaganda "think tank".

The other three come from people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

None of those people strike me as some sort of oppressed scientist. But more as people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

[BlackKat]

Now you're trying to politicise a scientific issue. Shame on you :cool: .

Oh I don't really care what wing they're from. It was more that they were from think tanks that I found funny. Opressed scientists? Try highly paid political writers.

[BlackKat]

Let's suppose what you say is true (but I didn't know that MIT - Where Linzend works- was a Right wing propaganda think tank) . How does it change the way "consensus" is made?
...
Have you read Lindzen's article?
...

Apparently, those "right wing think tanks" are everywhere......

As prestigeous as Lindzen's institution and some of his work there has been... he is not writing for MIT. Nor do his views that smoking is not likely to give you lung cancer make him exactly one to rely on for sound judgement. He has pretty much given himself a serious credibility issue.

And the rest of your examples were people who were contradicting state or organization policy positions, thus being asked to stop or leave their positions. Guess how quickly I'd get fired if I (in front of some clients) started contradicting my boss about a major issue?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

You can be fired very quickly. "Team spirit" is key to reach "consensus".

[CapelDodger]

This specific enough for you?

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/08/08/dingells_tax_plan_targeting_gas_mansions/6309/ " ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., unveiled his plan to fight global warming this week through additional taxes on both gasoline and large U.S. homes. The Detroit Free Press said Wednesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman wants to end a mortgage tax deduction given to estates larger than 3,000 square feet and create a 50-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax under his environmental plan."

You realize, don't you, that Dingell is the House Energy Chairman?

Call me parochial, but no, I was not aware of Dingell's stellar status. Fifty cents a gallon, that's what, 25p? I wasn't aware modern Democrats were so combative.

But isn't that exactly what the global warlarmists are insisting we must do? Act now to save the earth for future generations?

"Global warlarmist" is cute. Is that yours? Kudos if it is. Combining "war", which is alarming, with "alarmist", which defines the enemy, and "global", which implies both the enemy's alarming potency and its foreigness. That scores a lot of points in your local context.

Screw future generations, none of them are my fault. (People with offspring often feel differently, for obvious reasons.) Serious and prompt action for their benefit is no doubt required but my concern is with pay-backs I actually experience. Thus the five-year bet.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I think the W in Walarmist stands for Warming, not war.


"Global warlarmist" is cute. Is that yours? Kudos if it is. Combining "war", which is alarming, with "alarmist", which defines the enemy, and "global", which implies both the enemy's alarming potency and its foreigness. That scores a lot of points in your local context.

[CapelDodger]

Oh I don't really care what wing they're from. It was more that they were from think tanks that I found funny. Opressed scientists? Try highly paid political writers.

Your post was spot-on, I was making one of my irony attempts :o . It's a release mechanism. A breath of fresh rational air is most welcome in the self-referential tangle that's just washed in.

[CapelDodger]

I think the W in Walarmist stands for Warming, not war.

Well, whoopy-do to you for thinking, but my post was about the propagandist effect. Where thinking isn't an issue. You yourself, no doubt unconsciously and you think accidentally, have misspelled "warlarmist", leaving out the "war". That's the combination of letters that triggers an emotional response in the target audience. That's the point. Jeebus, have you never worked in Advertising or related industries?

We here aren't the target audience, propaganda gets short shrift on the JREF Forums, so your explication ain't really necessary.

[CapelDodger]

Linking through to Townhall.com's article (balanced) to NASA's press releases, hey, Houston, we gotta problem!

HANSEN'S DOING WHAT? Just making this stuff up?
2007

2007-05-30: Research Finds That Earth's Climate is Approaching 'Dangerous' Point (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070530/)
2007-05-09: NASA Study Suggests Extreme Summer Warming in the Future (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070509/)
2007-03-15: Global 'Sunscreen' Has Likely Thinned, Report NASA Scientists (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070315/)
2007-02-12: NASA Study Finds Warmer Future Could Bring Droughts (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070212/)
2007-02-08: 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/)

2006

2006-10-24: NASA Looks at Sea Level Rise, Hurricane Risks to New York City (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20061024/)
2006-09-25: NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060925/)
2006-03-14: NASA Study Links "Smog" to Arctic Warming (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060314/)
2006-03-09: NASA Finds Stronger Storms Change Heat and Rainfall Worldwide (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060309/)
2006-02-28: Scientists Confirm Historic Massive Flood in Climate Change (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060228/)
2006-01-30: Keeping New York City "Cool" is the Job of NASA's "Heat Seekers" (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060130/)
2006-01-24: 2005 Was Warmest Year in Over a Century (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20060124/)


It's all very alarming, isn't it?

With luck we can discuss how it all turns out ten years up the line. Care to make a bet? I'll bet on current alarm being justified. You could bet in it not being justified.

[BeAChooser]

except all the real climate scientists(who aren't close to retirement) agree with the general scientific consensus

You, of course, can prove that?

I tell you what, let's see if I can prove you wrong with just one source ...

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17181


"Survey Shows Climatologists Are Split on Global Warming
Alarmist 'consensus' does not exist
Written By: James M. Taylor
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: June 1, 2005

A survey of climatologists from more than 20 nations has revealed scientists are evenly split on whether humans are responsible for changes in global climate. The findings refute a widely reported study by a California “Gender and Science” professor who claimed that, based on her personal examination of 928 scientific papers on the issue, every single one reached the conclusion that global warming is real and primarily caused by humans.

... snip ...

The May 1 London Telegraph, however, noted Oreskes’ “unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.”

The newspaper reported that Dr. Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, “decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents [cited by Oreskes]--and concluded that only one-third backed the consensus view, while only 1 percent did so explicitly.”

The London Times then reported on Professor Dennis Bray, of Germany’s GKSS National Research Centre. Bray surveyed hundreds of international climate scientists, asking the question, “To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?” Bray received 530 responses from climatologists in 27 different countries.

With a value of 1 indicating “strongly agree” and a value of 7 indicating “strongly disagree,” Bray reported the average of the 530 responses was 3.62, almost right down the middle. More climatologists “strongly disagreed” than “strongly agreed” that climate change is mostly attributable to humans.

“The results, i.e. the mean of 3.62, seem to suggest that consensus is not all that strong,” Bray reported in his findings. “Results of surveys of climate scientists themselves indicate the possibility that Oreskes’ conclusion is not as obvious as stated.”


Oh my ... looks like you are completely wrong.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Forgive me I'm just a humble denier
Well, whoopy-do to you for thinking, but my post was about the propagandist effect. Where thinking isn't an issue. You yourself, no doubt unconsciously and you think accidentally, have misspelled "warlarmist", leaving out the "war". That's the combination of letters that triggers an emotional response in the target audience. That's the point. Jeebus, have you never worked in Advertising or related industries?

We here aren't the target audience, propaganda gets short shrift on the JREF Forums, so your explication ain't really necessary.

[mhaze]

You, of course, can prove that?

I tell you what, let's see if I can prove you wrong with just one source ...

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17181

Oh my ... looks like you are completely wrong.

There is a real problem with the strictness of the presumption that CO2 is the major driver. I suspect at the core the reason for this is historically, a portion of the Greens have never liked industry or its benefits, and also, CO2 is something that can be taxed.

You can't tax the sun, and land use changes are difficult to figure. Co2 is oh so easy to work with. You can't tax cows that belch 9% of the GW, and those pesky dams that produce 4% of the GW.....gosh, the governments own them, and they can't tax themselves. Taxing and regulating CO2 appeals to greens, local governments, state, federal, the UN.

Why, it's a veritable goldmine, just put your brother in law into the carbon offsets business and make a few calls down to Africa or Jakarta. There's a guy down there with a process that emits methane.

The way it works, you tell him to just light a fire on top of that smokestack...then he's converting that potent greenhouse gas, CH4, into the less harmful CO2. And there is this big multiplier that converts a little bit of CH4 into a whole bunch of CO2 "equivalents". So you can make a whole lot of money on that one little smokestack.

Anyone want a few examples?

But once they go down the road of presumption that CO2 is the major driver, logically that becomes a house of cards. Basically, it's a weak argument and a lot of people see it.

Even so, once such an idea becomes politically ingrained - set into law - it's quite difficult to argue against it, whether you are a scientist or an individual. Laws are difficult to change. That's why dissent must be stifled, so the laws can be passed.

I'm reposting this chart, not that I am in agreement with it but it is still a handy look at the IPCC point of view - http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/142244696b7a46ad59.bmp (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=6998)

[mhaze]

Your first example is of someone who works for the a right wing propaganda "think tank" being called out for working for a right wing propaganda "think tank".

The other three come from people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

None of those people strike me as some sort of oppressed scientist. But more as people who work in right wing propaganda "think tanks".

You must be in your first reference talking about ....

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee

So you don't like the Senator. Fine. But...

You can do a little bit better than describing him as someone who works for the a right wing propaganda "think tank" being called out for working for a right wing propaganda "think tank".

I don't think that's accurate or called for. Bad form.

[mhaze]

Forgive me I'm just a humble denier

I'm sticking with Global Warming Alarmist. At least with that, someone in Nepal can run it through Google Translate and figure out what us nutcases are talking about.:D

[BobK]

If people feel it necessary to be concerned about temperature you might want to concern yourself with cooling temperature. At least in the US.

People here may not be aware of the fact that during the last 100 years of US records, 40% of the top ten coldest years are within the most recent 30% of the years.

[a_unique_person]

There is a real problem with the strictness of the presumption that CO2 is the major driver. I suspect at the core the reason for this is historically, a portion of the Greens have never liked industry or its benefits, and also, CO2 is something that can be taxed.


:rolleyes: You could provide some evidence of this, maybe?

[varwoche]

I believe your *summary* leaves out quite a bit that is pertinent. :D I'm disinterested in this clumsy attempt to shift the goalposts. Let's stick to the topic, that being your false claim (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2872178#post2872178) that Antarctic ice mass is increasing.

I take your vague post as tacit acknowledgment that your first cite was refuted, seeing as the authors of the study are on record (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1529) saying that Antarctic ice is in retreat overall. (Please correct me if I've misinterpreted.)

(I also note that Rob Lister has failed to explain his vacuous posturing, no surprise.)

I'm skipping over your second cite because, as has already been demonstrated (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2874323#post2874323), we can't rely on CO2 Science's characterization of the study as they are brazen propagandists. If you can provide a reputable cite for this study, I'll gladly take a look.

That takes us to your third cite where it is claimed "the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass". True. But even taking this into account, overall the ice mass is diminishing (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_06085_arctic_ice.html).

I'll move on to your remaining cites when I have time, hopefully in a day or two.

[mhaze]

:rolleyes: You could provide some evidence of this, maybe?

Well, think about it. What you don't here is something like this -

(A) "we think that due to a combination of land use changes, brown clouds, soot, agricultural practicies, emissions from cars, coal, oil and natural gas fired powerplants...(yada yada yahda...)the planet may be warming...."

No. You hear

(B1) "CO2 is causing the planet to warm".

The B1 hypothesis is not nearly as rational or defensible as a position as the A. However, it leads to numerous easy to implement taxation and regulation plans, while the first statement does not at all do so.

So I am suggesting that because of the basic weakness of this position, global warmists are led to the "alarmist" position B2, saying essentially...

(B2) "If you don't get with me on CO2 is causing the planet to warm, New York, Florida and Bangladesh will be submerged by the rising sea waters as the icecaps melt".

Now you have a strong position again. By going alarmist?

But this is politics, polemics, and the like. It's not science, right? Now a lot of reasonable people will object to the alarmism. They've seen it before and know what it is.

Can't this destroy whatever integrity may have been in the science?

[mhaze]

On a different note.

Wensday here was strange weather. About 8" of rain over 12 hours, and within a 30 mile radius, 7 killed when their cars were swept off roads into the flood currents in normally dry creeks. Six to nine inches of water on roads including freeways. Basically, not smart to be out driving in any vehicle. Many low water crossings and roads impassable.

Global warming?

Nope. Just a normal day. One that represents perhaps 0.5% of all days, and which is seen, including a fatality count from 3-12, once or twice a year. In this case, the remnants of the tropical storm Erin affecting us 200 miles inland.

Not unusual at all. Tragic, yes.

Not global warming.

[BeAChooser]

I'm disinterested in this clumsy attempt to shift the goalposts.

Not shift the goalposts ... just set the record straight. Good thing the internet has a memory so anyone can go back through this thread and see that you left a lot out of your *summary*. :D

Let's stick to the topic, that being your false claim that Antarctic ice mass is increasing.

I apologize for being unaware of a report that was published in 2006. Now will you apologize for the global walarmist movement claiming the ice caps were going to melt (or were melting) all those years before that ... when the studies did say that overall antarctic ice mass was increasing? I think my motives in this discussion are pure. I don't think the motives of those who did that are, however. :)

And by the way, I notice that you completely ignored my questions about the seriousness of the problem. How serious can it be if over the 20,000 years prior to today, the average loss in ice mass in Antarctica was equivalent to a 0.5 mm increase in the sea level each year ... more than the 0.4 mm increase claimed using the GRACE data? I notice you completely ignored my question about how serious the loss of ice could be if it's going to take 750 years to raise the sea level one foot.

I notice that you completely ignored the huge uncertainty in that estimate by the authors own admission. There are uncertainties in that estimate because to make it we still have to make assumptions. Will you acknowledge that?

I notice that you completely ignored my posting a second even more recent reference to a study that claims satellite data shows an overall loss of ice so small that it would take 3800 years to raise the sea level even one foot. If true, is that something to get excited about and pass draconian tax legislation crippling our economy RIGHT NOW???

And I notice you ignoring the articles I posted suggesting there is anything but a consensus amongst climatologists about this issue. Again, will you apologize for Al Gore and the global walarmists who have claimed there is? Somehow, I sort of doubt it. :rolleyes:

[mhaze]

Not shift the goalposts
I notice that you completely ignored my posting a second even more recent reference to a study that claims satellite data shows an overall loss of ice so small that it would take 3800 years to raise the sea level even one foot. If true, is that something to get excited about and pass draconian tax legislation crippling our economy RIGHT NOW???

And I notice you ignoring the articles I posted suggesting there is anything but a consensus amongst climatologists about this issue. Again, will you apologize for Al Gore and the global walarmists who have claimed there is? Somehow, I sort of doubt it. :rolleyes:

It should be possible to present evidence for and against various positions and discuss it without needing to assert that this or that "absolutely proves" an issue, right? I didn't read those papers as clearly showing Antartica was melting - I'd be happy to say they said that if they did. They leaned a little bit in that direction. Is that fair?

On another subject, Hansen talks about the reasons he is an alarmist. I'm not going to except from this and spin it - read it if you like - he comes across as quite sincere in what he believes. But this is not science, it is something quite different...

I believe this type of position taking is completely improper for the head of the NASA division he has, and most certainly, his obvious bias would affect the quality of work coming out of his division. Given the importance of "getting the science right", that simply won't do.

Apparently, his obvious bias has affected the quality of the work.

Therefore, he should resign.

James Hansen replies to the “jesters”
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/realdeal.16aug20074.pdf (http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/realdeal.16aug20074.pdf)

[Rob Lister]

I also note that Rob Lister has failed to explain his vacuous posturing, no surprise.


My post -- thoughtfully submitted, neither exaggerated nor unnatural -- was in response to your vacuous posturing (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=2878203#post2878203). I stand by it.

[CapelDodger]

You, of course, can prove that?

I tell you what, let's see if I can prove you wrong with just one source ...

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17181

Apparently not so far :
[/URL]

On October 12, 2006, Peiser admitted that only one of the research papers he used in his study refuted the scientific consensus on climate change, and that study was NOT peer-reviewed and was published by American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Peiser's incorrect claims were published in the Financial Post section of the National Post, in a May 17, 2005 commentary authored by Peiser himself.
[URL="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benny_Peiser"]http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benny_Peiser (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benny_Peiser)

Oh my ... looks like you are completely wrong.

Oh dear ... looks like you regard the Heartland Institute as a reliable source. Not a great idea given its extreme ideological stance. There's a picture of Al Gore on their home page, which is a strong indication of what that stance is.

[CapelDodger]

There is a real problem with the strictness of the presumption that CO2 is the major driver. I suspect at the core the reason for this is historically, a portion of the Greens have never liked industry or its benefits, and also, CO2 is something that can be taxed.

:confused:

The subject was the scientific consensus that AGW is real and significant. Scientists do not levy taxes, nor are they identical with "the Greens", however that term's defined.


But once they go down the road of presumption that CO2 is the major driver, logically that becomes a house of cards. Basically, it's a weak argument and a lot of people see it.

The scientific basis of AGW is extremely well-established and sound. What scientific basis there is for the anti-AGW argument has been rustled-up recently (there was no call for it before the 80's) and hasn't held up - "It's the Sun", for instance, or "It's cosmic rays", or "It's taxes".

Even so, once such an idea becomes politically ingrained - set into law - it's quite difficult to argue against it, whether you are a scientist or an individual. Laws are difficult to change. That's why dissent must be stifled, so the laws can be passed.

It's a very frightening world you seem to see around you. How you can believe that the scientific consensus on AGW is somehow ingrained in politics, or that politics is ingrained in science, is beyond me. How you see dissent on AGW being stifled also escapes me. The coverage given to the tiny coterie of contrarian scientists and weathermen in the interests of "balance" belies anything of the sort, let alone FoxNews, the editorial board of the WSJ, and the plethora of Institutes and websites being cited on this thread.

I'm reposting this chart, not that I am in agreement with it but it is still a handy look at the IPCC point of view - http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/142244696b7a46ad59.bmp (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=6998)

And worth taking note of. Massively dominant influence in the warming column : CO2. No other credible alternative candidates. Perhaps someone's just yet to come up with one but it seems unlikely.

(Lest anybody be tempted to leap in with "It's water vapour!", water vapour is not a forcing. It's a feedback to other forcings. Forcings are what drive the change; feedbacks determine the extent of the change given the forcings.)

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

:confused:

The subject was the scientific consensus that AGW is real and significant. Scientists do not levy taxes, nor are they identical with "the Greens", however that term's defined.

We all have seem how this "consensus" is being build. See above



The scientific basis of AGW is extremely well-established and sound. What scientific basis there is for the anti-AGW argument has been rustled-up recently (there was no call for it before the 80's) and hasn't held up - "It's the Sun", for instance, or "It's cosmic rays", or "It's taxes".


The scientific basis of AGW are based in computer models with no predictive value, full of erroneous data and already invalidated (as Lockwood study says in essence). Also, see above.

It's a very frightening world you seem to see around you. How you can believe that the scientific consensus on AGW is somehow ingrained in politics, or that politics is ingrained in science, is beyond me. How you see dissent on AGW being stifled also escapes me. The coverage given to the tiny coterie of contrarian scientists and weathermen in the interests of "balance" belies anything of the sort, let alone FoxNews, the editorial board of the WSJ, and the plethora of Institutes and websites being cited on this thread.


Politics and partisan groups have enormous sums of money dedicated to studies who can confirm AGW. What is interesting is that there are no similar amount of money dedicated to research of methods to control GW or find alternate sources of energy.........there are almost invisible. The majority of the money goes to studies who confirm AGW. This should trigger alert signs, because that's supposed to be proved.


And worth taking note of. Massively dominant influence in the warming column : CO2. No other credible alternative candidates. Perhaps someone's just yet to come up with one but it seems unlikely.

The sun is other credible candidate. Natural forces are other credible candidates. Now take the massively dominat CO2 force and higlight the human produced CO2. That way you can have a clearer picture.


(Lest anybody be tempted to leap in with "It's water vapour!", water vapour is not a forcing. It's a feedback to other forcings. Forcings are what drive the change; feedbacks determine the extent of the change given the forcings.)

And so is CO2, at least in recorded history.

[CapelDodger]

Well, think about it. What you don't here is something like this -

(A) "we think that due to a combination of land use changes, brown clouds, soot, agricultural practicies, emissions from cars, coal, oil and natural gas fired powerplants...(yada yada yahda...)the planet may be warming...."

No. You hear

(B1) "CO2 is causing the planet to warm".

The B1 hypothesis is not nearly as rational or defensible as a position as the A. However, it leads to numerous easy to implement taxation and regulation plans, while the first statement does not at all do so.

You speak as if the only information a_unique_person (and the rest of us) has to go on is your quote A. In fact we have far more to go on than that - for instance, the chart you provided of the various identified forcings, their estimated influences, and the associated error bars. CO2 is the dominant warming forcing.

You seem to see hear (B2) "There are other influences, so there's nothing special about CO2." A conclusion you might indeed reach if quote A was all you had to go on.

So I am suggesting that because of the basic weakness of this position, global warmists are led to the "alarmist" position B2, saying essentially...

(B2) "If you don't get with me on CO2 is causing the planet to warm, New York, Florida and Bangladesh will be submerged by the rising sea waters as the icecaps melt".

Strictly speaking, that should be B1.1, not B2.

It's reasonable inference that AGW will contribute to the inundation of Florida, East Anglia, and the Nile Delta. It won't be the sole cause but it'll play its part. Just how much and when depends on the rate of CO2 emissions.


Now you have a strong position again. By going alarmist?

Actually, all that stuff about Florida et al is yours, so it's confected alarmism. Which you seem to find comforting, for some reason. Have you considered the possiblilty that the outlook really is alarming?

But this is politics, polemics, and the like. It's not science, right? Now a lot of reasonable people will object to the alarmism. They've seen it before and know what it is.

I know what the science is, and have a very good idea of what the world is like. What the science tells us is pretty alarming when you consider the way the world is. You seem to think that invalidates the science. I don't.

Can't this destroy whatever integrity may have been in the science?

May have been in Science? The triumph, on one small battlefield, of the anti-science movement - to traduce the reputation and honesty of the finest and most admirable intellectual achievement of mankind. Just in your opinion, but I'm sure it's being repeated on many such small battlefields.

Science will win the war because unlike the shysters who've fed your need for comfort in a scary world, Science does have integrity and does seek the truth, not short-term profit by populism. When the dust settles gabble about alarmism and hockeysticks will have all the social cachet of 30's appeasement.

[mhaze]

Forcings are what drive the change; feedbacks determine the extent of the change given the forcings.)

You are most welcome to lay out the define the variables, provide ranges for coefficients, and set forth a group of equations that represent what you believe "science tells us" or what you believe is reasonable concerning the workings of feedbacks and forcings.

[CapelDodger]

We all have seem how this "consensus" is being build. See above

I've noticed a jerry-built edifice dependent on sky-hooks constructed to house an incredible description of the scientific consensus. Many of us have seen how the scientific consensus has really been created over the last couple of centuries.


The scientific basis of AGW are based in computer models with no predictive value, full of erroneous data and already invalidated (as Lockwood study says in essence). Also, see above.

The scientific foundations of AGW include thermodynamics, quantum physics, and fluid dynamics. That's the sort of theory that is built into physical models, such as the climate models that have performed so well. (Ice-dynamics models have far more to contend with, and have not preformed so well, but there's no shame in that.)


Politics and partisan groups have enormous sums of money dedicated to studies who can confirm AGW. What is interesting is that there are no similar amount of money dedicated to research of methods to control GW or find alternate sources of energy.........there are almost invisible. The majority of the money goes to studies who confirm AGW. This should trigger alert signs, because that's supposed to be proved.

Why hasn't Exxon funded research into AGW? The results could hardly be regarded as tainted since it would have to be rigourously transparent on the "only Nixon could go to China" principle. They're not short of a buck, after all, these "enormous sums of money" you mention are small change to them. (Ten billion operating profit last quarter. Tasty money by any standards, even in dollars.) They're socially concerned enough about truth in science to fund groups that purport to be about just that, so why not a few million for a modelling project? All code and data publicly available, all procedures transparent, a completely hands-off approach. It would put your mind at rest, wouldn't it?

So why not? The cynic in me says that Exxon knows perfectly well what the outcome would be, so instead they leave the science to others and snipe at it by proxy. My other side says ... actually, I don't have another side. It's cynic all the way down.

The sun is other credible candidate.

Directly observed by dedicated satellites for decades and didn't do it. Not credible, unless it has a double that was on the other side of town at the time.

Natural forces are other credible candidates.

No supernatural force would be a credible candidate. CO2 is a natural forcing, solar variation is a natural forcing (been there, watched that, nothing happened), orbital variation is a natural forcing, continental drift is a sloooooooooow natural forcing. "Natural forces" smells of the woo a bit.

Now take the massively dominat CO2 force and higlight the human produced CO2. That way you can have a clearer picture.

The burning of fossil fuel puts more CO2 out there anually than is accumulated in the atmosphere and oceans, so there's not much (if any) room for any other significant contribution.

And so is CO2, at least in recorded history.

What's going on now is not represented in recorded history. It's not represented in history at all, unless a technological civilisation such as ours sprange up way back, did what we've done, and vanished without leaving a trace. Which isn't credible. Even if they were a lot tidier than us they'd have mined out the easy-access minerals and fossil fuels that we found waiting for us.

[CapelDodger]

You are most welcome to lay out the define the variables, provide ranges for coefficients, and set forth a group of equations that represent what you believe "science tells us" or what you believe is reasonable concerning the workings of feedbacks and forcings.

Thanks, but I'll pass on that. Suffice to say that I don't find alarming predictions unreasonable per se. I'd have switched accountants more often if I did. I don't demand to know exactly where I stand in the Big Field of Alarm before I move.

Why I'm sharing all this I don't know; the more folk like you there are, the more room on the hill for people like me.

[mhaze]

Thanks, but I'll pass on that. Suffice to say that I don't find alarming predictions unreasonable per se. I'd have switched accountants more often if I did. I don't demand to know exactly where I stand in the Big Field of Alarm before I move.

Why I'm sharing all this I don't know; the more folk like you there are, the more room on the hill for people like me.

You might want to send an email to Hansen and tell him you support him, since he has commented he feels pretty alone...

[mhaze]

Why hasn't Exxon funded research into AGW? The results could hardly be regarded as tainted since it would have to be rigourously transparent on the "only Nixon could go to China" principle. They're not short of a buck, after all, these "enormous sums of money" you mention are small change to them. (Ten billion operating profit last quarter. Tasty money by any standards, even in dollars.) They're socially concerned enough about truth in science to fund groups that purport to be about just that, so why not a few million for a modelling project? All code and data publicly available, all procedures transparent, a completely hands-off approach. It would put your mind at rest, wouldn't it?

So why not? The cynic in me says that Exxon knows perfectly well what the outcome would be, so instead they leave the science to others and snipe at it by proxy. My other side says ... actually, I don't have another side. It's cynic all the way down.


Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.

[mhaze]

Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.

A quote from David Roberts at Gristmill.com, referring to how "deniers" should be handled on Oct. 12, 2006. (He too fell for the Exxon conspiracy lies)When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.
Let's see? Has he retracted and apologized for this? No. He posted this "correction" the next day.What I want is some sort of public forum where the liars can be exposed for what they are and cast, once and for all, from polite company. It isn't economic or legal punishment I seek but simple social opprobrium. Shame. It needs to be made clear that knowingly lying about matters of grave social concern is not OK. This is not a game.
And on Oct 26, 2006- I never "recanted" my comment. I merely acknowledged that the Nuremberg analogy was stupid. (A helpful tip to all you polemicists at home: leave the Nazis out of it!) Lord knows I don't want to see any state-sponsored trials. What I want is transparency -- a little sunlight cast on all the musty deceptions and backroom corporate connections.

Twenty years from now, we will look back and see that the mercenaries who lied about global warming for money, who worked single-mindedly on behalf of industry to delay action, are at least indirectly responsible for untold economic and human suffering. They are committing a moral crime and deserve our collective opprobrium.
I invite Roberts to apologize and set the record straight.

And to clearly state whether he would advocate identical tactics to the misrepresentation, distortions, and condoned errors, of Jones, Mann, Hansen and Gore in fostering AGW Alarmism.

Or otherwise, to clearly indicate a sane and rational way to more forward that integrates the numerous new emerging "anti - AGW" studies, while denying any policies, social or scientific benefits to his previous position of Alarmism.

In a nutshell:
I invite Roberts to become a denier, or at least a skeptic of Alarmism.

[CapelDodger]

You might want to send an email to Hansen and tell him you support him, since he has commented he feels pretty alone...

He's certainly not alone in the scientific community, so you've probably presented this out of its context.

The high ground will inevitably be crowded, and the crowd will be scientist-heavy. The lowlands will be heavy on the religious and the thumb-suckers. And the powerless poor, of course. (The meek need patience. "Endeavour to Persevere!" is my advice to them :) .)

My advice to you is to bet your pension against the market, since current prices are influenced by AGW alarmism, which will have proved to be such to everybody (not just those with your foresight) a decade or three up the line. This has to be done in a targeted manner, of course; identify the distortions created by AGW alarmism and take long-term positions that exploit them. Spread your risk and you're bound to come out well.

(Specific advice on how to position yourself that way is, of course, chargeable.)

[CapelDodger]

Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.

They could easily cough up twenty million (of the hundred million, even) specifically for an independent study into AGW, including some research. Instead they make a big lump-sum contribution to a prestigious scientific institution (very publicly), while shipping the odd million or two each year to institutions that do no research and simply snipe against the work done by - amongst others - people at Stanford.

You're easily impressed.

Exxon won't fund a study because their strategy is to emphasize uncertainty, and they know what answer any study of AGW will come up with. So they leave the studies to the scientific establishment - Stanford and such - and then present the scientific establishment as a self-interested, untrustworthy, autocratic closed-shop. The proles know no better, and that's the target audience. The world of science is frickin' alien to them.

What isn't alien to proles is their own experience, of course, and there's only so long that rhetoric can blind them to what's actually going onwhere they live. That's why denial is in constant temporal retreat. Events cannot be denied to their witnesses, and explaining-away gets old pretty damn' quick.

The Al Gore thing only has local application, although as a rallying-point it probably serves well. The FDR thing did for a very long time, and hasn't entirely gone away yet. The demonic Al Gore is being cast very much in the image of FDR, the Pawn of Moscow. You should look him up, he was a Very Bad Person.

[a_unique_person]

On a different note.

Wensday here was strange weather. About 8" of rain over 12 hours, and within a 30 mile radius, 7 killed when their cars were swept off roads into the flood currents in normally dry creeks. Six to nine inches of water on roads including freeways. Basically, not smart to be out driving in any vehicle. Many low water crossings and roads impassable.

Global warming?

Nope. Just a normal day. One that represents perhaps 0.5% of all days, and which is seen, including a fatality count from 3-12, once or twice a year. In this case, the remnants of the tropical storm Erin affecting us 200 miles inland.

Not unusual at all. Tragic, yes.

Not global warming.

Not a normal day, but a weather 'event'. The prediction is that such events will become more frequent. The proof will be in the record of statistics.

[a_unique_person]

Well, think about it. What you don't here is something like this -

(A) "we think that due to a combination of land use changes, brown clouds, soot, agricultural practicies, emissions from cars, coal, oil and natural gas fired powerplants...(yada yada yahda...)the planet may be warming...."

No. You hear

(B1) "CO2 is causing the planet to warm".

The B1 hypothesis is not nearly as rational or defensible as a position as the A. However, it leads to numerous easy to implement taxation and regulation plans, while the first statement does not at all do so.

So I am suggesting that because of the basic weakness of this position, global warmists are led to the "alarmist" position B2, saying essentially...



That is not how the IPCC report phrases it, they say to what degree they feel the evidence and science is correct that CO2 is the driver of climate change currently.

[David Rodale]

They could easily cough up twenty million (of the hundred million, even) specifically for an independent study into AGW, including some research. Instead they make a big lump-sum contribution to a prestigious scientific institution (very publicly), while shipping the odd million or two each year to institutions that do no research and simply snipe against the work done by - amongst others - people at Stanford.

You're easily impressed.

Exxon won't fund a study because their strategy is to emphasize uncertainty, and they know what answer any study of AGW will come up with. So they leave the studies to the scientific establishment - Stanford and such - and then present the scientific establishment as a self-interested, untrustworthy, autocratic closed-shop. The proles know no better, and that's the target audience. The world of science is frickin' alien to them.

What isn't alien to proles is their own experience, of course, and there's only so long that rhetoric can blind them to what's actually going onwhere they live. That's why denial is in constant temporal retreat. Events cannot be denied to their witnesses, and explaining-away gets old pretty damn' quick.

The Al Gore thing only has local application, although as a rallying-point it probably serves well. The FDR thing did for a very long time, and hasn't entirely gone away yet. The demonic Al Gore is being cast very much in the image of FDR, the Pawn of Moscow. You should look him up, he was a Very Bad Person.

Ah yes, that troubling seemingly insignificant word "uncertainty" in science. If only it didn't exist.

In the meantime, your side has yet to offer one specific paper explaining the AGW claim, using the scientific method, that CO2 is the responsible mechanism for driving temperature.

All you've really got is climate models, appeal to Authority and unsubstantiated assumptions, isn't that what it boils down to? Two recent additions, among many, demonstrate the utter uselessness of climate models predicting climate. How many examples are needed to sow a seed of doubt in your unwavering faith of the IPCC dogma?
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/anttemps.htm

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3357
A somewhat humorous statement:
The discrepancy between the models and the data might mean that the models are wrong. Or it might be that two decades is not long enough to test their predictions.


That is not how the IPCC report phrases it, they say to what degree they feel the evidence and science is correct that CO2 is the driver of climate change currently.
Ah, so science is now about feelings...

According to IPCC's own admission, their LOSU (level of scientific understanding) is quite dismal, and the areas where they claim a high LOSU, the evidence does not support.

[a_unique_person]

No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.

[a_unique_person]

Ah yes, that troubling seemingly insignificant word "uncertainty" in science. If only it didn't exist.

Uncertainty always exists, that is why AGW is a matter of risk management. As they asked on a recent TV debate, at what level of risk would you not fly on a jet? 1 in 1,000,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? I am pretty certain the current state of the science is at least 1 in 10. The IPCC is claiming about 9 in 10.

[mhaze]

No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.

Von Braun was able to show in a fairly simple manner that we could send a man to the moon by -

using the multi stage rocket equations
plugging values in that were estimates
on a blackboard
in ten minutesthat it was possible.

Here with AGW, we seem to be all over the map
delta temp with CO2, if any;
essential positive and negative feedbacks.I'm just trying to get to the basics here that might be considered analogues to the moon rocket equations.

With the moon rocket, you did have s simple, elegant proof. With AGW, you don't...

[David Rodale]

No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.


There have been several in this forum stating it is a simple matter of physics; atmospheric CO2 levels go up and temperatures follow in a linear fashion. We are told current day temperatures are “unprecedented”, yet there is no evidence to support this claim; quite the contrary, direct evidence indicates present day temperatures are still much less than previous times, and well within natural variation.

According to IPCC, it has a high level of scientific understanding of CO2, therefore it should be very simple to provide evidence supporting the hypothesis of IPCC's conclusions that CO2 levels alone will determine global temperatures, particularly since CH4 (methane) levels have flattened for some unexplained reason, again contrary to IPCC climate models. Recent cooling of the oceans is referred to as a “speed bump” by AGW proponents.

A paper supporting that notion may for example have the inverse of the title of the following published paper "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics"
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

It would also refute this:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

In the IPCC 1992 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
In the IPCC 1995 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 -0.33K per decade. Adjustments in the models were made until it matched what they believe to be current day temperatures, then the AGW sheep claim the climate models were accurate. Any explanation for this?

It can be easily proven IPCC chooses to ignore relevant research contrary to their agenda driven dogma. Do you challenge this?

In the following IPCC SPM document, a chart on page 4, ‘Radiative Forcing Components’ gives RF values for various climate mechanisms. Do you notice something odd? Maybe a few items missing? Note the LOSU for solar is Low (compared to 2001, 2007 SPM eliminated all references of Very Low), yet IPCC attributes a very low forcing value. Since CO2 is listed as High with the largest forcing value, you should be able to easily locate the relevant physics explaining how IPCC arrives at its 2.4C minimum temperature increase.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_SPM-v2.pdf

It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

This subject matter is focused on CO2 as it is the main villain in AGW. When your side can satisfactorily support that IPCC hypothesis, we can move on to other issues.

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I'm just reading a interesting article:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/14/soa/ecocensorship.htm

Aside the usual ad-homs and derogatory comments about the web site and exxon funding, are there errors on the objections to AGW presented there?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

It should be noted also that the raw data and programs aren't yet released, despite repeated requests. All the requesters got were a mail stating that "they won't release the data because it will be used to critizice the papers".

Tell me about peer review :(

There have been several in this forum stating it is a simple matter of physics; atmospheric CO2 levels go up and temperatures follow in a linear fashion. We are told current day temperatures are “unprecedented”, yet there is no evidence to support this claim; quite the contrary, direct evidence indicates present day temperatures are still much less than previous times, and well within natural variation.

According to IPCC, it has a high level of scientific understanding of CO2, therefore it should be very simple to provide evidence supporting the hypothesis of IPCC's conclusions that CO2 levels alone will determine global temperatures, particularly since CH4 (methane) levels have flattened for some unexplained reason, again contrary to IPCC climate models. Recent cooling of the oceans is referred to as a “speed bump” by AGW proponents.

A paper supporting that notion may for example have the inverse of the title of the following published paper "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics"
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

It would also refute this:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

In the IPCC 1992 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
In the IPCC 1995 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 -0.33K per decade. Adjustments in the models were made until it matched what they believe to be current day temperatures, then the AGW sheep claim the climate models were accurate. Any explanation for this?

It can be easily proven IPCC chooses to ignore relevant research contrary to their agenda driven dogma. Do you challenge this?

In the following IPCC SPM document, a chart on page 4, ‘Radiative Forcing Components’ gives RF values for various climate mechanisms. Do you notice something odd? Maybe a few items missing? Note the LOSU for solar is Low (compared to 2001, 2007 SPM eliminated all references of Very Low), yet IPCC attributes a very low forcing value. Since CO2 is listed as High with the largest forcing value, you should be able to easily locate the relevant physics explaining how IPCC arrives at its 2.4C minimum temperature increase.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_SPM-v2.pdf

It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

This subject matter is focused on CO2 as it is the main villain in AGW. When your side can satisfactorily support that IPCC hypothesis, we can move on to other issues.

[David Rodale]

It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf



For some reason I couldn't edit the original post.

Anyway, this paper is being discussed at the following. Annan is claiming an error in Shwartz's article. We shall see how it plays out.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/20/new-paper-on-the-diagnosis-and-significance-of-ocean-heat-content-changes/#comments
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate.html

[mhaze]

What an attitude Annan apparently has - from his "review"

I am happy to let RealClimate debunk the septic dross

I hear that this paper (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf) from Stephen Schwartz (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/schwartz.html) is making a bit of a splash in the delusionospher

given the screwy results that Schwartz obtained,



For some reason I couldn't edit the original post.

Anyway, this paper is being discussed at the following. Annan is claiming an error in Shwartz's article. We shall see how it plays out.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/20/new-paper-on-the-diagnosis-and-significance-of-ocean-heat-content-changes/#comments
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate.html

[mhaze]

He's certainly not alone in the scientific community, so you've probably presented this out of its context.


Actually, no. I provided the link.

[David Rodale]

What an attitude Annan apparently has - from his "review"

I am happy to let RealClimate debunk the septic dross

I hear that this paper (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf) from Stephen Schwartz (http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/schwartz.html) is making a bit of a splash in the delusionospher

given the screwy results that Schwartz obtained,


Yes, no hint of narcissism at all ;)

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

As pedantic as the blog entry is, I suggest the criticisms to be evaluated on its own merits, instead of the attitude of the blogger. I have seem too much of this from the AGW'rs to begin doing the same to them.

Yes, no hint of narcissism at all ;)

[CapelDodger]

Actually, no. I provided the link.

Not in that post. If it's buried in somethinng else, I'm afraid I missed it.

[mhaze]

Not in that post. If it's buried in somethinng else, I'm afraid I missed it.

Post 402 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2875995&postcount=402) in this thread. It's a pretty good article, he describes why he feels being an alarmist is a valid position. And laments that not many others seem to share his views.

I'm not saying it alarmism is not a valid belief, mind you; neither do I argue with my fundamentalist religious co-workers about religion.

But it is improper for the head of NASA climate science to be bend that far in a single direction; we pay him to get things right. So he should quit NASA and just be a full time climate alarmist, obviously.