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Actually, it was called "The Great Global Warming Swindle," and was mentioned by several other folks commenting here. One other commenter was kind enough to point out that RealClimate has a response to this documentary, and you owe it to yourself to read the response. Particularly, one of the climate scientists who appeared in the documentary claims that he was quoted severely out of context, and his e-mail follow-up is in the comments (number 109, though it says it's comment number 108 in an edit near the top of the article) on the RealClimate page I linked.

Kind of interesting that "The Great Global Warming Swindle" gets mentioned a lot in the comments on this article. So I might as well mention the RealClimate debunking of this documentary (mentioned briefly in another comment thread).

It is the height of meglomania to suggest that human beings have a greater impact on the planet than that big-ass hot thing that comes over the horizon every morning.

You will find articles dating back 20 years or more, with many articles devoted to the coming catastrophe of Global COOLING. They were all anticipating the new Ice Age.

Humans tend to think that the span of our lifetimes are significant, when in the scope of Universe, our lifespans, and indeed human life on this planet are nothing but a blip, a footnote, a grain of sand on the beach.

I tend to think the Earth can and will do what it will do without consulting us.

These guys are back public eye because they recently appeared in a UK Channel4 documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Basically a rehash of all the outdated silly arguments you've heard a thousand times before. You can read the RealClimate response here if you like.

But that's pretty boring, science type stuff. What's much more fun is watching the right-wing contingent defending this piece of crap, proclaiming its truth and accuracy, when the film was produced by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party! Regular contributors to the RCP's journal, "Living Marxism" no less.

What an interesting meeting of minds.

Nope. It is a forcing. Water vapor holds a higher concentration of the greenhouse effect then Co2 does and is more abundant in the air. And when the sun causes more water to evaporate, it causes more watervapor to be in the air wich causes more heat to be retained. In a models sence of wording, it would be the underlying force. And therby a forcing.

That's not what a forcing is. Water vapor causes warming, yes, but it is not a forcing, according to climatology jargon. I already gave you a link to an article explaining the difference in terminology (here)

I think it is clear you don't understand theworking here.

Don't lecture me on climatology. You've been making moronic statements about it which I have been patiently correcting for a month now.

The sun gets hotter. It evaporates more water and raises the air temperature. The increased humidity traps more water then something comes along and attached to it creating clouds. Now clouds block some of the light reducing the effects of the sun.

I know that. In fact, I explained it to you once. It still doesn't make water vapor a forcing.

No, the forcings due to contrails and such are largely independent of whatever the global warming is due to.

No, the paper like you, are trying to attribute the wrong information to the desired outcome.

No, it's basic physics. Contrails do not magically act differently if the temperature is being raised by CO2 or by something else. Contrails don't care what is causing the temperature increase.

How much stronger? The amount of heat caused by the increaded water vapor stronger?

The positive feedback from increased water vapor acts the same regardless of whether the water vapor increase is being produced by CO2-based heating or by Sun-based heating. Water vapor does not amplify solar heating more than it amplifies CO2 heating. It amplifies any heating in the same way. The forcing from solar variations is much smaller than the forcing from CO2. Water vapor amplifies both forcings, but the solar variation forcing remains much smaller because it started out much smaller.

It doesn't need to be that much stronger, the sun isn't the only factor in this.

Yes, it does need to be much stronger than it actually is.

The Co2 models discount a lot of these factors by negating watervapor effects in favor of making Co2 apear stronger.

Once again proving you don't know the first thing about climatology. Yet you presume to lecture others on it.

Climate models do not "negate" or "neglect" water vapor effects. All climate models include water vapor feedbacks. Those feedbacks act on ALL forcings in the system, not just CO2 or just anthropogenic forcings.

I'm saying let the science prove it out.

It has been. The fact that you refuse to accept it says more about your bias and ignorance than it does about the science.

There is and always has been a lot of support for the sun being the cause.

There isn't and there hasn't. The Sun has been ruled out as the major cause of global warming. Deal with it. It makes a contribution, but it's much smaller than anthropogenic factors.

With the sun, it will fic itself. With human caused GHGs we are fucked unless something drastic is done.

The Sun won't necessarily "fix itself" any more than GHGs will. Eventually the solar intensity will change, and eventually GHGs will get scrubbed from the atmosphere, but neither are necessarily going to happen on any time scale that's convenient for us.

(More accurately, the Sun gives a measurable but small contribution, and greenhouse gases give a measurable and large contribution.)

There is no way you can say this to any certanty.

Yes, there is. You simply refuse to accept

Here is a discussion of this issue by climate scientists:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /10/global-warming-on-mars/

It was more than a single article, but it was still only a few articles. The most prominent was in Newsweek, and also one in Time.

In fact, despite the media scare in the 1970s, scientists were not predicting a coming ice age. The general idea was that natural effects were causing a cooling, but there wasn't enough information to tell whether manmade effects would offset that cooling (from the greenhouse effect), or contribute further to it (from aerosols and particular matter). After 10-15 years it became evident that they produce an overall warming. Also, much of the manmade cooling effect was removed with tighter pollution controls.

You can read more about the history of "global cooling" here, here, and here.

The only kind of planetary warming that has relevance to Earth is warming due to increase in solar output, because that is the only factor Earth shares in common with other planets.

Solar output has been increasing for some time. However:

1. The warming on Mars is not due to an increase in solar output; solar output actually decreased slightly over the period that its warming was observed. (It's also not global warming, but rather regional warming of Mars's south pole.) See here.

2. According to the article you cite, the warming on Pluto is not due to an increase in solar output. It is due to orbital variations: Pluto recently passed perihelion.

3. According to the article you cite, the warming on Triton is not due to an increase in solar output. It is due to changes in surface albedo (the amount of solar radiation that the planet reflects vs. absorbs).

4. According to the article you cite, the climate changes on Jupiter are not due to an increase in solar output. They are due to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns. (It's also not clear from that article whether the overall effect is global warming; there is warming at the equator and cooling at the poles.)

In short, other planets don't tell us much about global warming on Earth. Even if they were all warming for the same reason, that reason would have to be solar output, and we don't need to study other planets in order to know about that: we can measure solar output directly.

As it turns out, solar output isn't sufficient to explain the observed global warming. It has been increasing overall, but not by very much. It explains a little bit of the warming, but not most of it. See this article for more details (subscription required).

I fail to see how mars can have much of a "greenhouse effect" when it doesn't have much of an atmosphere. Perhaps Mars is getting warmer I really don't know, 3yrs of data is too insignificant to say much at all but I certainly don't want to stop people looking at Mars.

However, claiming that the sun is responsible for Earth's current warming and "proving" it by looking at Mars is pure bullshit designed to confuse people. Zonk is always posting this type of crap, I wouldn't have a problem with it if he didn't insist on labeling it "science".

It's interesting to note that a National Geographic article is also the source of the "in the 70's scientists predicted global cooling" myth that psuedo-skeptics drag up all the time. As I said, if you are interested in solid research about the attribution of forcings in Earth's recent warming then look at figure SPM-2 in the IPCC report (LOSU = Level Of Scientific Understanding).

See also this discussion on RealClimate.org about Martian warming:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

The IPCC has released radiative forcing data for the various greenhouse components, and CO2 is by far the largest component.

You're making the mistake of conflating ozone depletion with global warming, too.

The Mars data is often misunderstood.

"The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted."

Funny how three years is good enough to prove Martian global warming to the same people who tell us 150 years of data (and 720,000 from ice cores) just isn't enough to base a conclusion off.

I had a hard time finding good data on forest fire emissions via Google. There's a two gigatons of carbon figure for overall deforestation - fires, logging, etc. - but it's not broken down more than that as far as I can see.

Even if it were that entire two gigaton figure, though, it's a lot smaller than the seven gigatons put off by fossil fuel usage, and much of it can be put down to human activity as well.

> Or are you saying this particular study does not actually discredit man-made global warming?
not even close

this news has been covered and extreme implications as made in this short report debunked by climatologist geeks at realclimate.org:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /10/global-warming-on-mars/#more-192%5Dhttp://www. realclimate.org/index.php/archi...-mars/%23more-19 2


Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars..These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars..But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.....Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, ... The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are....the shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 ....Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. .....There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth...

The scientist who looked at the polar ice cap melting said it was from a global climate change on mars, while discussed in this link http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192 the ice caps are melting due to regional climate change. That conclusion was based on numerous data measurements across the planet of mars. The inferrence of solar radiation and global climate change on mars is baseless.

Exactly right. See this article for more details:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /10/global-warming-on-mars/

Same old crap from global warming deniers; won't bother to find out the facts.

CFCs - found in fridges, air conditioners, aerosols etc. are extremely effective greenhouse gases. Although there are lower concentrations of CFCs in the atmosphere than CO2 they trap more heat. A CFC molecule is 10,000 times more effective in trapping heat than a CO2 molecule, methane is about 30 times more effective. Methane molecules survive for 10 years in the atmosphere and CFCs for 110 years. It is this that causes people to want to ban them completely.

The original CFCs were powerful greenhouse gases (about 0.34 W/m2 forcing since 1850), and even allowing for a cooling due to the subsequent depletion in stratospheric ozone (-0.15 W/m2), they had a net warming effect.

As usual, some useful discussion of these issues can be found on RealClimate.org. The following two articles are worth a look, though neither is especially recent:

• Did the Sun hit record highs over the last few decades?
• Global warming on Mars?

The punchline from the latter article is, "There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth..."

As usual, some useful discussion of these issues can be found on RealClimate.org. The following two articles are worth a look, though neither is especially recent:

• Did the Sun hit record highs over the last few decades?
• Global warming on Mars?

The punchline from the latter article is, "There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth..."

Yeah, you've said it before, but your cite from the right wing think tank (predictably receiving funding from Exxon) is from 10 years ago and filled with half-truths and outright lies (look up the latest IPCC report and see how it conflicts with what's written there). The Crichton crap has been addressed a million times already. What makes you think quoting these idiots is more convincing than what actual climatologists have to say on the matter?

If only we could see something that the two share in common.

I suppose it's insightful to the good portion of the ./ audience who fancies themselves armchair geologists, oceanographers, climatologists, astrophysicists, etc.

It's along the lines of the "duh, it's only the sun that's causing any warming, if there is any." (That's wrong, BTW).

Okay, so Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. What about water vapor? :)

This recent article linking cosmic rays and global warming is the start.

This has already been debunked I'm afraid.

Generally speaking, lower glaciers which extend below the elevation where above-freezing air temperatures occur, are more sensitive to temperature. [Kaser and Osmaston 2002] calculate that such tropical glaciers are even more temperature-sensitive than midlatitude glaciers. A warming of 1 degree C is sufficient to raise the equilibrium line (below which net ablation occurs) by fully 300 meters. As we've already seen, warming is by no means unimportant to the 20th century retreat of the Lewis glacier (Mt. Kenya) in E. Africa. In other cases, the role of warming is yet more clear.

Throughout the Tropics, glaciers are in retreat. Well-documented examples include Quelccaya [Thompson, et al. 1993], Huascaran [Byers, 2000; Kaser and Osmaston,2002], Zongo and Chacaltaya [Francou,et al 2003; Wagnon et al. 1999] in S. America; and the Lewis, Rwenzori and Kilimanjaro (more properly, Kibo) glaciers in East Africa [Hastenrath, 1984; Kaser and Osmaston, 2002]. There have been indications of widespread retreat of Himalayan glaciers, including Dasuopu in the subtropics, but a quantitative understanding of this region must await peer-reviewed analysis of the recently completed 46000-glacier Chinese Glacier Inventory.

"All I and Mr. Chrichton want is clean science. No consensus, no politics. Capice?"

If Chrichton wants "clean science" why did he accept an invitation to give evidence on "the facts behind climate change" to a senate commitee. The guy is entitled to his opinion but I and many others object to his fiction being misrepresented as science to policymakers and the public.

It's not even really about politics either, Chrichton does what he does to sell science fiction books. Capice?

"Currently, the concept of "Solely Man-Made Global Warming" is not independently verifiable! The entire discussion smacks of politics, and that's what's got a bee in Mr. Chrichton's bonnet. This is NOT an outrageous request to make. We simply want All the data available, and have it put to a totally open, and independently verifiable test. Are you aware that Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with the famous "Hockey Stick" graph, has YET to release his data and methods for peer review? What kind of science is that? No review? Community consensus without discussion? THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, IT IS POLITICS. Clear and simple.

...not to mention wrong:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11

"This work in no way ANSWERS any questions."

It's good to double check your sources and after doing so I have to admit you are absolutely correct.

"Actually, the linked article is fairly good for Real Climate.

After a second reading I find it below par, here is the evidentary link, they normaly don't forget stuff like that.

"while villifying anyone who works on studying the Sun"

On the contrary, (and coincidentally), from the above link...
"The fact that there is little recent trend in the GCR and solar activity does not mean that solar activity is unimportant for earth's climate. There are a large number of recent peer-reviewed scientific publications demonstrating how solar activity can affect our climate (Benestad, 2002), such as how..."

"assuming that these [cosmic ray] researchers aren't denied funding..."

I'm not sure what "reasearchers" you are talking about but here is a list of "reputable" articles/papers on the subject of '"cosmic rays" and climate'. I say "reputable" since it comes for RC"s "google coop search", the list of sites in their search includes (Science, Nature, NASA, NOAA, AGU, ect), it even includes their "other opinions" list. If you don't wan't to be "censored" then there is always google wher I am sure TFA's linking of cosimc rays to climate change will find plenty of support (none of it scientific but it is well funded).

"...on the basis of having become "too controvercial", which is the typical fate of anyone who brings the "consensus" into question."

Politically contraversial is entirely different to scientifically contraversial (re: Darwin). Also a political consensus is entirely different to scientific consensus (re: Dogma vs Established theory), a scientists job is to attack established theory via consensus, the relationship between dogma and a politicians job is fairly self-eveident. The very act of submitting or performing peer-review is by definition a consensus of informed opinion using a formal methodology.

Just out of interest where is the "RC != science" FUD coming from - WSJ editorial page? I only ask because your "skeptcisim" seems reasonably coherent?

"This work in no way ANSWERS any questions."

It's good to double check your sources and after doing so I have to admit you are absolutely correct.

"Actually, the linked article is fairly good for Real Climate.

After a second reading I find it below par, here is the evidentary link, they normaly don't forget stuff like that.

"while villifying anyone who works on studying the Sun"

On the contrary, (and coincidentally), from the above link...
"The fact that there is little recent trend in the GCR and solar activity does not mean that solar activity is unimportant for earth's climate. There are a large number of recent peer-reviewed scientific publications demonstrating how solar activity can affect our climate (Benestad, 2002), such as how..."

"assuming that these [cosmic ray] researchers aren't denied funding..."

I'm not sure what "reasearchers" you are talking about but here is a list of "reputable" articles/papers on the subject of '"cosmic rays" and climate'. I say "reputable" since it comes for RC"s "google coop search", the list of sites in their search includes (Science, Nature, NASA, NOAA, AGU, ect), it even includes their "other opinions" list. If you don't wan't to be "censored" then there is always google wher I am sure TFA's linking of cosimc rays to climate change will find plenty of support (none of it scientific but it is well funded).

"...on the basis of having become "too controvercial", which is the typical fate of anyone who brings the "consensus" into question."

Politically contraversial is entirely different to scientifically contraversial (re: Darwin). Also a political consensus is entirely different to scientific consensus (re: Dogma vs Established theory), a scientists job is to attack established theory via consensus, the relationship between dogma and a politicians job is fairly self-eveident. The very act of submitting or performing peer-review is by definition a consensus of informed opinion using a formal methodology.

Just out of interest where is the "RC != science" FUD coming from - WSJ editorial page? I only ask because your "skeptcisim" seems reasonably coherent?

It might have been interesting to have a back-and-forth with you, but when somebody calls me a "denier," suggesting that my skepticism about AGW can in any way be compared with holocaust denial

You are no skeptic! Just look at the uncritical way you lapped up Svensmark's work along with the claim that this somehow invalidated the (by now well-established) role of human activity in GW! Was your skepticism on holidays?

Skeptics are more likely to accept scientific orthodoxy while rejecting pseudo=science, fringe science and conspiracy theories. GW denialists do the exact opposite.

I wouldn't accuse you of holocaust denial though. More like being in denial when you've just been told you have terminal cancer, and you are willing to grasp at any pseudo=scientific cure which promises complete remission.

BTW you did check out OP's link re cosmic rays (or the response the the Calder article), didn't you.

It might have been interesting to have a back-and-forth with you, but when somebody calls me a "denier," suggesting that my skepticism about AGW can in any way be compared with holocaust denial

You are no skeptic! Just look at the uncritical way you lapped up Svensmark's work along with the claim that this somehow invalidated the (by now well-established) role of human activity in GW! Was your skepticism on holidays?

Skeptics are more likely to accept scientific orthodoxy while rejecting pseudo=science, fringe science and conspiracy theories. GW denialists do the exact opposite.

I wouldn't accuse you of holocaust denial though. More like being in denial when you've just been told you have terminal cancer, and you are willing to grasp at any pseudo=scientific cure which promises complete remission.

BTW you did check out OP's link re cosmic rays (or the response the the Calder article), didn't you.

Ahem. While Svensmark's results are indeed interesting, you don't think that based on the results of a single lab experiment claiming that everyone else's assessment are wrong is a
wee bit premature? This is yet another example of misusing results, and Svensmark should really be embarrassed about his tactics. Rather like how Pons and Fleischer reacted to their now-infamous results.

There are indeed plenty of interesting questions to ask and answer about global climate change, but somehow the anti-GW crowd always manages to seize on each new discovery as evidence of wrongness and wrongheadedness on the part of the climate science community about the diagnosis of anthropogenic warming. And the reason denialists don't like that diagnosis is not because of science (except maybe old-guarders like Lindzen), but because the policy implications don't line up neatly with this or that view of the world they have. There is no science in climate denialism, because the questions all flow from the answer - which must be that people are not responsible for warming - rather than vice-versa. As I said before, this is exactly the same as Intelligent Design, where the answer that God created the world begets a series questions to demonstrate this, rather than vice-versa.

Note that to get any of your above "questions" to line up with your chosen answer requires bringing together a misintepretation of data (localized Antarctic cooling is indeed happening but is in no way contradictory to current understanding of climate change) two allegations of conspiracy (the refusals to publish Svensmark's results AND the so-called lack of media coverage, despite that obvious fallacies in both conspiracy theories), an as-yet uncorroborated laboratory finding that's been inflated into a unjustified conclusion about climate change and a counterfactual claim (please, please look at the GISS data - when you don't incorrectly average in the vertical, the data does not show stabilized surface air temperatures, it shows a dramatic increase in surface air temperatures in all but a few places in the world - that's where the records for warmest years come from, and to the point of the child post below this, the issues about urban areas are directly address in the current IPCC assessment and do not have a substantial impact). This is what's so infuriating about this whack-a-mole game. Any single random potshot that happens to land is trumpeted as evidence that the whole can be shot to pieces. Every time you dig into one of these arguments, there's never reputable, reproduceable science behind it. There are plenty of open questions about climate change, but the ones you're trying to keep open have been closed. If you are really interested in the science, start asking questions about what the variability between model runs means for predictions (which, quite reasonably, are still at least a half an order of magnitude apart).

Please guys there is nothing insightful about this post whatsoever. In the first place it merely cut and pasted an article from elsewhere (how much insight does that require?) Secondly Calder's article has already been debunked.

The Svensmark experiment was doing the rounds 6 months ago. Are the Denialists running out of steam?

"I think he meant serious, peer reviewed investigation"

Have a look again, RC is attacking a PRESS RELEASE similar to the PRESS RELEASE that is TFA. If this guy (or anyone else) publishes a paper on cosmic rays and climate I am sure it will be treated with more respect.

"In case the writers didn't know - environmentalists are also widely regarded..."

Perhaps RC contributors are also evil boogey-men "environmentalists" in their spare time, but they are climatoligists first and foremost. The guy who started the blog is the hockey stick guy and has been a lead authour in the IPCC reports, many of the contribitors also have a long list of current peer-reviewed publications under their belt, there is a bio for all of them on the site and (unlike psuedo-skeptical sites there is a prominent list of "other opinions. OTOH: The guy in TFA is a journalist who's claim to fame is that he was once the editor of New Scientst.

Having said that I doubt it will slow you from dogmatically defending a psuedo-skeptical press release in the face of overwhelming contra-evidence.

Maybe you should explore RealClimate. They specifically discuss the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, Antarctic Climate, and the supposed problems with the Hockey Stick Graph.

But, hey, god forbid you should actually do your own research.

Maybe you should explore RealClimate. They specifically discuss the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, Antarctic Climate, and the supposed problems with the Hockey Stick Graph.

But, hey, god forbid you should actually do your own research.

Maybe you should explore RealClimate. They specifically discuss the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, Antarctic Climate, and the supposed problems with the Hockey Stick Graph.

But, hey, god forbid you should actually do your own research.

Maybe you should explore RealClimate. They specifically discuss the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, Antarctic Climate, and the supposed problems with the Hockey Stick Graph.

But, hey, god forbid you should actually do your own research.

This need not be an either/or scenario. We can both reduce emissions AND find carbon sinks. According to Eric Steig, "[i]f humans stopped producing CO2 today, it would take around 700 years to come back down to the original value." I don't know how accurate that number is, but I suspect he's at least right that it would be a long time.

Interestingly, I recently read a claim that overfishing is causing a boom in smaller fish that eat algae/photoplanton causing a drop in carbon sink activity. I don't know if that's credible though. If anyone has info on that, please post.

This need not be an either/or scenario. We can both reduce emissions AND find carbon sinks. According to Eric Steig, "[i]f humans stopped producing CO2 today, it would take around 700 years to come back down to the original value." I don't know how accurate that number is, but I suspect he's at least right that it would be a long time.

Interestingly, I recently read a claim that overfishing is causing a boom in smaller fish that eat algae/photoplanton causing a drop in carbon sink activity. I don't know if that's credible though. If anyone has info on that, please post.

RealClimate discussed these results back in October ...

Yah, and every day every physics department in the world recieves letters from nutters who think they've discovered the ultimate theory of everything in their basement.

So sure is it logically possible this guy is right and the rest of the scientific establishment wrong? Sure, though there are some quite compelling reasons not to think cosmic rays explain climate change. It's also logically possible that Xenu really did bring 50 billion aliens to earth on DC-10s and kill them with hydrogen bombs. Do you think we should plan for the future based on mainstream science or the threat from the thetans?

The question is how likely is this guy to be right. Now if you happen to be a climate scientists you should evaluate that based only on the merits of the idea, i.e., the evidence for it. If you don't read climate science papers and keep up with the subject it is just idiotic for you to evaluate the merits of his theory. Instead you have to compare the credibility of the vast vast majority of the scientific establishment and a few dissenters. There isn't much of a contest here.

Let's put the issue a little bit more concretely. Suppose some guy comes up to you with a proposal to mine gold based on a new process for leaching it from rocks other companies are ignoring. He wants you to invest money in his company but when you consult experts in chemistry, mining and geology they all tell you he is a complete quack and his idea is completely bogus. Would you invest?

Do you read the research papers in climate science? If you answered no to both these questions then you shouldn't be trying to weigh the evidence yourself based on what you read in newspapers.

In any scientific discipline, and particularly complex ones like climate science, it is easy to select evidence (even honestly) to make almost anything appear to be the right explanation. The reason the scientific process works is because it doesn't just let each theory get up and give a stump speech but demands to know how it can answer tough questions and fit consistently with our other knowledge. The question is not, 'would cosmic rays make for a good hypothesis on the basis of our inexpert knowledge,' but 'given the vast body of knowledge scientists have is it plausible that cosmic rays explain climate variation.'

Thankfully, climate scientists have not only already addressed this question but even written lay explanations about it. You can find plenty of other discussions about cosmic rays over on realclimate.org and they point out that there is considerable reason to discredit the cosmic ray explanation for global warming.

What disgusts me about this whole buisness is that whenever something like this comes up a bunch of people who can't be bothered to actually read the journal articles but think they are entitled to second guess the people who have pipe up and complain about how global warming is just a dogma. Like any topic you have a choice. You can either choose to learn enough about the subject to intelligently weigh the evidence, which in this case would mean keeping up with the actual scientific papers not just media summaries, or you can count on experts to analyze that evidence for you and reach your conclusion on the authority of those experts.

Look it's simple really. Either you can read the scientific papers yourself and argue with the other experts about the evidence or you can argue about which experts are more credible. If you are debating the matter here you are doing the later. So do you really expect anyone to believe that the handful of climate change deniers are more credible than all experts who find the evidence for global warming compelling? If the positions were reversed and it was the deniers who were claiming it was global warming would you believe?

The worst part of all this is that these very idiots who claim that climate science is just some dogma pose a real threat to important dissent in the climate science community. While we may be sure of the vague outlines of human caused climate change there are many issues that still require vigorous scientific debate but if this debate is jumped on by skeptics as proof that global warming is a fraud then responsible scientists will be more reluctant to publicly express such disagreements.

Do you read the research papers in climate science? If you answered no to both these questions then you shouldn't be trying to weigh the evidence yourself based on what you read in newspapers.

In any scientific discipline, and particularly complex ones like climate science, it is easy to select evidence (even honestly) to make almost anything appear to be the right explanation. The reason the scientific process works is because it doesn't just let each theory get up and give a stump speech but demands to know how it can answer tough questions and fit consistently with our other knowledge. The question is not, 'would cosmic rays make for a good hypothesis on the basis of our inexpert knowledge,' but 'given the vast body of knowledge scientists have is it plausible that cosmic rays explain climate variation.'

Thankfully, climate scientists have not only already addressed this question but even written lay explanations about it. You can find plenty of other discussions about cosmic rays over on realclimate.org and they point out that there is considerable reason to discredit the cosmic ray explanation for global warming.

What disgusts me about this whole buisness is that whenever something like this comes up a bunch of people who can't be bothered to actually read the journal articles but think they are entitled to second guess the people who have pipe up and complain about how global warming is just a dogma. Like any topic you have a choice. You can either choose to learn enough about the subject to intelligently weigh the evidence, which in this case would mean keeping up with the actual scientific papers not just media summaries, or you can count on experts to analyze that evidence for you and reach your conclusion on the authority of those experts.

Look it's simple really. Either you can read the scientific papers yourself and argue with the other experts about the evidence or you can argue about which experts are more credible. If you are debating the matter here you are doing the later. So do you really expect anyone to believe that the handful of climate change deniers are more credible than all experts who find the evidence for global warming compelling? If the positions were reversed and it was the deniers who were claiming it was global warming would you believe?

The worst part of all this is that these very idiots who claim that climate science is just some dogma pose a real threat to important dissent in the climate science community. While we may be sure of the vague outlines of human caused climate change there are many issues that still require vigorous scientific debate but if this debate is jumped on by skeptics as proof that global warming is a fraud then responsible scientists will be more reluctant to publicly express such disagreements.