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Predictably enough, Anthony Watts is at it again ([1] [2]). Haven't looked too deeply into his claims, and I'm really not too tempted to do so either. So has anyone else looked at it? Any comments?

As shown by this guy, weather stations are positioned next to asphalt parking lots and air conditioner units which produce an unnaturally high reading. So until these monitors are placed elsewhere we will be getting reading that can be several degrees higher than the actual temperature, which will skew the results upwards.

So there may actually be man made global warming, but the man made part is the data...

So if Anthony Watts is an honest amature then why did he try and use the DCMA to suppress this devestating contra-evidence to his propoganda? (meat of the debunking at 5:00-6:00)

He didn't.

I'm just stating the facts that are obvious if you've read any of the Climategate emails or dug into the real criticisms of the alleged climate science.

If you'd like to hear from a climate scientist on the topic read this and the many other supporting articles. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/10/fred-singer-on-the-muir-russel-report

The "conspiracy" is well documented in the Climategate emails: political interference in the peer review scientific method process, hiding declines in tree ring data is blatant fraud and deserves jail time for Mann and Jones, refusing information requests also deserves jail time for public data needs to be available to the public especially when it is being used to spend the public purse on public policy of governments, ... the list goes on and on... Nasa GISS temperature data fabricates data with one temperature station being used for 1200km diameter up north in Canada - fabrication of data is fraud the last time I checked ethics... the list goes on and on and on....

So do your own homework. I don't have time to debate you or bring you up to speed.

Here are some sources with many excellent and informative articles (including one that shows that the Null Natural Hypothesis has better correlation coefficients than any of the Alleged AGW Hypothesis climate models).

http://www.climateaudit.org/
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/

You might think that challenging someone for references is being scientific smidget2k4 but really do your own research. I'm not here to mother you.

I'm just stating the facts that are obvious if you've read any of the Climategate emails or dug into the real criticisms of the alleged climate science.

If you'd like to hear from a climate scientist on the topic read this and the many other supporting articles. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/10/fred-singer-on-the-muir-russel-report

The "conspiracy" is well documented in the Climategate emails: political interference in the peer review scientific method process, hiding declines in tree ring data is blatant fraud and deserves jail time for Mann and Jones, refusing information requests also deserves jail time for public data needs to be available to the public especially when it is being used to spend the public purse on public policy of governments, ... the list goes on and on... Nasa GISS temperature data fabricates data with one temperature station being used for 1200km diameter up north in Canada - fabrication of data is fraud the last time I checked ethics... the list goes on and on and on....

So do your own homework. I don't have time to debate you or bring you up to speed.

Here are some sources with many excellent and informative articles (including one that shows that the Null Natural Hypothesis has better correlation coefficients than any of the Alleged AGW Hypothesis climate models).

http://www.climateaudit.org/
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/

You might think that challenging someone for references is being scientific smidget2k4 but really do your own research. I'm not here to mother you.

Uhhh..maybe because carbon credits are a scam and even on the small scale they are currently being used major scams are occurring? All your "offset" plan would do is allow those at the top to reap windfall profits while ultimately the same thing that is happening now would still happen, they would just use a few more middlemen along the way. Oh and have government assistance as well of course.

If you really want to make a change give companies tax breaks that design easily recycled materials, while having higher taxes on those that make e-garbage. But the offset scam is just that, a major scam, that in the long run will bring only misery while doing jack and squat about actual pollution. Just look at how well the government has done when it comes to keeping wall street honest, you really think they'll do better with big business and the environment? How many superfund sites are we up to now?

"Sorry, but you are confused. Skeptical scientists like Richard Lindzen are indeed actively getting their work published in peer-reviewed journals. So that's strike one for your conspiracy theory."

Sure. Lindzen, out of how many? Hint: if it actually happened, and it's documented, it's not "conspiracy theory". Strike one for your refutation.

"The mails that talked about keeping something out of journals were referring to poor research that didn't stand up to even a superficial look by someone with knowledge. It is a good thing to keep poor science out of science journals. So that's trike two for your conspiracy theory."

No, they weren't. In the particular email to which you refer, Jones was referring to a paper by McIntyre and McKitrick, who Jones and Mann simply didn't like, because they were critical of the methods used by Mann and CRU. The criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, far from not "standing up to even a superficial look", were later specifically stated to be valid in the Wegman report commissioned by the US Senate. Strike two for your refutation.

"No, there are thousands of active climate scientists around the world."

Nice straw-man argument! How many of them at the time were actively involved with this research? Strike 3 for your refutation.

"Correction: Authors whose research was too crappy to appear in real scientific journals were forced to "publish" through kook rags."

Your bias is showing. As I have shown above, it was not crappy research, and Energy and Environment is far from a "kook rag"! Do you know anything about it at all? Strike 4 for your refutation.

"It seems that you do not know the details. You are assuming that because research that seems to support your ideology is not gaining consensus, there must be a conspiracy. What is happening in reality is that the proper science shows AGW, and those who don't accept that can't produce the proper science to support their position."

YOU are the one who made the assumptions. You assumed that the paper by McKitrick and McIntyre was garbage (have you read it?). It was not. Their criticisms of the work done by Mann, Jones, et al. were specifically upheld by the statisticians who later reviewed the work. The science was proper, and has been supported by the reviews of some of the finest professionals in the field. You are simply wrong. Strike 5 for your refutation.

"Oh no! He's biased against quackery and kooks!"

I have already mentioned my basis for stating that Phil was not objective on the matter. You have done nothing to refute it. Strike 6.

Unlike those, he isn't willfully rejecting well known facts.

And what facts are those? Come on! If you are going to make an argument, then make your argument! That's just an empty claim. Strike 7.

"The difference is that Phil's position is supported by actual science. The denialist side is only supported by kooks and conspiracy theorists."

And here you just show your ignorance. Where did you get this idea? Please support it with evidence. Strike 8.

"Really! So how come the actual experts in the field all have research that shows the same thing, while the denialists have nothing but political propaganda to point to? How come those who are not experts in the field are less likely to accept the scientific facts?"

I see. The "actual experts in the field all have research that shows the same thing"? Interesting! I would be very interested to see some evidence for that claim! Wait... don't bother. Just the other day I found some counter-evidence right here. And it only takes one counter-example to disprove a claim like that. So please... by all means show me wher

Ok, I just found a page with waaaaaaaaay too much information, but I'll give you the short brief. First by the lower pressure at the poles and higher elevation of the coldest measurement stations, you might not pass the freezing point at all, it seems right on the border. Secondly, because there's so little CO2 in our athmosphere the sublimation effect is much stronger than the freezing effect, dry ice won't last even if held below the freezing point.

Oil always occurs in pockets in sedimentary rock.

Not true. Russians have been going after deep oil since after world war II, and have a much higher success rate than their US competitors.

Life is made of hydrocarbons, and when packed down with a shit-ton of pressure, it forms coal and oil.

Bull pucky. Feel free to pressurize a dead fish to whatever level you want, and see if it magically becomes petroleum.

Some of the lighter forms of coal even show shapes that show it was at one point plant material.

Again, bull pucky. Lighter forms of coal may contain bits of plant, but that's not because coal is made out of plants -> it's because the plants got stuck in the tar or other materials that eventually solidified into coal. Go ahead, feel free to pressurize two cabbages to whatever level you want, and see if one magically becomes petroleum, and the other one remains unchanged.

A super volcano is devastating, but it takes weeks for the ash to spread globally

You're vastly underestimating the power of a super volcano, and wildly overestimating the power of nuclear weapons. How's this for a question -> do you know how many megatons of nukes have already been set off on planet earth?

Natural variation is accounted for in these models, a fact which you seem to be neglecting.

No it isn't. Certain non CO2 drivers are calculated, but all the remainder is assumed to be due to humans, rather than unknown natural drivers. This is the typical creationist "God of the Gaps".

There was no choice about it, I either did not go to college, or go into massive debt

That sounds like a choice to me.

I chose to make a future for myself, and sadly the only way to do that in america is to be born with well-off parents who build you a savings account, go into the military, or acquire a shit-ton of debt.

Your imagination seems very limited here -> there's plenty of future available to poor people, without well off parents, or the military, or debt, one simply must open one's eyes to the possibilities. It seems like you've made a choice, and have nothing but bitchy things to say about it, which makes me wonder what you're really angry at, your lack of imagination or the fact that you have to work hard for things you want.

Handy tip -> don't bitch about your prospects when you've got it better than 90% of the world population.

Seriously, I have been keeping tabs on Wattsupwiththat.com for a while, waiting for them to post anything at all that might actually help their point, but have found no such information.

Really? And you didn't like the latest post on exaggerating ice loss by not providing context?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/23/on-being-the-wrong-size/

Using scary numbers like "200 km^3", instead of "0.007%" makes these kind of AGW propaganda pieces pretty obviously devoid of any real science. Tell me, what basic scientific principle is the author of this particular post missing?

The nuclear arsonal of just a few superpowers could kill all life on earth. Instantly. No supervolcano can do that

Bull pucky. A supervolcano would easily out do every single warhead ever built by man, and even if every nuke went off at once, life would certainly go on.

Also, the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth, not the sun. It may be summer up north, but in Aussiland it is fall, the beginning of winter.

So get rid of summer in one hemisphere. Whether because of axial tilt or solar output, natural variation in global climate far exceeds even the most outrageous projects of unfalsifiable climate models.

Oil is a combination of hundreds of different hydrocarbons of varying length and shape. Its most likely origin is from deposits of life that were burried by sedimentation and eventually compacted into coal or oil.

Its most likely origin is from methane created in the lower layers of the earth, percolating up through various levels of temperature and pressure, creating complex hydrocarbons. The idea that deposits of life somehow magically turn into petroleum is farcical.

What is not nice, is when we increase CO2 or Methane, because then the earth heats, and warmer oceans mean more H2O in the air, keeping it even warmer. However, clouds do help reflect some light.

Actually, the latest papers on the subject show that the cloud reflection effect acts as a negative feedback that far outweighs any increase of CO2 or methane. You've got your story right, but your conclusion wrong.

I am currently only struggling because Americans have decided that if I want to do something with my life I need to be absolutely perfect, and put myself in such heaploads of debt that it will take a good part of my life to pay off, or I could just pull the money out of my ass, or save up 10 dollars that don't go towards cost of living each month to put towards going to college, so that I could get a degree by the time I am 50.

You're struggling because you've chosen to put yourself in debt. There are plenty of community colleges and state universities that offer college educations for much less than some fancy dancy private four year college. And you're always welcome to join the military and get GI bill benefits for education, if you're not a total lard ass.

Please, if you are going to continue, consider the arguments out there, as I have looked at every single anti-global warming website and haven't found even the slightest reasonable argument against it

Well, you may have looked, but it's obvious you haven't understood anything. Check out http://surfacestations.org/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and http://climateaudit.org/ - and please, further than just the front page, actually read the critiques and think about it. It's fairly obvious that politics of catastrophic AGW have been corrupting the science of global climate, and the religious fervor with which you defend the "consensus" view is an example of that.

No, you are saying that "humans are intelligent, therefore God".

Apparently not all humans :)

Your ignorance shines through again. Please read the link I gave you.

Ah, argumentum ad linkium. Here's one for you, and please, read all the posts and comments:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

You are saying that anything which can affect the climate is supernatural, therefore anyone who says that humans affect the climate believe in the supernatural.

I'm saying that anyone who believes that an ant can build and launch a space shuttle is expecting supernatural powers from the ant. And anyone who believes that 4.5 billion humans can possibly overwhelm the natural variations of global climate by the emission of a gas measured in parts per million is similarly attributing super natural powers where they simply do not exist.

I already told you what happened. I educated myself.

And apparently along with your education, you learned the skills to properly express yourself in detail :)

Seriously, what did you do to educate yourself? Read the IPCC AR4 cover to cover? Take Physics 101 and flunk it? If you were honestly a skeptic before reading something in particular, why not share that particular for other skeptics that might follow your lead?

Or are you just a bunch of fluff pretending to fall into a narrative which gives you unwarranted credibility?

The problem is this is NOTHING but a catholic indulgences scam, and because carbon can't be weighed on a scale, it is beyond ripe for abuse and manipulation by leeches like GS, and hey, guess what? It is ALREADY BEING ABUSED! Wow, what are the odds?

You want to see how your precious carbon credits will work? Here you go-market is set up, major corps find loopholes that let them not change a SINGLE DROP of carbon emissions while still selling their "excess carbon" on a market manipulated all to fuck by GS and other leeches, meanwhile China, India, and the other coming up third world countries tell you to go fuck yourselves, while the shitholes third world countries line up for their free money for not being "carbon abusers" which will come straight from YOUR pocket, and you know what? They'll get it too.

You want to get rid of carbon? Ban ALL vehicles (including limos) that get less than X MPG, shut down every coal plant, along with giving every plant that spews out more than X amount of carbon per year six months to clean up their act, and every year you raise X. Tada! I'm a fucking genius! but this is NOT about carbon, never was. This is about Al Gore becoming a cabon billionaire and Goldman Sachs being ready to latch onto your wallet while for some damned reason guys like you support giving them your money?

I'll tell you what, since you are a carbon sinner, why don't you just write a check for 45% of your income to GS and old Al, and leave the rest of our wallets the fuck alone,kay?

What data? His data on which stations match NOAA guidelines. Again, do you think this data is accurate or not? That is the only question that matters.

How many different ways should I explain this? Watts implied that his "good" stations would have a significantly smaller warming trend than the "bad" stations. Menne 2010 showed that any differences are negligible:

... Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative ("cool") bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive ("warm") bias in minimum temperatures. These results underscore the need to consider all changes in observation practice when determining the impacts of siting irregularities. Further, the influence of non-standard siting on temperature trends can only be quantified through an analysis of the data. Adjustments applied to USHCN Version 2 data largely account for the impact of instrument and siting changes, although a small overall residual negative ("cool") bias appears to remain in the adjusted maximum temperature series. Nevertheless, the adjusted USHCN temperatures are extremely well aligned with recent measurements from instruments whose exposure characteristics meet the highest standards for climate monitoring. In summary, we find no evidence that the CONUS temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting.

Watts's response is incoherent, filled with healthy doses of a persecution complex:

Surely he didn't mention that he and Menne et al 'borrowed' my incomplete surfacestations rating data against my protests. Dr. Pielke Sr. and I, plus others on the surfacestations data analysis teams (two independent analyses have been done) see an entirely different picture, now that we have nearly 90% of USHCN surveyed. NCDC used data at 43%, and even though I told them they'd see little or nothing in the way of a signal then, they forged ahead anyway. Assuming we aren't blocked by journal politics, we'll have the surfacestations analysis results in public view soon. If we are blocked by journal politics, we'll have other ways. ... After NCDC's unethical borrowing of my data and denying my right of first publication, don't ask to see the surfacestations analysis results here. I learned my lesson not to trust Karl et al the first time. Full disclosure comes in an SI with journal publication, not before.

He spent years posting pictures and implying incompetence/conspiracies on the part of NOAA/NASA scientists without ever bothering to redo NOAA's analysis on his subset of "good" stations. When someone actually did some science with his rankings, his claims ended up looking silly even to nonscientists who aren't familiar with previous studies like Parker 2004.

And, obviously, Watts doesn't see Menne's paper as verification of any sort. You appear to be alone in that opinion, and I don't understand why you're taking a position that even Watts is sensible enough not to make. He's saying that Menne is wrong, and pointing two non-peer-reviewed (heck, unlinked) analyses of "more complete" data which he's apparently not going to share.

Climate science has abandoned evidence and data and gone straight to propaganda. Check out the data and evidence for yourself, don't listen to the anti-technological propaganda from the politicized climate scientists. http://joannenova.com.au/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/

...go here.

On the contrary, the observed warming is consistent with the known and modeled effects of CO2 on climate, so it is not unexplained.

BZZZT. Wrong. The modeled effects are derived from the assumption that any unknown drivers must be due to human emitted CO2. Again, the model cannot be its own proof.

Indeed, nobody has yet managed to come up with a model that is consistent with historical climate data and does not predict warming in response to such an increase in CO2.

Historical climate data shows increase of CO2 in response to warming, not the other way around. Your prediction does not match the observations.

there is no way to explain the high temperature of Venus other than the greenhouse effect of CO2.

BZZZT. Wrong. RTFA again: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/

And another one if you dislike WUWT: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/05/hyperventilating-on-venus.html

Regardless if an atmosphere is a insulated container or not, the pressure versus temperature relationship of an atmosphere still holds - gravity acts as your container here. Now, have fun explaining how Mars has 95.2% CO2 atmosphere, but never had any runaway global warming. Have fun, think hard, it helps.

You can inspect the actual models, and run them yourself. You will find that they do include this positive feedback, do not make some sort of magical distinction between "natural" and "human" CO2, and do not necessarily result in "runaway" warming.

Which model is your favorite? And you were the one making the distinction between lags and leads of CO2 based on whether or not it was "added" or "not added", not me.

The major role of modeling in science is not to "be its own proof," but rather to help to provide a sanity check to detect errrors.

Ah, Mencken, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. " AGW seems to fit that bill perfectly.

Look, if you can accept that the model is simply a sanity check and not proof, you're half way there. A proof of causality requires a falsifiable proposition, not simply statistical correlations (sketchy or not). Accepting your statement at face value, yes, you may not have a model that proves your theory of catastrophic AGW driven by CO2 emissions wrong, but your model does not give us any confidence that it is right either.

The concern is not "unaccounted for warming," but rather the warming that is accounted for and expected.

That's not true, and you know it. The standard AGW talking point is that after taking all known drivers into consideration, we cannot explain all the observed warming, therefore it must be due to man.

That certainly will have serious consequences, but nothing approaching what you would get with runaway global warming such as is seen on Venus.

PV = nRT. The temperature on Venus has nothing to do with runaway global warming, it has everything to do with atmospheric pressures. Try again.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/

you can even try them out yourself to verify that the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the model is as described, without the need to postulate absurdities like "CO2 memory"

Again, a model cannot be its own proof. Statistics can tell us a certain number of rocks dropping into a pond will be correlated with a certain number of ripples, but it does not show us that ripples cause dropping rocks.

Ah, argumentum ad linkium. Here's a few for you:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
http://www.junkscience.com/

The warmists are the ones who are making the creationist argument - tell me if you've heard this one before:

"After understanding all of the natural drivers we know of, we cannot account for X degrees C of the observed global warming, therefore, changes must be due to man emitted CO2."

"After understanding all of the fossils that we know of, we cannot account for the gaps between the observed fossils, therefore, changes must be due to the Hand of God."

Sounds pretty good to me. Polls can obtain highly reliable statistical results by sampling a much smaller % of a population.

Polls are supposed to get highly reliable results because their samples are representative. This isn't to say polls give us any highly reliable trends - for example, although we may know Obama's approval rating went from 47% to 45% in one month, we cannot simply extend the linear trend and assert eventually he'll get to 0%.

But again, by your assertion, we could have one temperature station in the pacific, one temperature station in the Mojave, and measure CO2 atop Mauna Loa, and have plenty enough information to determine both the global climate today, and any significant trends. Think about how silly that sounds.

It is a myth that volcanos emit anything approaching the CO2 released into the atmosphere by man

Look closer at the graph you're citing -> the spikes are pretty significantly higher than the low rumbling that goes on usually. I'm certain if you looked at the geologic record, you'd find spikes even higher than pinatubo, which should be a good test of the "magical added CO2" theory of lag or lead.

There were about 280,000 such readings, covering most of the world's oceans. With that many readings, you'd expect the means to be pretty accurate and precise.

Seriously? This again? 280,000 readings, all filled with completely unquantified bias can magically give us an accurate and precise *what* exactly? Spread that over years, seasons, days, and even over hours, and you're dealing with a lot less useful readings than you think. In a single day, the temperature somewhere can differ by 10C, and seasons are even greater some places.

You may have an accurate measure of "average temperature of oceans over 150 years", but you sure as hell don't have a good measure of "average temperature of oceans in 1812", much less considering the inherent bias of location along shipping lanes.

Any fixed bias cancels out in determination of a trend. Try it yourself. Take a set of x,y values, do a linear regression. Then add a fixed value to all of the y values and do it again. You'll find that the slope of the fitted line does not change at all.

Here's your question - take a set of x,y values that has no trend. Add small fixed values for low y values, and large fixed values for high y values. You'll find that you've created a slope where none existed originally.

In other words, you are engaging in exactly the same reasoning as the creationists, pointing to "gaps," and trying to suggest that current theory would be unable to account for the unknown contents of those gaps

BZZZT. The creationists are pointing to gaps and insisting they have the answer, the same way you point to gaps and insist you have the answer. I'm simply pointing out gaps and asserting ignorance, not causation.

[regarding CO2 saturation] This was an error in early modeling which has been known to be mistaken for half a decade.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/ - Your model is still wrong.

To have even minimal credibility, you need a mathematical model showing that it is possible to reasonably model historical and prehistorical climate change and the climatic effects of "natural experiments" such as volcanos without a high sensitivity to CO2

BZZZT. Popper called again and he wants his science back. I think we can safely assume that pre-human history, anything that happened was "natural", and to assert we have to have some mathematical model of it before we can accept the pre-historical record as "natural" is beyond silly, it's obtuse.

That being said, historic CO2 sensitivity can be address

Of course it does. That's how it is modeled. Do you really think physicists would assume that there would be a preferred direction of radiation? Of course, a photon radiated upward from the upward levels of the atmosphere is more likely to escape into space rather than being reabsorbed (and possibly re-radiated downward) than a photon radiated upward from the lower layers of the atmosphere.

You didn't read the link did you? Here it is again:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/

The photons that escape into space don't have a memory of whether or not they started off in the lower atmosphere or upper atmosphere.

The prediction is a mathematical consequence of these falsifiable assumptions.

It isn't a prediction at all - it's a tautology. If you observe a lag, you assert it is because there wasn't any "added CO2" to trigger it. If you observe a lead, you assert it is because there was "added CO2" to trigger it. Nothing falsifies your prediction because you've got no proof that there was "added CO2" other than your assertion that it must have been based on your observations.

Put more simply, how would you observe a moment where there was "added CO2", but you still had a lag (in contradiction to the model). Or how would you observe a moment where there was no "added CO2", but you had a lead? You've built a model which no evidence can falsify -> essentially a completely useless prediction.

Moreover, the model predicts that if CO2 lags warming, then something else must have changed to initiate the warming, so this is a prediction that can be tested by looking for evidence that there is another source of warming.

That's the argument of "gaps" -> if you don't have evidence of another source of warming (or a fossil showing a transition between species), you automatically assume that man/god did it. That's simply not science, and I suspect that behind your knee-jerk defense of the church of global warming, you can probably admit this to yourself.

The source of the error was the failure to properly consider transfer of energy among layers in the atmosphere.

Your proposed model defies basic physics. When CO2 "re-radiates", it does so in all directions, not just down towards the earth. Here's a more thorough explanation:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/

Because there is a positive feedback between CO2 induced warming and release of CO2 from the oceans, it is necessarily the case that if they oceans are warmed by some factor other than CO2, then CO2 is increased after a delay

You're making an unfalsifiable assumption there. Any observation supports your theory without showing that it has made an accurate prediction. A tautology is useless insofar as it's predictive value (i.e., AGW is real if CO2 lags by 800 years, AGW is real if CO2 leads by 800 years, AGW is real no matter what the lag or lead of temp changes). You've ad hoc asserted causality without any way of testing your hypothesis.

Let's take exercise and obesity, for example -> you could assert people who exercise are not obese because they exercise. You could also assert people who are obese do not exercise because they are obese. Saying that both are true doesn't give us any insight as to the mechanisms of obesity, though - they are ad hoc rationalizations that give us no predictive value.

On the other hand, if you assert that people who eat carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels, which cause increased insulin levels, which, in insulin resistant people, causes fat cells to hold onto fat, you've got a falsifiable hypothesis. You can test carbohydrate intake, and prove causality rather than just correlation.

AGW's "CO2 can lag or lead depending on if it lags or leads" is not a prediction at all. The whole concept of "added CO2" is a red herring, since all CO2 is "added" from some source.

But if climate is really as unstable as a global MWP would indicate, then all bets are off, and perturbation of climate is far more dangerous than climate scientists currently believe.

The planet seems to have a temperature range that acts as a strange attractor,

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature continues warm: +0.50 deg. C for April, 2010, although it is 0.15 deg. C cooler than last month. The linear trend since 1979 is now +0.14 deg. C per decade. APRIL 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.50 deg. C

The MWP wasn't much when viewed in perspective of many cycles on different periods that sometime interfere constructively or destructively with each other; even today the warming that caused all of the concern is reversing. Heading into a cool period lasting for 30 years or so wouldn't surprise me, Ocean energy is down, no reason to get stupid on either side of the debate, the data just doesn't support a catastrophe right now.

No I'm saying he is a fat Lear Jet flying, McMansion owning (have you SEEN his fucking house? I've driven by it, you can power a couple of neighborhoods off what the fat bastard is blowing on AC alone) hypocrite who has the brass balls to pay HIMSELF "carbon credits" for blowing around in his Lear while he tells us to ride the fucking bus!

And if you actually buy into carbon credits? Then I'd really like to sell you some swamp land, almost gator free! Carbon credits will be so rife with abuse it will make credit default swaps look legit, the ones pushing for it like Rev Al (who to me is as big a self serving douchebag as Sharpton) and his buddies at Goldman Sachs are set to make billions by..well being a bunch of fucking worthless leeches, can't think of a nicer way to put it, and all the while it will do exactly jack and shit about carbon, because China will tell us where we can put our credits.

I look at it this way, if your spokesman is a total douche you've got trouble. I haven't seen ANYONE call out old Al for being a giant fucking hypocrite, or for having a major conflict of interest, instead they just let old Al hop up to the mike and not say a damned word. It reminds me of race relations, in that everyone knows racism is bad. Everyone knows treating people like shit because they are a different color, race, sexual orientation is wrong. But it doesn't matter how right that message is when old Rev. Al Sharpton gets his fat ass up to the mike and starts spreading his bullshit, because everyone thinks "Fucking douchebag!" and tunes out.

The same thing is happening here, with a bunch of self interested pricks hijacking the conversation and trying to steer it into their bank accounts. Until someone high up in AGW tells Al's ass to GTFO many are gonna say "douchebag" and tune out. And credit default swaps...err..I mean carbon credits, should be treated like the catholic indulgences scam that it is. To use the famous /. car analogy, It doesn't matter how important your message is if your messenger is as trustworthy as a used car salesman with a dodgy 74 Barracuda.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/11/a-note-from-richard-lindzen-on-statistically-significant-warming/ A good graph of the earths average mean temperature over the past 10 years with error associated and source.

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

The planet is warming due to natural changes. Some of this is due to greenhouse gasses, but much of it is also due to solar activity and geothermal activity. The problem is many of the environmental models don't even take other factors into account.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

This statement is flat out false. If it were true then man would have to make a significant contribution to greenhouse gasses. The number one greenhouse gas (95%) is water vapor which is 99.99% natural. CO2 comprises 3.62% of all greenhouse gasses of that 0.117 is man-made. The total percentage of man-made contributions to greenhouse gasses are a whopping 0.28%. Source: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

No they aren't, see above.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

This would only be true if warming occurred faster or larger than the Earth's climate can handle. Phil Jones, one of the authors of the IPCC report, admitted that non only was the Earth warmer during the Medieval Warming period but that Earth hasn't statistically warmed in 10 years. Sources: http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2010/02/climategate-expert-phil-jones-admits.html, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/phil-jones-momentous-qa-with-bbc-reopens-the-science-is-settled-issues/

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

This is fear-mongering with no facts to refute. Your turn, warmer.

It is thought that somehow formation fluids - oil /gas - got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed - the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment - the Blowout Preventers, or 'BOP's" as they're called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow - the flames. They were 200 - 300 ft high.

My take is that this sounds like a new failure mode that wouldn't be covered by current regulation either in the US or the European states. That's probably because the mode was discounted as being too unlikely. They (regulators and the drilling company) might not even know things could fail that way. All I know is that large blowouts like this are rare no matter where you are in the world. Throwing about accusations of "lax regulation" seems vastly premature when current regulation appeared adequate prior to this event.

Well, here's a start:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html

Of course, a lot of literature refuting the AGW hypothesis has been suppressed, either by implicit or explicit pressure, but I would suppose since ClimateGate we'll be seeing a more fertile field for skeptical publication.

That all being said, let's remember that "peer reviewed" does not mean "peer approved" or "peer consented to" or "peers think this is right" -> it just means that peers have decided it's worthy of publication.

You've also got the whole IPCC relying on non-peer reviewed literature (AmazonGate, GlacierGate, etc). If you want some serious answers on the link between the data they've destroyed or refused to release and claims made, I'd suggest trolling around at http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - they've got pretty savvy comments on a lot of the posts there.

I say this year we nominate Global Warming for the Nobel Peace Prize for providing a peaceful solution to this heated dispute between Bangladesh and India.

... not global warming:

Sarasota Herald - May 29, 1937... see page 4, top section. "Islands" have disappeared before.

The above link is from this page:

Bengal Island succumbs to global warming nonsense – AP gets nutty over the loss of a sandbar

• Why was there a heated dispute? Because the island was at the mouth of the river which forms the border between the two countries.
• When did this dispute start? When the island appeared in 1970 after a hurricane.
• What kind of island was it? Sand and silt. It's a sandbar. Or it was, until it was washed away.

This is a sandbar in an estuary. It first accumulated enough silt to poke above the surface back in 1974, and was never more than 2 meters high. In addition, the nearest tide gauge is showing +0.54 (+/- 0.52, heh) mm per year rise in sea level, meaning that it would have taken nearly 4000 years for the local change in sea level to have caused it to disappear.

If you insist on bringing up global warming, you have to blame the sandbar's emergence on global cooling during the 70s and notice that we are now back where we started. A much wiser choice would be to simply notice that rivers flush crap down stream, and ignore this "island" the way we ignore all the other sandbars and ephemera.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/bengal-island-succumbs-to-global-warming-nonsense-ap-gets-nutty-over-loss-of-a-sandbar/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Talpatti_Island

Move along, nothing to see here.

Actually, I don't think you did read them otherwise you would have seen that Menne used unchecked, unvalidated, partial data from Watts that Watts said not to use as the quality was suspect. And Watts wasn't even notified that his raw, unscrubbed data was being used for a paper by Menne. Yet you'll take Menne's conclusions and ignore the concerns of the man who actually collected the data and disclosed up front the issues and errors contained therein.

.
As far as the NOAA paper, this should be enlightening.

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As far as the NOAA paper, this should be enlightening.

I disagree. The basic physics is this:

• moisture + cold air = snow
• moisture + warm air = rain

Citing Anthony Watts:

You can bet he’d be making the same claim if we had a below normal snowfall records too.

Except that it was just the first error, and Pachuri (sp?) initially defended it, and used that number to get funding for his own projects... I hate to tell you, but when the head of the IPCC is pushing bad numbers for his own profit, it puts the whole process under suspicion. And when people keep digging and finding more issues, I'm not inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Granted, most errors so far relate to costs of Climate Change as opposed for evidence that it is occuring, but since that section is critical for justifying government policy it doesn't save the report.

The biggest failure yet discovered was the claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would all melt away by 2035.

Yes, I think it is very, very important to note that the biggest failure found in the IPCC paper was a single wrong number on page 493 of Volume 2.

Skeptics are taking minor errors and trying to blow them up to ridiculous proportion. That error about the Himalayan glaciers is trivial. There is a 45 page section on glacial melting in Volume 1 that is entirely correct and well-sourced, and nobody's paying attention to it. They'd rather focus on a single flawed number.

No report of that size is going to be perfect; there are going to be minor typos and flaws. So far only two legitimate errors have been found. (The other involves bad data on the Netherlands, which was provided by...wait for it...the government of the Netherlands.)

Maybe we can all agree that the IPCC report is 99.999% correct. Then we can get something done.

It would have been nice if the IPCC had simply relied on climate researchers. Yet, as Anthony Watts has found in examining the sources used in IPCC AR4, the IPCC has relied for multiple specific claims on such random, non-peer-reviewed sources as a mountain climbing magazine, and Greenpeace and WWF political papers.

The biggest failure yet discovered was the claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would all melt away by 2035. The source? A speculation from an interview by a climate scientist, quoted in news piece. The scientist interviewed stated that his comment was simple speculation, not peer reviewed, not based on new research or anything.

It would have been nice if the IPCC had simply relied on climate researchers. Yet, as Anthony Watts has found in examining the sources used in IPCC AR4, the IPCC has relied for multiple specific claims on such random, non-peer-reviewed sources as a mountain climbing magazine, and Greenpeace and WWF political papers.

The biggest failure yet discovered was the claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would all melt away by 2035. The source? A speculation from an interview by a climate scientist, quoted in news piece. The scientist interviewed stated that his comment was simple speculation, not peer reviewed, not based on new research or anything.

I read recently that the snow line (in the northern hemisphere) is moving south. It's a substantial claim. It's not undisputed.

Ok, I see what your gripe is. Yeh, by "plateau" I didn't mean tens of thousands of years of relatively flat temperatures. Just that we should be maxed out about now.

And what makes you it's "maxed out"? Just visually looking (you have to look at the raw numbers to get an exact amount), the trough to peak time for the previous cycles exceeds the current trough to current time. My TARDIS is broken. Is yours working?

It is not an assumption, rather what a truckload of research has been pointing to. But if you prefer let's say it's dark and it looks like it might be a gun, but you're not sure. The analogy is still fine.

I'm tired of people saying there's "a truckload of research". Cite references. You can't have an intelligent discussion without knowing what the basis of the opinion is. Back to your anaogy, I presume you are saying that CO2 is a gun. I know guns can easily kill. Show me a reference where it says were are going to release enough CO2 to be toxic. The dark example I agree is much better.

That's pretty much the same thing as saying the gun isn't loaded. Or that it might actually be pointed at your foot and not your head. Put that in if you like. The analogy still works.

If only works if you are trying to get me to react without thinking. Let's change your analogy to this: You are in a dark room and you have the gun, and you see something coming towards you. Do you shoot? Much harder to answer, isn't it?

However you are making a false dichotomy: solve the climate problem or help the poor. Any action we are able to take now on climate will help improve our options in the future should the dangerous effects of AGW prove to be true. And furthermore, significantly rising sea levels and changing weather will probably have a much greater adverse effect on the poor and disadvantaged than anyone else. So not doing anything to stop GW may also end up being equivalent to hurting the poor.

You have not examined the effect of the politics from the issue much, have you? We've already seen limiting of cheaper, combustion generators to push more limited solar ones (yes, it's renewable, the it doesn't work at night and is far more costly). If you want an egregious ( unrelated to AGW ) example (but same 'logic'), the EU obstructed US GM (genetically modified) corn to Somalia under famine conditions. If the EU cared that much, they should have just offered to grind it up into cornmeal. Another one would be the effect of banning DDT and malaria. Millions of lives were needlessly lost. The poor will be the ones who will mostly suffer.

So you're advocating ignoring a known threat just because there might be other unknown threats? That just seems silly.

No. I'm saying (for example) if soot is what is causing a bulk of the glacial melting you are worried about, you should concentrate on soot.

I totally agree with you there. You'll note that I made no suggestions about what policy actions to take. I merely said we need to take the threat seriously. But I believe there is much we can do without sending global economies to the brink of disaster. As the science evolves we must be prepared to react. But doing nothing now is a poor choice. We at least need to invest heavily in green energy, so that we'll have something reliable we can switch to.

The sane non-AGW sites say exactly that. You don't need AGW to argue that it's a bad thing to send B$s to unstable parts of the world. You don't need cap-and-trade to push economical light technology or better insulation. AGW is just a distraction.

Oh, ok, you mean ignoring feedbacks. Yeh, 1 deg C

Clearly the more scientists who agree on something, the less true it is!

You mean like the consensus that plate tectonics and continental drift was "Utter, damned rot!" etc?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/are-scientists-always-smart/

My favorite is this.

H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?

The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D.

So the only two ways that the climate can possibly be effected is by solar or volcanic forcing. If it isn't one of those two then the only possible answer is then man made CO2. There are absolutely no other factors that effect climate period. And they expect us to take this seriously?

Mean while another 1/3 of the GHCN stations just get dropped. We are supposed to trust these temperature analysis when you can just add and remove a third of the weather stations at whim? Come on mod me down some more for trolling.

Link

Watts, oh yes he's outthere, how can you trust a GW denier that runs a headline like UAH global temperature posts warmest January, January 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update +0.72 Deg. C?

Try again. That wasn't the only error.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023598/after-climategate-pachaurigate-and-glaciergate-amazongate/

They make a major claim about the affect of climate change on the Amazon. The problem is the original study was done by an advocacy group (WWF), wasn't peer reviewed, and wasn't even on the subject of global warming! It was a study on wildfires.

And keep going in that vein...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-scandal-deepens-ipcc-ar4-riddled-with-non-peer-reviewed-wwf-papers/

These reports are NOT peer reviewed science and DO NOT belong in the IPCC report, which claims to be properly peer reviewed.

The IPCC fucked up big.

The chamber of Lords has been busy proving themselves useful, lately, be it with the climategate, for instance.

It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.

I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.
Note that, on the other hand, the US of A are close to the end of democracy. Unless Obama(hahahahaha) finally proves himself useful and just kicks the lobbies down to Hell where they belong.

As I thought. You're not reading sources at all. You're simply hiding from reality.You're the real denier

The lead author of the chapter on Asia, Dr Murari Lal, has admitted that the story about Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 was known by him to be false when it was made but it was deliberately left in to put pressure on politicians.

Dr Syed Hasnain, the man who made the original claim about glaciers, now works for Rajendra Pachauri and applied for grants from the EU to study the problem he knew fine well did not exist.

Conflict of interest? Scandalous misappropriation of funds?

Naah. It's just a typo. A storm in a teacup.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

If you're going to reference another post, you ought to at least link to it.

And while you're linking, you might as well post a link to some of the guy's conflicts of interest. He also shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

The problem is, the deniers believe that even one error in a summary report means that the science is wrong, while the scientists are all aware that, yes, it's a bitch, but indeed, sometimes typos creep through.

The problem is that gullible idiots like you make unwarranted assumptions about the quality of the scientific evidence based on no more than faith. And every piece of evidence to the contrary is summarily ignored.

The problem isn't with the "deniers" who are pointing all of these problems out. The "deniers" don't deny climate change or even global warming. They just deny the right of censorious assholes like you to claim that climate change is a) unprecedented and b) caused by man-made fossil fuels without actual engineering-quality reports showing either of these things to be true or even likely. They aren't the ones in denial - it's you.

The smell from underneath the IPCC bandages is pretty bad. The proxy reconstructions of past climate have been shown to be heavily cherry-picked and badly done statistics, the measurement of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA appears been heavily manipulated to show warming, as has the temperature records from the Climate Research Unit relied upon for the calibration of climate models - and is the subject of several independent investigations for possible scientific fraud in the US and the UK.

But you'll ignore it all because it comes from "deniers" and you'll invoke preposterous conspiracy theories involving fossil fuel companies while ignoring the cosying up of nearly entire fossil fuel industry with the alarmists.You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of the scientist who made the original bad claim on Himalayan Glaciers claiming millions from the European Union to investigate the problem that he knows doesn't exist. You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of Rajendra Pachauri and his willingness to fill his pockets with cash all the while exhorting everyone else to embrace the New Poverty of enforced energy rationing to Save the Earth from Global Warming that no-one knows is even happening to any great extent nor even a serious problem that can be "fixed".

Those aren't typos. The entire climate science story is falling apart as scientists investigate clear evidence of fraud, conscious manipulation of evidence in order to deceive and junk science.

The "deniers" are not the problem - its the neo-creationists like you who keep waving away that "there's nothing to be seen here - move along" while the Global Warming Hysteria explodes behind you.

And yes, I'm a liberal. A very angry liberal.

From this article (by a unabashed pro-global warming person), the estimate is 3 feet by 2100.

But the same theory says that the Maldives has been sinking, when it's not.

Personally I think China in it's present form is toast, first the Himalayan glaciers are receding precipitously due to Black soot particulates,which will devastate the Asian watershed, we're heading into 30 years of mini-ice age, Beijing was hit by its heaviest snowfall in 60 years so Asian agriculture may be in for quite a hard time. Cold, thirsty and hungry people get mean, and some kind of massive change is coming as far as China, the magic eight ball says "it's a good time to get the hell out of Dodge".