Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

blau tips news of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, decrying the "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." The letter lays out the basics of the scientific method, and explains how certainly highly-regarded theories — such as the big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin — are commonly accepted due to the strength of the evidence supporting them, though "fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them." According to the Guardian, the letter "originated with a number of NAS members who were frustrated at the misinformation being spread by climate deniers and the assaults on scientists by some policy-makers who hope to delay or avoid making policy decisions and are hiding behind the recent controversy around emails and minor errors in the IPCC."

Comments

always the loudest wins.

[Jurily]

In science vs media,

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Xaedalus]

Damn....

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

psst, mods, just because a post is really long and deals with wide concepts doesn't make it insightful. Especially when nothing is cited, and half of it is just bullshit.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[eln]

That's a little outdated. In today's world everyone is equally loud, and the media has no apparent interest in looking for who is the most factually correct so they'll assume anyone willing to talk to them is credible. Therefore, you have both sides presented as being equally correct and both sides being given plenty of opportunity to state their claims, even when one of them is clearly, objectively, nuts or at least does not have the facts on their side. So, instead of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, all of the wheels are squeaky.

In this environment, the one who wins is the one who can keep talking the longest. Nobody pays any attention to anyone else's arguments, and no one is even remotely interested in seeing anyone else's perspective, and thus nobody's mind is ever changed. All we get is two sides shouting past each other continuously until one side gets tired of the whole thing and gives up, or at least turns down their own volume. Whoever is left standing, regardless of whether their position is correct, or even makes sense, is the "winner".

So, while the one who can talk the loudest at the end is the one who wins, that one is only the loudest because everyone else has given up and stopped shouting. If both sides feel strongly enough about the issue, they'll both keep shouting forever, and nobody wins. Those issues become wedge issues, and elections often turn on them even though neither side ever has any intention of actually doing anything about them (guns, abortion, etc.)

Re:always the loudest wins.

[DrLang21]

M-theory supposedly solves the problem of what was before the big bang.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"and thus nobody's mind is ever changed."

Fortunately that is not true over the long run, having argued the case for AGW on slashdot for the last decade I can say that the slashdot consensus on AGW has done a complete 180 degree turn around in that time. Ten years ago I was definitely in the minority and was constantly modded down for debunking basic stuff such as the "volcanos release more CO2 than mankind" myth. Sure there's still a minority who for political or religious reasons will never accept that mankind can warm the globe but the rest of us (including me) are now much better informed for having had the amature scientific debate.

The public argument about the science of AGW is very similar to the public argument over smoking causing cancer. The strength of the FF lobby and their pet politicians is orders of magnitude greater than the strength of the tabacoo lobby in it's hayday. Scientists have not failed to communicate the science of AGW but they have not yet been successfull in battling the anti-science forces who know full well they are engaging in propoganda and witch hunts in an effort to keep the public in confused darkness. However you are right, it does not reflect well on society that there is still a vast army of usefull idiots who accept and parrot the anti-science position without question.

But all is not lost, unlike propoganda and politics, science is objective and always wins in the long run. Evolution, plate techtonics, and AGW, are "scientific facts" where people can see the evidence for themselves. Gun laws, abortion rights, and what to do about AGW, are subjective and those are the wedge arguments that, fueled by the blind faith of politics and religion, will rage forever.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[MightyMartian]

As someone who spent a decade battling Creationists on talk.origins, I can tell you right now that the pseudo-skeptics pretty much ape the anti-evolutionist pseudo-skeptics to the letter. It's like they lifted the Panda's Thumb tactics and applied it to climatology.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

The problem with "AGW" is that it is bad science and mostly public relations, not necessarily actual science. I can name numerous sorts of problems with those who are pro-AGW just as those who are blatant deniers are equally out to lunch.

A great part of the problem is that head smacking obvious issues like what caused the medieval global warming (hint, it had almost nothing to do with human impact on the environment) and the subsequent cold period that sort of peaked some time around the period of the American Revolution in the late 18th Century are certainly not satisfactorily explained with the current climatological models, and how anybody can measure the temperature of the whole of the Earth down to a fraction of a degree is something that I think is equally bogus.

I'm not one to suggest that we need to completely ignore the effects of human civilization upon the global climate or even on a regional basis, but some balance does need to get back into the debate.

Where the real problem comes in is not just the deniers who want to pop off a bunch of oil wells similar to what Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War and deliberately try to pollute the Earth and cause as much CO2 production as possible to prove that the AGW hypothesis is incorrect, but those who are of the opposite extreme and essentially wish to kill off the whole of human civilization and go even so far as advocating mass genocide as obviously mankind is a virus that needs to be exterminated.

It is precisely the politics that has invaded science, as evidenced by this letter too, that is causing many of the problems. Those sitting on committees who are funding this kind of science are seemingly systematically killing off even modest questioning of basic concepts, and worse still is the suggestion that one and only one form of activity is solely responsible for any warming that the Earth may have had over the past couple of decades.

These who would be honest scientists ought to decry and distance themselves from activists who do really bizarre things like claiming extreme blizzards and heat waves are "evidence" of global warming, as are floods and droughts. Heck, any time there is any sort of weather of any kind and there is some story that says "Oh.... that was caused by global warming". Even ordinary temperate and fair weather is attributed to global warming.... thus making a farce of the whole notion in the first place.

Can reasonable steps be done to reduce pollution in the environment in all its varied forms, and ought we be reasonable stewards over those things we are responsible for? Absolutely! At the same time, massive economic overhaul that causes mayham to almost everything we hold dear and turns folks like Al Gore into billionaires is not necessarily something I wish to advocate either, and certainly would be willing to call those who support crazy ideas like carbon tax credits without following the money and realizing what harm such a policy and concept causes is also just as silly.

I, for one, am very concerned about carbon sequestration and the potential long-term pollution problems that sort of technical solution might cause, and even go so far as to argue that some of the methods of sequestration might end up causing more problems than simply letting it pipe out into the atmosphere. It is one thing to run the exhaust of a coal plant through a greenhouse to promote biomass production. It is another to shove the CO2 into the ground and pretend that it has no long-term impact if that is done for a century or two. I really worry about CO2 dumping into oceans and what sorts of long-term impacts that may have on the aquatic ecosystems.... yet those are schemes that are going to be given a carbon tax credit as it won't be going into the air. Yeah, put off the problems for a couple millenia when we are going to be compost ourselves. That sounds like a good idea, I suppose.

This isn't a cut and dried issue, and there is some horrible science being done, and others claimin

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

Yep the creationists and the anti-AGW's have recently joined forces at the heartland institute. I notice that my post is modded 50% flamebait, 50% underrated, if past results are anything to go by I think it will improve by the time the story reaches the bottom of the page. With a few more underrated's I could get the coverted +5 flamebait. :)

Re:always the loudest wins.

[tbannist]

That's not surprising, it certainly seems like a lot of anti-evolutionists are also in the anti-AGW battle. I suppose there's a couple of reasons for that. For one AGW questions the literal truth of the Bible, because if AGW is true, then maybe God didn't really give the world to Christians to do with as they wish. The other big reason is that anti-evolutionists have a tendency to be anti-science, thus it is natural for them to take up any side which questions the credibility of scientists and scientific consensus. Evolution is just the wedge issue that they're hammering away at to try and break science.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[jhol13]

You are effectively denying all science by grouping AGW sceptics with "useful idiots".

There is one huge problem with AGW: we cannot measure it. So how can you claim it is a scientific fact? If Earth is warming we certainly should be able to measure it, right? Why cannot we?

See, last decade "warming" could be, according to statistics, due to just random fluctuations. This is a mathematical fact and there is no way to deny it. Yet you never hear that fact, you only hear "last decade was warmest ever measured". Why should I trust AGW proponents when they do bad math while knowing it is bad math? Similarly for purposefully claiming Himalayas will dry off in 30 years while knowing it is 100% bogus. What else have they done, cherry picked "scientific" papers perhaps? Who know as they will not tell.

Then there is another, even bigger, problem in the news. Everything "could be caused by global warming", everything, even the Icelandic volcano eruption! But no matter what happens (last winter was exceptionally cold in many, many places) it does not show anything, it is "just weather". This, although true, does not make good science and is very sickening.

I do not claim CO2 emissions are not bad, I do not claim we are not raping the Earth in many ways, I am not even claiming AGW is not true. All I am saying: stick to the science, please, don't deny it.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"A great part of the problem is that head smacking obvious issues like what caused the medieval global warming"

Nobody knows what caused the anomally known as the MWP but the fact that it was regional rules out the sun and other global phenomena. Whatever it was, it does not imply that CO2 is not causing the current warming. I'm sorry I only skimmed the the rest of your rant but that initial logical fallacy was enough to inform me that you are ill equiped to constructively critisize climate scientists.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

** with one big exception : how is it, unless earth is really, really special, that the earth appears exactly in the middle of the universe ? The current theory is that the universe is bigger than the big bang theory would make possible : that there is no "edge" of the universe at 14.6 billion lightyears, but it simply continues. We measure the earth in the exact center, because all our instruments can only "scan" at lightspeed, and thus they all dropoff at the exact same point : the edge of our light-cone in the universe, which gives us the idea that the universe is a sphere with the earth in the exact center.

Sheesh, you really shouldn't comment on this stuff if you don't understand it!

This is a bit like saying your car appears to be in the "center of the world" because an equal amount of terrain is approaching from the front, as is leaving from the rear...nothing to do with the world, everything to do with your perception.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[tgibbs]

A great part of the problem is that head smacking obvious issues like what caused the medieval global warming

The existence of a medieval global warming period seems to be an article of faith among opponents of global warming, even though the evidence that it was global rather than regional is much weaker (PDF) than the evidence for modern global warming. The oddest thing is that they seem think that the possible existence of some additional mechanism that is not understood whereby the earth could warm more than is expected from current global climate models models should make people less concerned about the possible consequences of modern global warming. If the medieval warm period was indeed global, it would argue that there is some additional mechanism that could add to or amplify the modern CO2 induced warming so as to cause global temperatures to shoot up even higher than projected.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Xonstantine]

You know, the AGW pundits like to point to some dark, sinister conspiracy of evil industrialists conspiring to suppress all the great research being done by climatologists. But strangely enough, you look at the industries that actually fund people like the CRU, and you end up finding companies like Exxon-Mobile and British Petroleum. You know, "Big Oil"...the same folks that you would think would be bankrolling people like Steve McIntyre...but don't. It's funny you guys talk about your opponents in engaging in witch hunts and propaganda...when that is exactly what you do to skeptics.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Geotopia]

Damn rights!

Seriously, AGW is a scam and if these 255 NAS members really resorted to calling those that dissent as "McCarthiests" and "Climate Deniers", they're not helping their cause, but showing themselves as naked hypocrites and fear mongerers.

Fact is, you don't need a degree in rocket science to see that AGW doesn't congeal either in scale of numbers, or economics, nor in accepted scientific laws. In the realm of numerical scale, one volcano (take for example Krakatoa off Java, circa 1800) can do more "damage" to the environment than the concurrent century of human industry. In the area of economics, politically neutral studies show that totally eliminating the combustion engine might curtail less than a degree of increase in temperature in 50 years, so we have to question if our efforts that have catastrophic effects on human productivity and survival can even slightly curtail the natural forces. Finally, and most importantly (with respect to the scientific method), the issue of AGW is truly such a wedge issue with no middle ground, so highly politicized by both camps (but most recently, these 255 demagogues who rather than debate science are reverting to pejoratives), that critical thinking has flown out the window.

For example, we have nothing but computer models to support the assumption that so-called "green house" gases contribute to warming. A junior high science student can tell you that a real green house works not because of the flavor of the glass enclosure, but because of the color of the plants and the way they change the wavelength of inbound light. Sure, the glass captures the heat, but not until it was reflected at a different wavelength and energy level than it penetrated. We're all fussing about carbon dioxide, a vital and natural component of the atmosphere, when it's the reflective quality of Earth's various surfaces that contributes more to any warming effect. If you want to capture the heat (say to divert it), paint everything black, to reflect, put a mirrored finish on everything. But 75% of the Earth (the oceans) is already semi-reflective and the remainder brown or green. I'd rather our environment warm a degree or two than deal with the chemical side effects of painting everything.

But the Global Warming detractors (the "climate deniers") are equally entrenched. The same eighth grader could tell you that the first law of thermodynamics is fully applicable. The Earth has to be warming on a global scale. The sun beats on the earth 24/7/365 and the only reduction to the temperature of the Earth's system is what is reflected back into space as UV and visible light, but that can only be in a less-than equal ratio to that which the Earth receives from the sun, so the net increase is always positive on the system over time. So where does the heat go? Natural conduits such as the oceans drive it into the core, which acts as a heat sink. One day, it will have absorbed so much that the surface is no longer inhabitable, but there's no amount of conservation or abuse that man can affect that will change that inevitability, so chill and learn to live life without worrying about that over which you have no influence.

But the monopoly for idiocy rests with the electric vehicle proponents. These nimby folk need to wise up and educate themselves on how power gets on the grid. Somewhere they pick up a short slogan, start chanting it, and it carries them away in a frenzied euphoria. Fact, 1 mile of electrical transmission has 30% loss (don't believe me, take a 3 foot fluorescent tube under a power line at night and watch it glow). Batteries charge with approximately a 50% loss (don't believe me, feel the heat coming off a battery and the charger circuitry during charging). So a charging station 2 miles down line from the generation source captures less than 25% of the energy input (.7 x .7 x .5), and that's just on charging. A good battery might retain 90% charge over a week, so by the end of the week, you're at around 22%. Back to

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Stephan Schulz]

how is it, unless earth is really, really special, that the earth appears exactly in the middle of the universe

Sorry, but if you want to bluff your way into a scientific discussion, you should not spout such nonsense.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[advocate_one]

Fortunately that is not true over the long run, having argued the case for AGW on slashdot for the last decade I can say that the slashdot consensus on AGW has done a complete 180 degree turn around in that time.

There's only one reason for that... slashdot has become flooded with young ones who've been brainwashed by the education system to believe in AGW...

I might believe in AGW if, and only if they provide incontrovertible real evidence that it is happening, and not heavily selected and massaged data sets which mysteriously have been lost... and also heavily fudged "models" which given any data, always provide a "warming" output.

their "peer review" process also leaves a lot to be desired... as someone earlier (or maybe later in this topic) said... it was friend review for those articles which were pro warming, and fiend review (if at all) of anything which was against warming... They went to a lot of trouble to deny anti-warming reports from being peer reviewed in the first place... forcing the anti-warming reports to remain in the fringe where they could be laughed at as crackpot science...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[drsmithy]

Where the real problem comes in is not just the deniers who want to pop off a bunch of oil wells similar to what Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War and deliberately try to pollute the Earth and cause as much CO2 production as possible to prove that the AGW hypothesis is incorrect, but those who are of the opposite extreme and essentially wish to kill off the whole of human civilization and go even so far as advocating mass genocide as obviously mankind is a virus that needs to be exterminated.

Can you cite any remotely mainstream opinions "advocating mass genocide" ?

I, for one, am very concerned about carbon sequestration [...]

I'm kind of curious why you're concerned about "sequestering" carbon, but apparently not so concerned about dumping it out into the atmosphere.

Again, because of the politics in climate research, those who are doing the bad science are also getting away with it.

How are they "getting away with it" ?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Troed]

IF the MWP (and the other warm periods that we can see in ice core data) was global then that pretty much falsifies the current climate models. Thus, there's no "added" problem you describe we should be afraid of.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what I said in the first place. I also explained the problem with that explanation : unfortunately it assumes that there is more terrain in front of you to move into view and more terrain behind you (that has moved out of the view).

And if that terrain does indeed exist, how did it get there ? Because "there" is 14.6 billion lightyears. The only way to get there would be to have an average velocity, lasting billions of years, larger than the speed of light.

So your "brilliant solution" comes down to a statement that relativity theory is not just wrong, but very wrong indeed : huge objects, entire galaxies, can move faster than light ... and most scientists are not prepared to go that far.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same eighth grader could tell you that the first law of thermodynamics is fully applicable. The Earth has to be warming on a global scale. The sun beats on the earth 24/7/365 and the only reduction to the temperature of the Earth's system is what is reflected back into space as UV and visible light, but that can only be in a less-than equal ratio to that

This is another trivially true matter, which has an important caveat. First law of thermodynamics :

The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system minus the amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings.

Other than the stupid little fact that long term reflection measurements are ... nonexistent. Short term reflection measurements are scarce (and do not include a great many weather fenomena, nor are they anywhere near global measurements). So we don't know that. We could say that simple, initial measurements seem to indicate as much.

Furthermore this is about the total energy of the system. In case this needs to be said, the earth is distinctly not at thermal equilibrium, and the average "internal energy of the system" is about 6200 degrees kelvin. Whoops. Clearly something is going that doesn't compute as easily as this argument.

The earth is VERY far from thermal equilibrium (the fact that humans exist is a testament to that), and so there is no law that states what happens if the total internal temperature rises. It could not affect the surface at all. A temperature drop could easily burn the surface to a crisp (since there is more than enough energy available in the system to do that).

So yes, the total internal energy changes, BUT :
1) we only have a VERY limited view about how it changes
2) clearly the total internal energy does not, at present, have all that much to do with surface and athmospheric temperatures. And incidentally, pray to God that that never changes, because temperature would rise a lot. Ice ages (certainly what Europeans, Americans and Asians would call an ice age) have happened with average temperature at 17 degrees celcius and multiple regions the size of north america had a tropical climate during a period where that total dropped to 11 (and there was no ice age anywhere).
3) the fact that the earth remained between 10 and 25 degrees celcius for 2.8 billion years probably means that big changes are utterly impossible. During that time, the athmosphere has been over 50% co2. The athmosphere has been VERY rich in methane and water vapor, and it did ... not ... raise the temperature all that much. Clearly some very strong effect(s) are preventing the surface temperature from exiting that range. What humans do to the athmosphere is not actually without precedent, and did not kill all life on earth, nor did it kill all humans (by contrast a transformation of a relatively small region from tropical savannah to desert very nearly killed all humans. It had nothing to do with global temperatures).

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Carewolf]

IF the MWP (and the other warm periods that we can see in ice core data) was global then that pretty much falsifies the current climate models. Thus, there's no "added" problem you describe we should be afraid of.

No, not really. Climate scientist are not unaware of earlier temperature changes, it is that data that the climate models are based on, you know those models that predict what happens when you add additional CO2 to the athmosphere. Why are you even going into so long posts, when you don't understand or know anything about the subject? I you want to know something about global warming, then read on the subject matter, and stop guessing randomly, or parroting deliberate misinformation.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever it was, it does not imply that CO2 is not causing the current warming.

Since AGW is a non-obvious, significant statement - onus of proof is on the proponents of AGW rather than the doubters. Hence, a doubt need not "imply that CO2 is not causing the current warming" to be a valid doubt. Other factors need to be considered.

I'm sorry I only skimmed the the rest of your rant but that initial logical fallacy was enough to inform me that you are ill equiped to constructively critisize climate scientists.

But you fail at basic logic. Read up on burden of proof, especially as applicable to logical philosophy. Not to mention, you badly need a spelling course.

Posting as AC because I moderated here.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

Define "mainstream opinions" as a term and perhaps I can respond here. I'll admit that there are idiots and quacks from multiple extremes on this topic, but I will point out clearly that there have been "activists" and other sorts of folks who have been proponents of AGW that have indeed advocated the mass genocide of the human species. This is more a continuum of opinion ranging from merely zero population growth advocates to something resembling the eugenics movement of the 1930's, but they do use the viewpoint that mankind shouldn't be on this planet in one form or another.

BTW, in regards to carbon sequestration, my concern isn't that dumping it into the atmosphere is necessarily a good thing, but rather that the science behind what the long term consequences of putting it elsewhere hasn't really been done, and that it really doesn't deal with the issues involved with treating carbon in the form of CO2 as a pollutant. Burying the carbon underground in the form of a gas isn't necessarily going to help the global environment in the long run, and I am suggesting it may even backfire when you measure on time scales of thousands of years instead of mere decades.

It just seems as though similar kinds of projects in the past to "deal with" pollution have resulted in long term problems that eventually had to be addressed. All I'm suggesting here is that pressing the panic button and demanding that a power plant put into place some sort of sequestration technique without knowing the long term consequences of such an action isn't really helping anybody out. There is also no proof that such a sequestration is necessarily less harmful than simply leaving that CO2 in the atmosphere, where larger scale global processes might just work to "scrub" that CO2 and turn it into plant matter or something else more useful.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Troed]

Why do you claim that climate models accurately can emulate historic climate when they cannot?

(That's what the whole debate on whether the MWP was global or not centers around - thus my comment)

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

Historical records exist of agriculture practices in several areas of Europe for crops that simply won't grow in those areas because it is too cold to grow them there now. Things like widespread vineyards in England and the growing seasons in Greenland with its rather substantial population based on medieval European farming practices.

Yes, I'll admit that may have been caused from an unusually strong Gulf Stream or some other mechanism, but it was a rather sustained and prolonged warming period that impacted climates and not just a few storms. You have got to identify the source of that heat in some way and put it into the model, and I'd even argue so far as that the burden of proof rests with those who claim it was merely a local phenomena.

Furthermore, it seems to suggest that the Earth can warm up several degrees and actually be beneficial for mankind in terms of increased growing seasons for many areas and increased food production in general. It sort of begs the question.... what are we worried about even if the global environment is warming up?

Again, I'm not necessarily saying we need to go out of our way to deliberately cause pollution, but more science clearly is needed, and not some sort of bible bashing on the concepts.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Eunuchswear]

Which is what I said in the first place. I also explained the problem with that explanation : unfortunately it assumes that there is more terrain in front of you to move into view and more terrain behind you (that has moved out of the view).

Not to hot on that whole "geometry" thing are you.

Hint: On a spherical planet the terrain in front of you is the same as the terrain behind you. You can keep rolling forever.

In a closed universe the same applies. Doesn't matter how far you go, you've still got the same amount of space in front of you as you have behind you.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Eunuchswear]

There is one huge problem with AGW: we cannot measure it. So how can you claim it is a scientific fact? If Earth is warming we certainly should be able to measure it, right? Why cannot we?

Yes we can.

See, last decade "warming" could be, according to statistics, due to just random fluctuations.

You mean:

Question: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Dr. Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

I.E. if you cherry-pick the data to include only the years 1995 to 2009 you can't be 95% sure that the warming is a trend. Of course if you include the years before 1995 you can be 95% sure.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[medcalf]

On what evidence do you base the claim that the MWP was regional? China also reported conditions consistent with higher than normal temperatures, and my understanding is that the proxies show evidence of the MWP in central Asia and in southern Africa as well.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Geotopia]

1 mile of electrical transmission has 30% loss

Doh! I had a bad source for the loss in electrical transmissions (should have been for 10 miles, not 1 mile, though who wants to live a mile from a power plant, not me), so it would be 20 miles from the power plant that the charging station runs at only 49% efficiency.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[durrr]

They get away with it because of the extreme polarisation of opinions. If i write up an article detailing how the atmosphere will balloon and aerobreak the moon down on our heads because of man made CO2 sources then i'll get immideate support from the CO2=Bad crowd, atleast from the journalist and non-scientist segment of the crowd even though the science behind the argument is fraudulent. That it have turned into a political alignment instead of science is my main problem with it.
My secondary problem is the hubris of the climate modellers, predicting there will be rain in 12 hours or snow this winter is at best guesstimations, yet people tout their multi decade global predictions as for sure to be really accurate and a reason to ACT NOW because in twenty years it will be too late, never mind waiting five years to see if the model have any accuracy. And if we do wait five years we'll have the new and shiny and untested climate model 5.0 which more accurately reflected the last five years as an indicator of increased accuracy yet still is untested for predicting real future.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TheStatsMan]

It sounds like you know that AGW is real, but because people you don't like are putting the idea forth you're fighting it. Just relax, it only hurts the first time. You can always find some yahoo that has extreme(wrong) views, don't couch an entire group of people in with the yahoos just because it's easy.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Strawman much?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[tgibbs]

The inhospitality of England to vineyards has been greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, the existence of a regional warm period in northern Europe is not really in dispute (PDF)

Furthermore, it seems to suggest that the Earth can warm up several degrees and actually be beneficial for mankind in terms of increased growing seasons for many areas and increased food production in general. It sort of begs the question.... what are we worried about even if the global environment is warming up?

It is certainly possible that some northerly areas might benefit from longer growing seasons. On the other hand, the temperate areas that currently enjoy a near optimal climate, and that produce much of the world's food would be expected to suffer. So a country like Greenland might benefit, while the US would probably lose big. Since agriculture cannot shift from one region to another that rapidly, countries that currentl import large quantities of foods like grain may experience massive starvation.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean science vs US media. You might also include Saudi Arabia media, but other than that, the rest of the world pretty much accepted the evidence of climate change.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Mr. Slippery]

For example, we have nothing but computer models to support the assumption that so-called "green house" gases contribute to warming..... A junior high science student can tell you that a real green house works not because of the flavor of the glass enclosure, but because of the color of the plants and the way they change the wavelength of inbound light....The sun beats on the earth 24/7/365 and the only reduction to the temperature of the Earth's system is what is reflected back into space as UV and visible light, but that can only be in a less-than equal ratio to that which the Earth receives from the sun, so the net increase is always positive on the system over time. So where does the heat go? Natural conduits such as the oceans drive it into the core, which acts as a heat sink.

The problem is, I'm not sure if you're a complete idiot or being sarcastic. Because there are a great number of people out there who do actually believe shit this stupid.

(Just in case: Earth would be freezing without the greenhouse effect, also it's what makes Venus so hot; your car, which most likely contains no plants; and once an object reaches thermal equilibrium it radiates the same amount of energy out that it received from the sun (in different wavelengths, not via "reflection"), we're just changing the Earth's equilibrium temperature.)

Back in the days of USENET, we used to throw around this bit of wisdom: "It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file." (Attributed to Bertil Jonell.) The problem is that now, some proponents of such nutty theories -- like the idea that anthropogenic climate change is some sort of scam -- are in positions of actual authority.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since AGW is a non-obvious

Sorry, but what the fuck are you smoking?!?!

CO2 is a "greenhouse gas". It traps solar energy - this is basic physics.

Human beings are producing massive amounts of CO2 - this is provable by looking at the isotopes of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Therefore AGW is fucking blatantly obvious you denialist fucktard.

For fucks sake, how about you learn a little bit about science before you try to deny things that are obvious?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! A paper by Michael Mann... yeah like I'm going to read any of his bullshit. He writes papers nearly as well as he forges graphs

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Mr. Slippery]

Historical records exist of agriculture practices in several areas of Europe

This may be a shock to you, but Europe is not the world.

I'd even argue so far as that the burden of proof rests with those who claim it was merely a local phenomena.

Nonsense. "It's 75 degrees here in Baltimore. The burden of proof is on those who claim that it's not 75 degrees all across the planet right now!"

Furthermore, it seems to suggest that the Earth can warm up several degrees and actually be beneficial for mankind in terms of increased growing seasons for many areas and increased food production in general.

Again: Europe is not the world. A few degrees warmer might well be pleasant for England -- but deadly for India.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Mr. Slippery]

there have been "activists" and other sorts of folks who have been proponents of AGW that have indeed advocated the mass genocide of the human species. This is more a continuum of opinion ranging from merely zero population growth advocates

Wait wait wait. ZPG advocates are calling for "the mass genocide of the human species"???

You, sir, must either immediately retract that statement, or let it be know that you are a complete fucking idiot who has disqualified himself from any political, scientific, or philosophic discussion.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

You, sir, must either immediately retract that statement, or let it be know that you are a complete fucking idiot who has disqualified himself from any political, scientific, or philosophic discussion.

I think your own reply speaks for itself and deserves only a reply that you have buried yourself in your own argument.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

You know, that is part of it. I don't like the people or the political actions that those who support it are putting forth.

It is mostly the degree of AGW and not necessarily that it doesn't exist. The die hard supporters want to dismiss all other factors in climate change, as if the man-made component is the only factor at all. Yes, that is perhaps the one component we as a civilization can control most easily, but even then there are limits to what we can do.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Teancum]

It is certainly possible that some northerly areas might benefit from longer growing seasons. On the other hand, the temperate areas that currently enjoy a near optimal climate, and that produce much of the world's food would be expected to suffer. So a country like Greenland might benefit, while the US would probably lose big. Since agriculture cannot shift from one region to another that rapidly, countries that currentl import large quantities of foods like grain may experience massive starvation.

I completely disagree with you on this sentiment, and note that some of the most productive agricultural areas on the planet can be near the equator, and certainly in tropical and semi-tropical areas. Yes, diets might have to change as well as farming practices as climates shift in one way or another, but in terms of calories per acre produced in a year and other similar kinds of factors of food production, there is no reasonable way to suggest even in tropical areas or for that matter even in the USA that a general warming trend would be bad for food production.

So what if the corn belt shifts to Montana/North Dakota/Minnesota/Canadian Prairie Provinces? That would put citrus farming into Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama instead. Heck, for the USA and Canada, a slight warming might even result in an increase in grain production.I really don't see where the down side of this is at, even for a country like the USA. Some farmers would certainly be stupid and go bankrupt if they kept farming as their great-grandfathers had done earlier, but that just implies that they need to adapt like the rest of us to a changing environment. That is what a brain can be used for.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring your uncivilized language for a while -

If AGW is so obvious, why are scientists wasting millions of dollars in accumulating evidence, running computer models, ascertaining the details of the physics involved etc.?

I sincerely think you are trolling, but just giving you the benefit of a slight doubt.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Rockoon]

Indeed.

The downplay of the MWP and LIA began with Jones and his hockey stick, and was then ratified into the IPCC group-think when that hockey stick came under attack. His original graph showed almost no MWP or LIA, and as such put the IPCC in a catch-22. They had been publishing graphs with pronounced MWP and LIA for years.. and how could it possibly be that this one graph without was better than the dozens with?

So downplay they did. "Just regional" became the response to anyone who questioned the usefulness of hockey sticks that didnt show the periods.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"On what evidence do you base the claim that the MWP was regional?"

Although there is no generally accepted definition of the MWP in the litrature the IPCC glossary defines the MWP as - "An interval between AD 1000 and 1300 in which some Northern Hemisphere regions were warmer than during the Little Ice Age that followed."

For a much more detailed answer to your question Section 4.2 of a Jones/Mann paper published in Geophysical review gives a well referenced rundown as to why the MWP and LIA are no longer considered global anomolies. The six graphs in fig 4 (unfortunately split in half by a block of text) gives a nice visual representation of the available proxy records for various regions. Section 4.2 also sheds a bit of light as to why Jones expressed his contempt for the Soon and Baliunas paper in the climategate emails.

I don't expect you to wade through the whole paper, nor do I claim the expertise to verify it all myself but IMHO it is an excellent litratrature review that highlights the various pros and cons of climate reconstructions for the past couple of millenia.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[robinjo]

I don't know about you but I'm amazed at how the Slashdot readers react to Climategate and AGW in general. It's like the whole site has been inundated by young environmentalists.

I'd love to send a PM to you and find out, how you think. It's pretty clear, that you care about science but so do I. We probably agree spot on about evolution, plate tectonics, health hazards of smoking etc. That's what makes it so hard for me to understand, how in the world you can support the depressingly low quality of climate science, that Climategate has revealed?

Have you made an informed decision based on the hard facts? Or do you just think, that the skeptics are as loony as the anti-scientific groups, that you mentioned?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

The general answer to your question is that science is not a static grab-bag of factiods. For a more specific answer read my reply to the parent post. However since your ad-hom laden post seems to accept the character assination of Jones, the IPCC and anyone else who disagrees with your conspiracy theories I doubt you will read the paper let alone learn anything from it.

BTW: It's Mann's hockey stick.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[rocker_wannabe]

"climate scientists"? What a joke. A climate scientist is like an economist. Their theories sound great until they don't. The concept of trying to account for all the energy inputs and output alone is ridiculous, let alone all the other factors. The fallacy that most people don't seem to address is the fallacy that we can EVER predict the future to any useful degree of accuracy. I would be happy if anyone could predict the weather for the upcoming week with more accuracy.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"If AGW is so obvious, why are scientists wasting millions of dollars in accumulating evidence, running computer models, ascertaining the details of the physics involved etc.?"

Why did NASA recently launch the twin GRACE sattelites to test Einstien's physics? Why do we continously test QM by smashing atoms together? Those two theories are the most robust models of physical reality we have, why "waste" millions continuously testing them over and over again for the last 50-100yrs?

If you don't know the answer to any of these questions then you simply don't understand what the word "science" means. If this is the case then I sincerely think anything I can tell you about the philosophy of science will probably just confuse you further, however I will recommend you look up and study epistomology as a first step toward answering your own question.

And yeah, my spelling sucks but nowhere near as bad as your comprehension of science and the applicability of logical fallacies. AGW is established science, the onus is on the deniers to, ( at a minimum ), falsify Fourier's 1824 work on spectral lines or come up with a better explaination. As the letter in TFA states, immortal fame awaits anyone who can achieve such a feat since it would also rewrite astronomy, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and all the other fields of science that rely on the veracity of spectral analysis.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"The fallacy that most people don't seem to address is the fallacy that we can EVER predict the future to any useful degree of accuracy.

Yes, predicting the times of sunrise and sunset, total eclipses, the date of comet Halley's return, the amount of fuel required or an airliner to reach it's destination are all total bullshit. They are just numbers that someone plucked from their arse, we all know that humans are incapable of modeling the FSM's creation to any degree of accuracy. /ridicule_of_stupid_statement

"I would be happy if anyone could predict the weather for the upcoming week with more accuracy."

For fuck's sake learn the difference between climate and weather rather than simply displaying you ignorance. As for making climate predictions I predict that summer will be warmer than winter in the year 32125 or any other year you care to pick. I have no fucking idea what the weather will be like two weeks from today.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[budgenator]

Nobody knows what caused the anomally known as the MWP but the fact that it was regional rules out the sun and other global phenomena.

Mounting research points to the MWP as a global event

This survey makes a very clear. The time of the High Middle Ages, that is 1000-1300, it was almost everywhere in the world warmer than today. There were periods of warming, the 0.6 degree Celsius rise in temperature in the 20 Century, something more dramatic and completely without the man had on the increased emission of the supposed "climate killer" CO2 taken to influence. The statement that there was the Medieval warm period either not given or it was simply a localized phenomenon was, it can safely be regarded as untenable. Unprecedented warming, unprecedented data manipulation?

I think more research is needed on the MWP.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[samoanbiscuit]

Marine science tells us that many coral species are sensitive to small temperature changes, and carbon dioxide levels rising will also cause acidification of the oceans, and the coral bleaching beginning in many parts of the tropics seem to ominously back this up. another factor in coral bleaching. Because yes, people in the northern hemisphere should be able to grow wine further up north than usual, don't worry about the die-off of some of the most important organisms in the marine enironment, I mean, fish stocks, fish life-cycles, migrations, what are those, we need wine in northern europe! By the way, my point was sincere, but that bit about northen europe was tongue-in-cheek...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[budgenator]

Jones/Mann has serious credibility issues and anything they published is unlikely to sway most skeptics. Jones would might have been persecuted for violation of the British Freedom of Information laws had the statute of limitations (6 months!) not run out, and Mann is under criminal investigation by Virginia for defrauding the taxpayers mostly for receiving public grants to produce the work you cited!

Re:always the loudest wins.

[samoanbiscuit]

You are effectively denying all science by grouping AGW sceptics with "useful idiots".

There is one huge problem with AGW: we cannot measure it. So how can you claim it is a scientific fact? If Earth is warming we certainly should be able to measure it, right? Why cannot we?

Yes, they can't measure how sea-levels are rising, causing small island nations to lose already small reserves of land, and they cant measure how el-nino and la-nina cycles are changing because of climate change, yeah totally!!! What I cannot understand is the resistance to legislature regarding fuel-efficiency and carbon emmisions caps. Industry could stand to be more resource efficient anyway, regardless of the veracity of climate change or "AGW"...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, your argument would be much stronger, or rather, much less weak, if you would support your "obvious" claims with some actual references.

These who would be honest scientists ought to decry and distance themselves from activists who do really bizarre things like claiming extreme blizzards and heat waves are "evidence" of global warming, as are floods and droughts. Heck, any time there is any sort of weather of any kind and there is some story that says "Oh.... that was caused by global warming". Even ordinary temperate and fair weather is attributed to global warming.... thus making a farce of the whole notion in the first place.

You should better familiarize yourself with the terminology used here. It is climate change which can contribute to floods and droughts and blizzards, not global warming. Though the average global temperature is increasing, regional weather patterns can be affected in different ways. If elevated ocean temperatures were to lead to the gulfstream currents slowing or failing, then the system which delivers warm air to europe would halt, and much of europe would actually be plunged into longer, colder, snowier winters.

I agree with you in that there is too much political influence on science these days. Science should be just science. Carbon credit trade may not be a particularly effective way to prevent further release of greenhouse gases.

that one and only one form of activity is solely responsible for any warming that the Earth may have had over the past couple of decades.

Where the heck did you get that idea? Climatologists agree that there are undoubtedly natural processes which affect the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. For example, Milankovitch cycles, the variation in earth's temperature due to inconsistencies in its orbit, are well known to cause fluctuations in earth's temperatures. However, when you look at the rate of temperature increase and the position in the cycle, recent trends far exceed this natural phenomenon.

Yes, I can name specific instances where a university climate scientist should lose tenure and be fired from the research institution because of this sort of bad science I'm talking about.... some of it really is that bad.

Then please do name them. But in order for that to matter, you'll have to list a heck of a lot of scientists. It's undeniable that there are some frauds out there. I mean heck, look at the global warming skeptics community - as I said, there are lots of frauds out there. But still, even if you can list a couple dozen bad scientists, there are still thousands of other scientists out there who do their work right, and don't care about the political implications - they just do science. And the scientific community as a whole still agrees that human activities are increasing the rate of average global temperature rise at unprecedented levels.

Finally, there's some simple physics to think about. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The greenhouse effect is an undeniable scientific phenomenon - without it, life wouldn't be possible on earth. And so, when you pump tons and tons of greenhouse gases into the air, then yes, the temperatures will rise. To deny that is to truly stick your head in the sand.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[medcalf]

Dude, you seriously do not know what ad hominem means. You are, however, quite immune to the irony of then using it so broadly.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

Why do you claim that climate models accurately can emulate historic climate when they cannot?

(That's what the whole debate on whether the MWP was global or not centers around - thus my comment)

Computer models actually do correctly emulate historical temprature records but that is irrelevant because the "debate" on the MWP has nothing to do with models it has to do with the interpretation and availability of proxies.

Initially the analysis of the available European proxies assumed the MWP and LIA to be global phenomena mearly because paleoclimotology was first developed using European proxies in the 1960's, had it been developed using southern hemisphere proxies you would now be agruing about the geographical reach of the EDP (extended dry period).

If you want the best assesment of past climate then you need to use all the proxies currently available not just the ones that were available in the 60's. When all these proxies are used the MWP, LIA, RWP, and EDP, all fade into background noise. Your insistance that the 1960's reconstructions are still correct amounts to insisting that a much more comprehensive data set will give much less accurate results. Why do you keep making these nonsense claims about climate science when you clearly have the capacity for critical thought in other subjects?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[drsmithy]

My secondary problem is the hubris of the climate modellers, predicting there will be rain in 12 hours or snow this winter is at best guesstimations, yet people tout their multi decade global predictions as for sure to be really accurate and a reason to ACT NOW because in twenty years it will be too late, never mind waiting five years to see if the model have any accuracy.

The fact that a model cannot pinpoint specific events does not inherently invalidate its conclusion.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[drsmithy]

Define "mainstream opinions" as a term and perhaps I can respond here. I'll admit that there are idiots and quacks from multiple extremes on this topic, but I will point out clearly that there have been "activists" and other sorts of folks who have been proponents of AGW that have indeed advocated the mass genocide of the human species. This is more a continuum of opinion ranging from merely zero population growth advocates to something resembling the eugenics movement of the 1930's, but they do use the viewpoint that mankind shouldn't be on this planet in one form or another.

"Zero population growth" is no more genocide than masturbation is murder. That ludicrous statement, alone, exposes your bias.

Please, I ask again, cite some people advocating "mass genocide".

There is also no proof that such a sequestration is necessarily less harmful than simply leaving that CO2 in the atmosphere, where larger scale global processes might just work to "scrub" that CO2 and turn it into plant matter or something else more useful.

No, there is indeed "proof" (that is to say, evidence). Prime among which is the known effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, I wouldn't believe anything budgenator says. He's been accused of molesting and murdering a 12 year old girl back in 1992. He also committed tax fraud, punched a kitten, and jerked off while peeking at his mom in the shower.

Now, I can't point to any evidence of any of this because of statute of limitations running out, but I promise you he could have been convicted on all counts!

And sure, he hasn't been convicted of anything whatsoever on the murder charge, but he HAS been accused.

Budgenator, you're retarded.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[bzipitidoo]

I wonder whether our civilization will collapse. We have a problem. But instead of arguing about how big this problem is, and what to do about it, too many of us are in denial. It may be that the consequences are mild enough that we can get away with such behavior. If we acted that way towards every problem we face, we would die.

But I wouldn't care to bet on this problem being no big deal, particularly when we don't have to and it's actually more costly to do so. Contrary to the knee jerk thinking that this is all going to be very expensive, the solutions will make our civilization more efficient. That's right, switching to WWS (wind, wave, and solar) and weaning ourselves off of oil would be worth doing even if AGW wasn't real. We'll save money. We could leave the Middle East alone at a huge savings in money and lives.

Maybe you have not appreciated just how wonderful an electric motor is compared to a combustion piston engine? Engines are smelly, polluting, noisy, complicated, unreliable, bulky, cumbersome, expensive, dangerously hot, and hard to operate. An electric motor turns on and off in an instant, and is so quiet, smooth, steady, and small. Doesn't need oil changes. Doesn't vibrate its load, causing more wear and forcing the use of heavier components to withstand it. Converts more than 90% of its input into useful work, versus 30% for engines. If that isn't enough, to maybe better see how awful engines are, imagine using a fan powered by a gasoline engine. You'd be choking on the fumes it'd be blowing in your face. You'd have to rig up some kind of belt drive so you could put the engine outside, maybe add a flue to exhaust the fumes, maybe put it in a closet to muffle the noise. What is the matter with you that you can bear to continue living with piston engines and other assorted inferior tech if you don't have to? Is familiarity worth that much? It's not as big a change as you might think. Trains have been halfway there for decades, with the diesel electrics. For railroads, the advantages of driving wheels with electric motors have been so big that it's been more than worth the losses involved in the conversion. Everywhere we can, we use electric motors in preference. The reason they aren't yet widespread in cars is that their "fuel" is hard to store and transfer quickly.

I see little hope for us if a seemingly intelligent person (like yourself?) can't go see for yourself and be honest enough to admit that this information is not fake or wrong or flawed. It would help if there weren't all these liars out there pretending to be scientists-- and have no doubt, those sorts aren't making innocent mistakes, no. They are lying, and they know it. What they may not understand is that they aren't doing good science. Don't seem to get what good science is. They actually think that real scientists make up bull like they do, and that doing so is somehow not the same thing as lying, or that being careful with the facts is not important. There is no way a group as widespread, diverse, numerous, and contentious as real scientists could or would engineer a massive conspiracy to fake something like this, or that lies or mistakes could long go unnoticed and unremarked. Nor is it conceivable that all of us are so stupid as to be mistaken or wrong, and wrong in the same way when there are infinitely many contradictory and mutually exclusive ways to be wrong. Nor can you put this down to "groupthink". If you give that notion any credibility, you fail to understand how competitive and factual real science is.

If you've understood how improbable it is that we're lying or wrong, then how can you not see that our information on the climate does show a break from the past, and that it coincides with the rise of our fossil fuel usage and this is not a coincidence b

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

Why is it that those who advocate adaptation never include the most sensible and cost effective adaptation of reducing emissions?

The problem that the parent post was highlighting is that in the tropics warm mosit air rises, as it does so the moisture falls out. However the air is now moving in a convection current that dumps huge amounts of dry air onto the subtropics (thus creating the current deserts in those areas). As the temprature increases the tropical convection currents become stronger and dump more dry air thus extending the reach of the desert zone further toward the poles. If this was to occur over geologic time scales, (as it has done in the distant past), our agriculture could easily adapt. However since it's expected to happen over human time scales, (wich has not been seen in the geologic record), all bets on the required rapid adaptation of agriculture are at best wishfull thinking.

Like any other Aussie will tell you from first hand experience, modern agriculture is ill equiped to adapt to the sudden onset of a "permenant drought". Current practices push agricultural production to it limits, the slight climate change we have seen here in SE Oz over the past 15yrs is the proverbial straw that breaks the farmers back and has halved our grain harvest for 12 of those 15yrs. Fortunately this year is shaping up to be the 4th "normal" year of rainfall out of the past 16.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can you cite any remotely mainstream opinions "advocating mass genocide" ?

Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance" advocates reduction of the earth's population by more than 2/3, before the end of the century. Methodology for accomplishing this is not elaborated on; yet the only way to reduce population that drastically in that short a time frame is either mass sterilization, or mass genocide.

"I'm kind of curious why you're concerned about "sequestering" carbon, but apparently not so concerned about dumping it out into the atmosphere. "

I am concerned about current carbon sequestration as well, but possibly for different reasons. Recently (within the past 10 years) there was a major incident in a nearby town called Hutchinson, involving an underground natural gas storage tank. Abstract on a news report of the incident

Now, let's consider the storage of a large industrial sector's CO2 in a similar manner. Slow release into the atmosphere allows at least some portion of that CO2 emission to be absorbed by nature and converted into cellulose and sugar via photosynthesis; a process that does not occur when stored underground in pressurized rock strata. Let us consider further, that this "Solution" has gained widespread "support" (because it is "cheap", and "effective"), and that after 20 or so years, several billion metric tonnes of CO2 are stored in such a storage system.

Now, What happens when that storage vents catastrophically?

You guessed it-- 20 years worth of industrial effluent gas is INSTANTLY added to the atmosphere.

How do you suppose THAT would effect global climate, eh?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

When people bring up the medieval warming period, they do it to point out "we don't understand very much at all about how global climate works". The logic being that if we do indeed understand it so little, that it's dangerous to spend a great deal of money and resources doing something that may not even have any effect, or may even make the effect worse, at the expense of our economy and lifestyle.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

I know of no "CRU like people" that Exxon fund so maybe you could back up that particular claim with a citation? Exxon-Mobile fund the heartland institute and the CEI, you know the band of ex-tabacoo lobbyists that have Steve McIntyre as a regular "guest" at their annual anti-science circus. Even the royal societies written request asking Exxon to stop funding these blatant propogandists fell on deaf ears.

However this is not to say there are no reasonable oilmen, Lord Oxburgh when he was the chairman of Shell is one such example and is the first person from the oil industry I recall who suggested a target on CO2 concentrations (450ppm). Also I belive that BP have joined Shell in their long standing call for regulatory certainty on the issue of CO2 emmissions. AFAIK both companies accept the reality of AGW and claim they want the politicians to set the rules for adressing it so they can get on with making their long term investment plans.

Shell even went so far as blaming their recent divestment of windfarms on the inability of politicians to make a concrete decision on emmission controls. I would not be surprised at all to find BP or Shell funding genuine climate research and alternitive energy technologies but it would cheer me up no end to find a citation showing that Exxon had abandoned it's propoganda campaign and joined them.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did NASA recently launch the twin GRACE sattelites to test Einstien's physics?

Because they are not "obvious". That was my point. Einstein discovered them through his genius. I've heard many adjectives applied to Einstein's theories, but obvious was never one.

You are getting confused between "robust" theories, and "obvious" theories. First get that right, then we will talk about "comprehension of science".

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

"It's like the whole site has been inundated by young environmentalists.....Have you made an informed decision based on the hard facts? Or do you just think, that the skeptics are as loony as the anti-scientific groups, that you mentioned?

Young environmentalist, I wish. I have been following the science now for almost 30yrs, I was unconvinced either way until the 1997 IPCC reports. All scientists are skeptics and I also consider myself a skeptic and there is certainly no shortage of deatils in climate science that are still vigoursly debated in the litrature. However my claim to being a practising skeptic does not mean I accept character assasinations and propoganda such as climategate, nor does it mean I simply disagree with your POV and don't understand why I accept the established science behind AGW.

Now ask yourself the same question, how long did you take to form your opinion on climategate and what evidence do you have for your claim it revealed a "depressingly low quality of climate science"? Had you even heard of Jones and the CRU before the email scandal? What hard facts do have that falsify Fourier's 1824 work on spectral lines? What statistical methods do you use to refute the observed 0.14degC/decade trend in the instrumental record? How do you explain the loss of arctic sea ice? Why do you think the ocean is becoming more acidic? Have you actually read any of the IPCC reports?

I'm sure you get the idea, there is a lot of ground to cover and even after following it for 30yrs I am still far from being an expert.

"I don't know about you but I'm amazed at how the Slashdot readers react to Climategate and AGW in general."

That's a good thing, your amazement is a signal that you should apply some skeptcisim towards your own ideas and the sources they depend on. As I mentioned in another post when I first started debating climate science on slashdot a decade ago I knew a lot less and was definitely a minority voice. I have learnt a lot simply by attempting to refute other people's arguments over those years.

PS: There is no need to PM me I will check this post for a reply because I belive you are genuine and as such there is hope for a reasoned discussion on how it is that two people who put their faith in science can be so diametrically opposed in their thinking on this one issue.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[tgibbs]

When people bring up the medieval warming period, they do it to point out "we don't understand very much at all about how global climate works". The logic being that if we do indeed understand it so little, that it's dangerous to spend a great deal of money and resources doing something that may not even have any effect, or may even make the effect worse, at the expense of our economy and lifestyle.

It is hard to imagine how producing less of a perturbation of climate by moderating our release of CO2 into the atmosphere will make the effect of CO2 worse. Certainly, if one honestly believes that we really don't have much understanding of how climate works, to the point that a substantial period of global warming could occur for no identified reason, one would rationally be even more reluctant to mess with climate by releasing large quantities of a "greenhouse" gas, particularly one with a long atmospheric residence time, such as CO2. The fact that the MWP is frequently cited as justification for doing less to control CO2 is a strong indicator that the people repeating these anti-AGW arguments are not really thinking them through, but simply exhibiting a knee-jerk reaction, embracing anything that appears to be a challenge to our modern understanding of climate physics.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[budgenator]

I never touched that cat LOL

Re:always the loudest wins.

[drsmithy]

Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance" advocates reduction of the earth's population by more than 2/3, before the end of the century. Methodology for accomplishing this is not elaborated on; yet the only way to reduce population that drastically in that short a time frame is either mass sterilization, or mass genocide.

Please quote a relevant excerpt of the book advocating genocide, not fanciful conspiracy theories.

How do you suppose THAT would effect global climate, eh?

*Global* climate ? Probably not a lot. Do you have any evidence to support your idea ? Can you propose a more effective way of reducing emissions ?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

By regional, do you mean that the MWP was limited to Europe?

The medieval warm period, which started a century earlier in Asia, benefited the rest of the globe as well. From the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, farming spread into northern portions of Russia. In the Far East, Chinese and Japanese farmers migrated north into Manchuria, the Amur Valley and northern Japan. The Vikings founded colonies in Iceland and Greenland, then actually green. Scandinavian seafarers discovered "Vinland" along the East Coast of North America.

During the Northern Sung Dynasty (961 A.D. to 1127), one of the warmest times, real earnings in China reached a level not seen again until late in the twentieth century. The wealth of those centuries gave rise to a great flowering of art, writing, science, and the highest rate of technological advance in Chinese history. Chinese landscape painting with its exquisite detail and color achieved its apotheosis.

Over roughly the same period, the peoples of the Indian subcontinent also prospered. Society was rich enough to create impressive temples, beautiful sculpture, and elaborate carvings. Seafaring empires thrived in Java and Sumatra. In the early twelfth century, the predecessors of the Cambodians, the Khmers, built the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat. In the eleventh century Burmese civilization reached a pinnacle with the construction of thousands of temples in its capital, Pagan.

In the ninth century, the indigenous peoples of North America pushed their agriculture northward up the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois river basins. By 1000 they were farming in southwestern and western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. The Anasazi civilization of Mesa Verde flourished; the Mexicans began constructing their pyramids.

The end of the medieval warmth and the start of the Mini Ice Age brought hardship around the world. The poorer climate in Europe after the thirteenth century halted the economic boom of the High Middle Ages. Innovation slowed sharply. Except for military advances, technological improvements ceased for the next 150 years. The economic slump of 1337 brought on the collapse of the great Italian bank, Scali, leading to one of the first recorded major financial crises. Construction on churches and cathedrals stopped. The Mini Ice Age cut off the colonists in Greenland, leading to their eventual demise.

At its coldest, the Mini Ice Age devastated the fishing industry as cod disappeared from the North Atlantic. Besides forcing the Anasazis out of their pueblos, the poor weather reduced incomes in China, raised food prices, and killed the orange trees in Kiangsi province.

If the climate is to become warmer or colder, let's hope for the warmer world. Humans would be better off with higher temperatures. History shows that people did well during the hottest periods and poorly during the coldest. If the climate becomes warmer, we should welcome the shift.

http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/HistoryEcon.html

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Hellsbells]

Did you read the article that you linked to (and for that matter the original article that was linked in this slashdot article) ?
You are instigating the kind of political motivated persecution that both articles criticise.

From your article: "By equating controversial results with legal fraud, Mr. Cuccinelli demonstrates a dangerous disregard for scientific method and academic freedom. The remedy for unsatisfactory data or analysis is public criticism from peers and more data, not a politically tinged witch hunt or, worse, a civil penalty. Scientists and other academics inevitably will get things wrong, and they will use public funds in the process, because failure is as important to producing good scholarship as success."

Mann is being persecuted because he is pushing a view point that is politcally damaging to the republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who incidentally also seems to believe another consipracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya and has faked his birth certificate.

Jones has already been cleared of wrongdoing in investigations, but still gets death threats made against him made by people who do not like his results.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[jhol13]

Dr. Jones does not say that you get statistical significance with any data set, he says it would be easier if we had a longer data set.

Unfortunately we do not have comparable data before 1995.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[jhol13]

Is sea level rising only because warming? Can you prove there cannot be any other factor?

If not, then the warming cannot be proved by that.

The fact that you cannot imagine any other reason does not make it a scientific fact.

Sure sea level rising, glaciers disappearing, etc. do make AGW very likely to be true, but again, that is not enough to make it a scientific fact.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[arcticinfantry]

Why do I have to live on a planet with communists like yourself?
* Even the IPCC is only 90% confident that the recent warming is caused by man (and they overstate *everything*). Is the IPCC in 10% denial?
* Many Climate Scientists disagree with the IPCC. See Dr. Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr., and Richard Lindzen to name a few. Go out and read from the wealth of information that has been put out there by them and others. Since they disagree with the dogma of catastrophic AGW, are they in denial? Could it be that they just happen to have an informed opinion counter to the Warmista's Dogma?
* Currently, you and all your Warmista friends are perfectly free to build a carbon free paradise where-ever you see fit. You can build out Solar/Wind/Geo-Thermal till the cows come home. Nothings stopping you. *You can save the planet for us*, but the reason you won't is because you want power over others. Completely UnAmerican, and also completely in the tradition of top down planned economies like the SU and Nazi Germany.
* Your opinions on Electric vs. internal combustion engines are so naive it's frightening. Diesel Electrics burn (you guessed it) DIESEL!! Calling that halfway there is a joke. Comrade Stalin, how would you like the kulaks to plow their fields with their electric tractors? Pull them with a team of oxen?
* Which climate past are you referring to? The one of the completely discredited hockey stick whose margins of error swamped todays temperature records? Are there other Hockey Sticks you'd prefer to show us?
* Finally, why don't you let the economy help itself subjecting it to your central planning comrade Stalin? Go out and find a better method of creating Solar Panels, or Wind Mills or GeoThermal, etc. That would help the economy immensely. Your centrally planned tax increase will only fall on those that are least able to pay.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[rocker_wannabe]

I have no fucking idea what the weather will be like two weeks from today.

You can't tell me what the weather's going to be like in two weeks from today but you're going to tell what the weather is going to be like in 10 or 100 years from now? That's like saying: "I've never seen a map of the U.S. but this road goes in the right general direction so I'm sure it will take you where you want to go in the U.S..

When you can predict the weather next week like I can predict the times for sunrises and sunsets then we can talk about climate change.

Until then why don't you go peddle that snake oil somewhere else!

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't tell me what the weather's going to be like in two weeks from today but you're going to tell what the weather is going to be like in 10 or 100 years from now?

No; climate != weather. If you can't figure that out, you have no business commenting on this topic. Sorry, you fail it!!

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Eunuchswear]

Unfortunately we do not have comparable data before 1995.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Why do you think we have no temperature records from before 1995?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[rtb61]

Wrong is not wrong by accident in this case, the whole pollution denial deceit is wrong on purpose. Mass media is paid for by it's advertisers, and as modern mass media is now run by sociopaths and manned by narcissists (not all but the majority) they are quite content to say anything their advertisers pay them to say. There is absolutely no value given to truth or the harm the lies will cause, simply how much more profit and power the sociopaths and narcissists can gain today.

Mass media monitors and data mines the public reactions to the lies told and continually adjusts those lies to manipulate the audience to suit the profitability goals of the corporate executives (this quarters bonus) of their advertising corporations. Advertising as 'commentary' and 'news' freed from liabilities for deceit and fraud has created the current 'climate' denial of science, decisions from the gut, verbal personal attacks rather than discussion of science and, the same lies repeated over and over again no matter how many times they are proven wrong.

This has been going on for quite some time and it is the internet that is making it far more obvious, not long ago mass media was getting away with it no problem at all, now they are losing and are becoming much more strident, loud and aggressive in their failing efforts to maintain control of the public consciousness. Those sociopaths and narcissists now feel themselves under threat, the ability to manipulate and prey upon the rest of society is threatened and they are attacking all those that threaten their privilege and exclusivity of existence.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[jhol13]

I got confused in the morning - too early for me? You are right, we do have.

Last decade is warmer than any previous decade measured (16 decades or so). But not statistically significantly warmer.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Huzzah!]

Speaking in general terms and not your specific situation, yields on corn here in the north central US today are at levels that ten years ago would have been considered unreachable and complete fantasy. Research here continues to do amazing things in relatively brief periods of time.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Troed]

Why do you keep making these nonsense claims about climate science when you clearly have the capacity for critical thought in other subjects?

I've thought about this for the better part of the day today. I consider your question to be sincere, and I've contemplated spending quite some time writing an equally sincere and in-depth answer.

It would be quite the blog post if I did. I've realized I'll just have to make it somewhat shorter:

A few years ago I was "all in" when it came to AGW. Not just in talk but in action as well. I caused a close friend of mine to spend a considerable sum of extra money on investment-protecting the new house he built close to the sea shore since I was confident we would see several decimeters of sea rise in the next century (he raised the foundation 40cm because of my advice).

Some time after that, my critical mind (and you're correct - I do practice what I consider to be healthy scientific scepticism in all areas I track. Working as a futurist, I track quite a few) began sending off warning signals when it came to AGW due to a lot of hyperbole being spread around. I think you know what I mean - I've personally listened live to Al Gore claiming we'd see an ice free arctic in five years, that ice bears were going to go extinct and that everything from this to that were "evidence" of catastrophic global warming.

So, I decided to track the science. Read the papers. Do personal back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to verify (or falsify) the hyperbole. And, as you could expect, things didn't add up. Sure there was a lot of valid science, but it was being distored beyond recognition by people who apparently were less interested in science and more interested in pushing agendas.

Long story short - I'm now spending more than a little time making sure the actual science isn't getting lost in the reporting, and I'm doing so everywhere I see unfounded hyperbole and suppression of sound scepticism. Cases in point:

1) I tried getting more science and less politics into some AGW-related Wikipedia pages a few months ago. No go. There's an incredible agenda driven bias amongst Wikipedia admins making sure only one line, the "true" AGW line, is reflected in the articles.

2) On Slashdot, a few days after an article related to AGW has been available, some users with mod points will go through the comments and moderate anything not fully compliant with catastrophic AGW (which includes my fully sourced and paper-referencing please-do-proper-science posts) Troll and/or Overrated.

3) Name-calling. Anyone using the word "denier" (which IS a reference to holocaust denialism) or comparing AGW-sceptics with creationists (in my country, Sweden, creationism is basically unheard of) just proves the point that most of the debate around AGW is driven by non-scientific agendas.

I'd rather just do science. I fully expect most of the catastrophy-reporting around climate change to have subsided within two years and I'd be happy to return and revisit all of these discussions then :)

Anyway;

As to your comment on proxies above. The MWP and LIA are fully visible in most proxies* except tree rings. That's a problem with tree rings as a proxy, and dendrologists admit as much, not with the amplitudes of the LIA and MWP themselves. I don't really see where you get "1960s" from - I'm talking about recent findings here. I see no reason based in proper science why tree ring proxies should have their status elevated as they have in the later IPCC reports.

I believe there's an agenda showing.

*) I really like this project: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

Re:always the loudest wins.

[robinjo]

I got interested in the climate science, some 5 years ago. I own a house by the sea, so I wanted to know, how much the sea level is going to rise. So I started to look at the measurements. NOAA has a lot of sea level measurement data from all around the USA. When I looked it up, I couldn't find a single statistic, that showed a accelerating trend. The satellite measurements of the University of Colorado agreed. The sea level was rising at a few mm/year, like they had for the last 100 years.

Then came the Chris Landsea's resignation from IPCC. If IPCC ignored him, it was no good news. Another big thing was Freeman Dyson. If a real genius like him casts doubt on something, it's worth double- and triplechecking. However, these are just names and I don't want to appeal to authority.

Then came the Climategate. I downloaded the zip file right away and started reading. I've spent countless hours reading the e-mails and the material in general. Based on them, I think that Mann and Jones should explain, why they hid the late 20th century decline of the tree ring proxies. I also think, that the way they fought against releasing data was not kosher. All in all, the e-mails cast doubt on the quality of the peer review process.

However, the biggest thing in the whole Climategate zip file is HARRY_READ_ME.txt. It took me 8 hours to read through the whole file. The comments by Ian Harris himself are unbeliavable. The quality of the data is poor, the algorithms are horrible and the poor man swims in this catastrophe for 2 years trying to make sense of it. Reading the file, I tried to find a single comment about quality control, error bars, or a happy end, where all the problems are solved. Instead I read how results of this mess was used in other peer reviewed articles. If you haven't read the file, please do.

If CRU TS is a big mess, NASA GISS is unfortunately not much better either. The homogenization methods are worrisome. The quality of the surface stations is unfortunately also poor. Way too many stations suffer from UHI. IMHO, all current temperature indexes should be thrown away and all work should be started from scratch, using original, unadjusted temperature measurements. And the whole process should be open and transparent with every adjustment being properly researched and documented (movement of temperature station, change of equipment etc.) After that scientists could throw all kinds of statistical methods at the data and come up with reliable results.

When it comes to the Arctic sea ice, I don't think there's a big problem with it. 2007 was a big low, but since then the extent has been growing every winter. At the moment it's pretty close to the 1979-2000 average. However, that's not something you read from the newspapers.

The Climategate is a big gaping wound that needs to be properly healed. As long as IPCC and the scientists involved pretend that is't not a problem, it's going to get worse. I hate the whitewashes, that have been done. The best thing for the whole science would be to admit the errors, bury the war hatches, throw away all unreliable data, start again with an open mind and start doing proper science.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that most studies that touch upon the MWP conclude that it was at least as warm as the last part of the 20th century. Referring to a FEW studies that are quoted to downplay the MWP, climate scientists engage in a dishonest presentation.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[budgenator]

I'm completely unaware of Dr. Jones being cleared of wrong doing, it it my understanding that Dr. Jones was not prosecuted because the British Freedom of Information laws have a 6 month statute of limitation,

... CRU head Phil Jones had tried to illegally shield data and correspondence from disclosure requests made under the U.K.’s Freedom of Information laws. Jones stepped down from his position in December while investigations are underway.

Now Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office says CRU probably broke the law, but that Jones and other officials won’t be prosecuted because more than 6 months have passed since the alleged breach. “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred,” an ICO spokesman told The Times. Climatic Research Unit Broke British Information Law

which is a far cry from being cleared of any wrong doing. As far as Mann, I don't see how the prosecutor having ulterior motives is germane if he is convicted, he was a public servant on a public or at least partially public payroll and shouldn't the public be able to expect their employees work in a forthright and honest manner for their pay?

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

I'd love to send a PM to you and find out, how you think. It's pretty clear, that you care about science but so do I. We probably agree spot on about evolution, plate tectonics, health hazards of smoking etc. That's what makes it so hard for me to understand, how in the world you can support the depressingly low quality of climate science, that Climategate has revealed?

Climategate revealed nothing. All the "controversy" claims were based on quote-mining. A technique, by the way, which is also frequently used by creationists.

And like you are doing now, creationists are claiming that scientists are basically lying, and that there is a huge conspiracy to hide the truth.

Creationists point to several hoaxes like Piltdown Man to discredit the theory of evolution and evolutionary scientists even more.

Still, creationists usually don't have problems with other parts of science. Just the one that happens to disagree with their ideology.

Hmm, I'm noticing a pattern here...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

Then came the Climategate. I downloaded the zip file right away and started reading. I've spent countless hours reading the e-mails and the material in general. Based on them, I think that Mann and Jones should explain, why they hid the late 20th century decline of the tree ring proxies. I also think, that the way they fought against releasing data was not kosher. All in all, the e-mails cast doubt on the quality of the peer review process.

This is ridiculous. You claim to have beend doing your own research, and yet all you do is to parrot denialist lies about the CRU e-mails. The tree ring proxy thing has already been explained too, it's just that you are either too ignorant or too dishonest to care about that.

However, the biggest thing in the whole Climategate zip file is HARRY_READ_ME.txt. It took me 8 hours to read through the whole file. The comments by Ian Harris himself are unbeliavable. The quality of the data is poor, the algorithms are horrible and the poor man swims in this catastrophe for 2 years trying to make sense of it. Reading the file, I tried to find a single comment about quality control, error bars, or a happy end, where all the problems are solved. Instead I read how results of this mess was used in other peer reviewed articles. If you haven't read the file, please do.

Yeah, as if. You didn't read crap. All you are doing is to parrot denialist lies about the CRU e-mails. You haven't a single independent thought in that denialist/creationist brain of yours.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

Oh my God! They are being brainwashed by education! Quick, bring out the Bibles!

All data points to AGW. The heavy selecting and massaging is being done by denialists.

No data sets have been lost.

No models have been fudged.

Your claims about peer review and publication are also complete nonsense. The fact is that skeptics are publishing as we speak. It's just that there are always some fundamental flaws that make them go back to the drawing board again. So fuck off with your crazy conspiracy bullshit. It's like listening to a creationist whine why his "God did it" report wasn't accepted for publication.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

It is only from 1995 to 2009 that the trend is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. Go to 1994, and it is. The reason he said 1995 was that the question was about 1995. So they just "happened" to select the year after it was significant at the 95% significance level. Gee, wonder why...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[Hellsbells]

Both of the reports from the investigations by the "House of Commons Science and Technology Committee" and "Scientific Assessment Panel" exonerated Professor Jones and the CRU.

He acted within the UK FOI laws. All UK Government agencies act this way. If you make a FOI request at any level of UK government it will generally be rejected because under the FOI laws they can reject requests which cost too much to process. This means a government deparment can effectively refuse any FOI requests they choose.

This is a problem with the UK's transparency laws, and has no bearings on the credibility of any of the CRU research findings (In any case, this would be a problem with the University's protocol for the handling of FOI requests, not Professor Jones personally).

If you are accusing the CRU of scientific fraud, this is a very serious accusation, and you'd better have decent evidence to back up your claim; Not "They didn't respond to FOI requests."

Re:always the loudest wins.

[TapeCutter]

I reiterate that I think you are genuine and I am taking you seriously. I have answered your post in my journal so it's easier to keep track for both of us, feel free to reply when you have had time to digest it.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[jhol13]

You have completely wrong data set. None of the decades start at 1995.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

"Mounting research" you say, and then you point to a denialist anti-science blog. That's not science, buddy. It's religion.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

What are you talking about? Decades start at 1995? No, I'm saying that someone picked 1995 because it is not significant at the 95% significance level, but if you measure from 1994, it is. Remember, longer periods gives more reliable data.

Re:always the loudest wins.

[samoanbiscuit]

I know this is an old thread, but still, you haven't replied to the last part of my post, that pollution reduction measures should be helpful regardless. Also, you agrees with me that temperatures are rising, and that sea levels are rising. All this hairsplitting about whether we are the cause or not is getting in the way of so many smart decisions, it makes me sad...
There are very few scientific facts when studying something as complex as climate, or evolution. How the earth's climate changes over time, how human activities fit in this, is hard to reduce to facts, but the theories fit quite well with the facts, and all this hand-waving to the midieval warm period, which WAS local to a certain region, and not beyond, is till weaker than the alternative, that human activity (particularly industrial activity) is responsible for climate change...

Re:always the loudest wins.

[hkmwbz]

Even the IPCC is only 90% confident that the recent warming is caused by man (and they overstate *everything*). Is the IPCC in 10% denial?

There's a difference between "confidence level" and "being confident". Of course, denialist organization constantly lie about what the scientists are saying, so "90% confidence level" becomes "not really 100% confident that it's happening (look, there's doubt!)", and "not statistically significant to the 95% significance level" becomes "there has been no warming". Are "misinterpretations" like this that are parroted by people like you conscious lies, or just ignorance on part of denialist organizations?

Many Climate Scientists disagree with the IPCC. See Dr. Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr., and Richard Lindzen to name a few.

Ah yes, creationist Roy Spencer. Funny how the denialists and creationist groups overlap. Also, three people are not "many". Especially when the group consists of creationists and other lying douchebags.

And ultimately, your pathetic appeal to false authority fails because it doesn't help to be a skeptic if you can't produce the evidence. Lindzen keeps trying to counter AGW, but his research always fails to do so. Yet he continues to be a "skeptic". Because he has faith in AGW being false, not because he has any research to back it up. FAIL.

Which climate past are you referring to? The one of the completely discredited hockey stick whose margins of error swamped todays temperature records?

The claim that the hockey stick has been discredited is just another creationist, eh, denialist lie. Funny how denialists always seem to lie (see my comments about Spencer and Pielke, and the "confidence" crap).

Politics

[Kingrames]

Politics is a sin, and those who practice it should be forced to repent. If only it were illegal - then only criminals would be politicians. Oh, wait...

Re:Politics

[blueg3]

Don't worry. The politicians already have that covered.

Re:Politics

[vxice]

the sinners are not the politicians but the people who vote for them. Until we get people to think about the issues or just remove themselves from the process we will continue to get crap politicians. Blaming anyone else, at least here in the U.S., is taking the easy way out and will not fix anything. Although I would like to know what form of government you suggest.

Re:Politics

[Hurricane78]

Politics, marketing, public relations, etc... are just other names for “professional lying”. That’s all.

Re:Politics

[BhaKi]

What about the Big Media? It's been serving the interests of wealthy and powerful corporations for more than 80 years.

Re:Politics

[Kingrames]

Slashdotocracy.

Re:Politics

[ArsonSmith]

Only one way to fix it, make voting have direct consequences. Perhaps if your guy loses you don't pay taxes, that way you vote for the people who's policies you actually support, not only with your vote but also with your wallet.

Re:Politics

[wall0159]

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you saw a commercial on TV from an energy company denying the existence of global warming and extolling the virtues of carbon emissions and fossil fuels? Better yet, when was the last time you saw a politician saying that global warming is bunk and we should continue importing oil from foreign nations?

No, big money and politics are both on the side of the global warming alarmists. These are big companies that want us off of foreign oil so that they can charge us a pretty penny for their product instead.

All of this research and these panels are government funded. It's absurd to say that "deniers" are making the subject political but supporters of the research are somehow not. They're the ones stealing our money to fund this research and trying to force us to buy from one company instead of another. Corporate welfare is what it boils down to.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of politics is involved before the politicians reach a high enough position in their parties/organizations. That system works without your vote and it almost always brings the corrupt, the incompetent or the just plain evil to the top. Only then the voter can pick and choose, but almost always from a very poor selection of candidates.

Don't blame the voter. The system is broken.

Re:Politics

[mpe]

All of this research and these panels are government funded. It's absurd to say that "deniers" are making the subject political but supporters of the research are somehow not.

Even calling what is going on "research" is questionable. Note that even the CRU enquiries were critical of some of the methods used.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer should be obvious: don't let humans have power over other humans and get some higher species to control us.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

The sinners are the politicians who let themselves be bought, and the people who buy them.

Re:Politics

[cbreak]

Just because they have been elected by idiots, politicians should still not have the right to stay blameless for their own actions. Just as "I just followed orders" is not a valid excuse, "I was just elected" should not be one either.

Re:Politics

[vxice]

That might have the side affect of getting people to vote for the worst candidate since their chance of affecting the outcome is slim compared to what they would gain by voting for the loser. However everyone would face that and in the end more people would vote for candidates they thought would loose.

Re:Politics

[vxice]

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. If a politician is reelected we have no right to complain. Take Bush for example not only did he violate civil rights and start two wars but many other things and yet knowing, or perhaps not but that is your own damn fault, exactly what we would get he was still reelected. Tell me how that is his fault.

Re:Politics

[vxice]

But there is plenty of media out there besides 'big media' sometimes you have to look for accurate information. If people keep depending on the same news organizations for their 'news', cnn I'm looking at you and your lets go to twitter and ask people who just updated their status to omg Timberlakes new hair is so hot for insight into world events and fox you know why too, they will have no reason to change their habits. Especially if you don't ignore them when they report inaccurately they will not face any penalty and face possible gain so will serve other interests. But yeah its only the entire world that hates us because of our bad policies so there really is no concern or need to do anything about it right?

Re:Politics

[cbreak]

... Take Bush for example not only did he violate civil rights and start two wars but many other things and yet knowing, or perhaps not but that is your own damn fault, exactly what we would get he was still reelected. Tell me how that is his fault.

How is that NOT his fault? He is a sentient being, so he is responsible for his actions. Just because there were morons who voted for him, should he get a card blanch and immunity from law?

Re:Politics

[skynexus]

Yes, let's trivialize reality the other way around and shift the blame onto the people instead, who obviously elected the wrong representatives... No need to burden the mind with complicated problems like the electoral process, lobbying activities, campaign contributions, concentration of media ownership, etc etc.

Re:Politics

[krazytekn0]

Maybe the sinners are not the politicians or the people who vote for them, but the people who KNOW BETTER and don't work up the nerve to become politicians. Can you really blame the voting public for making a bad choice when the only choices available to them are bad choices? So maybe it's us (yeah let's just try this crazy thing by not blaming everyone else), the people sitting here on our high horses espousing all of the solutions to world problems and doing nothing of consequence with them, who are the sinners. I'm just sayin'.

Now I feel guilty. Damn

Re:Politics

[vxice]

apparently it is what we wanted.

Re:Politics

[vxice]

No one forces you to vote for a candidate. If you are illinformed because you can't be bothered to look anywhere besides big media, there are plenty of sources, or at least check their reasoning how is that their fault. Campaign contributions and lobbying, simple if the politician votes against you vote against him. When you don't punish him by voting for him again you are rewarding him by allowing him to get that money. Tell him my vote or that money. That is the electoral process. The only broken part of it is that it assumes good civic duty.

Re:Politics

[ArsonSmith]

If everyone voted for the candidate they thought would lose then it wouldn't work. I don't think it'd take very many elections for people to learn though.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

the sinners are not the politicians but the people who vote for them.

I hate that argument. Try living in Illinois were only crap runs. In general, decent people will not get into politics since it is such a mud fight.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all very nice, theoretically. In practice, the people who vote have no alternative other than voting for a turd sandwich or a giant douche.

Remember that Democracy (like the "Free Market") only works if there are real alternatives/competitors. Voting in a bipartisan system and thinking you actually have a "choice" is like having to "choose" between Verizon and Comcast for your ISP (i.e. not a real choice by any measure).

It won't work

[SomeJoel]

As long as the average person thinks the relative likelihood of "science being right" and "nutball propaganda being right" is about the same or worse, nothing will change. It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.

Re:It won't work

[Obfuscant]

And now all we need is to get loud-mouth aggressive "scientists" to stop labeling everyone they don't agree with as "nutball propaganda". The scientific method doesn't have "keep shouting the other guy down until he goes away" as part of the process. The scientific method doesn't resort to name calling and insult as a means of proving the hypothesis.

When I read this summary, I thought "hurray, the antagonistic, dogma-preaching 'scientists' were finally going to be told that debate IS allowed and questioning the data and methods IS allowed and you don't get to question the ethics of the guy with the opposing ideas just because he disagrees with you." But no, it's the ones who need control that are complaining about being picked on. The poor dears, they behave boorishly in public and then cry about how boorishly they are being treated.

It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.

And that's why every time you ask a strong AGW proponent to support his claims he resorts to name calling and saying things like "it's a fact" and "the debate is over". Never explain how you got to your conclusion, pretend the other guy is an idiot for asking, and you'll have "uneducated, scared, misinformed" people at your feet. And the scareder they are, the more money they'll keep pumping into research on how to "fix the crisis."

I know "climate scientists" who behave exactly that way, so pretending they don't exist won't earn you any points in this discussion.

Re:It won't work

[osgeek]

The fact that the parent was labeled a troll only confirms the pattern I've witnessed, even in Scientifically-minded communities like /., of shouting down or censoring skeptics.

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I'm very disappointed that asking for baseline data and manipulation algorithms has been met with stonewalling and name calling.

Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies. They should expect a high degree of skepticism and deal with it head on rather than politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up.

It saddens me that the AGW crew has forced supporters of the Scientific method like myself into an awkward position when discussing other cornerstone issues like evolution and cosmology. We've all been painted with the brush of religion because some Scientists forgot their place and their core principles in pursuit of Being Right(tm).

Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.

Re:It won't work

[Ethanol-fueled]

The CIA has opened a center on climate change and national security, the issue du jour.

Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.

And so it goes.

Re:It won't work

[Saint Stephen]

Exactly. Most of the comments here are the classic example of the echo chamber.

I think there's a saying that goes something along the lines of "wrapping yourself in purple" or "bringing out the purple." If one has already made up one's mind about a topic (the way incorrect science that seems good - consider for example the Static Universe theory of the early 20th century), it's natural to call everyone who questions it a scheming evil nincompoop.

There's been lots of wrong science over the years. And the Static Universe theory wasn't something that was refined - it was just rejected, as wrong. The fact that the climate changers did sloppy stats sure doesn't help the science seem air tight.

It could be that all the premises are true, and yet the conclusion is false.

Re:It won't work

[MikeBabcock]

Scientists in this letter are not however encouraging people to educate themselves. They're encouraging blind acceptance.

I don't care which side you agree with in any debate -- its the sign of a weak argument to require the silencing of your critics.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore bought a 9 million dollar ocean-side estate. Can I trust Al Gore's judgement that the coastal areas will be just fine?

Re:It won't work

[BCSWowbagger]

As long as the average person thinks the relative likelihood of "science being right" and "nutball propaganda being right" is about the same or worse, nothing will change. It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.

So true.

Of course, as a climate change denier, it looks to me like this letter is the nutball propaganda and the real scientists are all on Fox News. So maybe painting all of society with generalizations and then grousing about the evil power elite is not the best way to keep the dialogue going on the global warming issue.

Re:It won't work

[Shark]

I like how the summary mentions "climate deniers". Does anybody seriously deny that there is such a thing as climate? I thought it was all about it warming up (or not) because of human activity.

For me it doesn't speak very well for the um... Climate believers(?) sense of rational argument. No, the opposing view isn't questioning our computer models or the accuracy of our data. Nope. They deny climate altogether!

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

This is somewhat different. The defenders of the Static Universe did not have Sagans and Sagans of dollars depending on the acceptance of the theory. If we took global warming as a drop-dead-serious problem, it would be the end of the coal industry, and business would be very different for the oil industry (plastics, we still need plastics). The auto industry not be on life support; it would be dead and buried.

There is, in addition, the problem that we already have nice solid evidence of an earlier spring (the yearly spring dip in the Keeling Curve is beginning earlier), and we have a mechanism dead to rights for why increased CO2 should make the earth warmer. The science on this is not weak; our main problem is that we are trying to get data out of a noisy system, and there's no control. In contrast, the it's-not-happening crowd does not have a good explanation for why it should not be happening, nor do they have good data showing that it is not happening (noisy data has the annoying property that it proves nothing for nobody, neither presence or absence). They do sometimes say things that sound scientific, but those typically get holes punched in them with a quick visit to Wikipedia. So, not really.

As far as "trying to shut up the other side", well, yeah, it gets f*cking frustrating, if you're not just arguing with other academics, but instead have to deal with a well-funded FUD and PR campaign, that can even afford to buy senators. This is not an ordinary "scientific debate".

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot looks at kettle and says, I'm not the one that's black! You're black!

Re:It won't work

[quokkaZ]

Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.

I do believe this has been going on for a long time now. It's called publishing in peer reviewed journals. Thousands of times.

It seems that the published science is so compelling that every national science academy, scientific society and professional body of international standing that has expressed a public position has asserted the reality of AGW.

If this reasoned published evidence is good enough for the leading bodies of world science, then I'd say you need some very cogent arguments to dispute it. Hand waving doesn't cut it.

You are to brutally honest, full of it.

Re:It won't work

[tsm_sf]

"Exactly. Most of the comments here are the classic example of the echo chamber." he said, with no apparent sense of irony.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies.

Sorry, no. The future is demanding societies revise their infrastructures and policies. AGW is just another reason in a basket of many. Solar will become the cheapest energy conversion technology in a matter of decades. You do understand that societies that modernize first will have the biggest economic advantage? We are running out of fossil fuel resources and it costs more to extract and them. Sorry, but our economy can't afford $140/b oil, guess which countries can? We are destroying our planet in order to obtain their last bits: Brazil, uhh the oil slick in the gulf, the mining explosions, Have you SEEN what they have to do to Alberta to get 1 barrel of oil out of the tar sands? Odds are you haven't and that increasing your own corpulence is your chief concern.

So enough about "preserving" the economy. The US government invested trillions (direct subsidy, tax benefits, land grants) to jump start coal, oil, and railroad (Hey shit, most industries actually: auto, telecom, yawn). We should be doing the same now. Creative destruction is the heart of real capitalism. What you see now is the fascist collusion between state and industry to preserve the profits and power of doomed entities. You're either an ignorant clown or a treasonous fascist.

Re:It won't work

[shutdown -p now]

There is no such thing as AGWs. "Global Warming" has now become "Climate Change".

It did, for the same reason why Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging became simply Magnetic Resonance Imaging: the gullibility of a common man.

Apparently, there are still too many idiots unable to comprehend the concept of averaging temperatures across the globe, so as soon as they see one place that didn't warm up for one year, they get confused by the "warming" bit in "global warming", and decry it all as a conspiracy theory by a socialist world government.

Still, it's just a name change for the sake of PR. Global average temperature keeps going up - the planet is warming.

Re:It won't work

[MrHanky]

Oh, so because "Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies" they must be wrong. Notice that your argument is fundamentally ideological. And still you demand respect for it?

Re:It won't work

[zerblat]

There is no such thing as AGWs. "Global Warming" has now become "Climate Change".

And you can than the previous administration for that. On Frank Luntz's recommendation, they started using the phrase "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming" to make it sound less frightening.

Re:It won't work

[CrazyDuke]

It's not their job to convince you of anything. You are supposed to get the necessary education and analyze the information and find the flaws and confirm the observations when they do not. Can't do it? Well, then you're going to have to rely on expert opinion and hope the leadership doesn't do something that screws you yet again. Or, at least that it screws you less than the (real) results of doing nothing.

But, no, two talking heads get on InterToobs and one tells the audience the sky is yellow and the other says the sky is green. Then, half the audience thinks the sky is yellow because it's obviously not green and the other half thinks the sky is green, because it's obviously not yellow. Then a nice little thinly veiled holy war ensues. And, the guy that stands up and says the sky is blue (along with the ones that say black, red, purple, etc...) gets treated like some kind of crazy-extremist-traitor or something. Oh, well.

Re:It won't work

[Alef]

Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies. They should expect a high degree of skepticism and deal with it head on rather than politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up.

And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.

If AGW is happening, you should be asking for completely revised infrastructures and policies, for you own sake. It is your responsibility and in your own interest to find out what the truth of this matter is. Skeptics shouldn't expect others to do this work for them.

Maybe we live in different parts of the world, but I don't share your view of how skepticism has been dealt with. On the contrary, I find it commendable how some find the effort to continue arguing with, usually misinformed, deniers. But there comes a point when the discussion needs to be settled, because it could truly go on forever, or there will be no time left to act.

Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.

Precisely that, is what peer-reviewed scientific journals are for. Have you been reading them?

Re:It won't work

[antirelic]

The reason there are people who are up in arms over the whole Climate Gate scandal is very simple to understand. Many of the scientists and the institutions that are involved in the research of Climate Change are also involved in the conversations surrounding "Social Justice", "Climate Justice", "Redistributive Change", and have hopped on the anti-American bandwagon during the Bush years instead of staying "very neutral".

The extreme left are hip deep in the environmental movement. This clip from the Copenhagen Summit paints a disturbing picture for those who are not on board with the Marxist Dream:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNQqUACJ_Kw&feature=player_embedded#!

If people are really interested in advancing the truth behind Climate Change, they had better divorce themselves from the people in the above clip and fast. Yet, I dont think that is going to happen because these people and the proponents of AGW are one and the same.

And let us not forget the blazen hypocrisy of the AGW leaders who fly in multiple 747's and drive around in stretched limo's during such conferences, and crack pot schemes such as "Cap and Trade" which reduces "carbon emissions" through impoverishment of western nations.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

That is because of the AGW proponents who would shout as soon as one place was warmer than the year before that it was "proof" of AGW. Or the AGW proponents who claimed that more severe storms were evidence of AGW and the next year claimed that less severe storms were evidence of AGW. There were even AGW proponents who would claim that both warmer than normal tempatures and cooler than normal temperatures were evidence of AGW.
There have been AGW proponents exaggerating since at least the early 80s (and no loud voices from other AGW proponents saying that they are exaggerating), and then they are surprised when they have no credibility.

Re:It won't work

[DrDitto]

The scientific method cannot prove AGW since you can't stick the Earth in a test tube. You can only prove/disprove sub-components that may support the *theory* of AGW.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

This is somewhat different. The defenders of the Static Universe did not have Sagans and Sagans of dollars depending on the acceptance of the theory. If we took global warming as a drop-dead-serious problem, it would be the end of the coal industry, and business would be very different for the oil industry (plastics, we still need plastics). The auto industry not be on life support; it would be dead and buried.

And billions more people would be starving. Those that weren't starving would be suffering from communicable diseases or the ravages of war. How exactly would we have transferred from a oil based world economy to one that only used it for plastics? If we weren't using oil and coal for energy, we wouldn't be making plastics either.

Re:It won't work

[OldSoldier]

I think part of the problem is something most of us here on /. are blind to, namely that there is a large fraction of the population who do not understand the scientific method and have been brought up on a culture of relative right and wrong.

Who is at fault in a traffic accident? Depends on who has the winning lawyer.
Did that CEO break the law or just push the law to its limit but did not step over it?
And who made those laws anyway? If those laws were repealed would that CEO suddenly be "right" again?

I was in an astronomy forum where even some of the people there were debating thing like whether 1+1 = 2 is truism vs an artifact of a properly chosen arithmetical scheme (and for this 01 + 01 = 10 would still count as 1+1=2, it's the same arithmetical scheme).

Fact is there are some things where there is an absolute truth for (climate change, drug effectiveness, best way to handle nuclear waste) and there are some things that will always remain judgment calls (whether fetuses are alive, how to handle illegal immigration). Government has to operate in both but the problem is that most people in politics and in the population at large believe MANY MANY more things are in the judgment call category and less in the absolute truth category.

I think it's winnable, but it has to start with experts SHOWING us why/how they've come to their conclusions and NOT telling us to trust them, they're experts. Scientific debate in science iterates to a common agreement. One would think that scientific debate in the media can achieve something close and eventually the general public will catch on that some things CAN be known and are not arbitrary.

Re:It won't work

[shutdown -p now]

That is because of the AGW proponents who would shout as soon as one place was warmer than the year before that it was "proof" of AGW.

They're idiots, too. The correct course of action when dealing with such is calling them out, though, not repeating the same mistakes, or using them as an excuse for perpetrating flawed reasoning.

There were even AGW proponents who would claim that both warmer than normal tempatures and cooler than normal temperatures were evidence of AGW.

That's a perfectly valid claim, if we're talking about regional temperatures. In some regions, GW does indeed manifest as a cooling in local climate patterns, even in very long term. It's just that there are more regions which warm up, hence why we get warming on average.

and no loud voices from other AGW proponents saying that they are exaggerating

I've seen many feedback from climate researchers warning about sensationalizing AGW, actually. Precisely because they don't want people to "cry wolf" lest they be disbelieved by the time it's actually scheduled to come...

The problem is that all that stuff gets reported by mass media, and mass media wants a drama, not facts (because drama sells). So when a researcher says that some glacier somewhere might be melting because of GW, you get newspapers with front page stories saying "argh all ice is melting we're all gonna die in 2020!" (I really wish they'd use that spelling, too - it'd be very apropos in the context) - throwing in stats such as "this summer has been the warmest in last 20 years" as a kind of proof. And, of course, there's no way in hell they're going to quote a climate scientist whose study they "based" the article on saying "geez, guys, it's not really all that bad - it's much slower than that!" - unless he goes all the way to the opposite extreme and starts spouting about socialist conspiracy etc.

That works both ways, though. Say, "climategate" is by and large a creation of mass media, too - driven by demand for drama in this particular area, especially in U.S. As usual, when you get past the screaming newspaper headings, the reality is much more bleak and uninteresting.

Mark my words, today's journalists should be the second in the line to the sharks, right after lawyers.

Re:It won't work

[osgeek]

It's not the reality of temperature going up and the likelihood of man's involvement that I'm concerned about.

It's the catastrophic predictions based upon mystery models with hidden data that bothers me. If we're all headed for disaster, then I'll stop driving my car. You'd better be certain, though, and being an ass won't convince me that you're sincere.

You are to brutally honest, full of it.

Ad hominem has no place in this discussion.

I try to look past it, but there are plenty that you completely turn off with that line of attack.

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

I am not so sure of this (and note that you are making an essentially economic prediction about the future, and we're not too good at those, either).

If we're serious about GW, we start with an increasing CO2 tax, beginning at somewhere between $10 and $50 per ton of CO2 (think, burning 100 gallons of gasoline). You'll notice the price differential, but we've had worse fluctuations in recent years. And it goes up, and everyone knows it goes up. Europe is an existence proof for how we can live pretty well with half the CO2 footprint, and high gas prices.

At a certain CO2 tax, alternatives become economically interesting. Don't fart around with random subsidies and targeted stuff like that, just make it clear what will happen, and let the market go at it. DO see about a national effort to upgrade the power grid.

But, such a tax, certainly means the end of the coal industry, probably in my lifetime. They won't be able to compete, unless they can make the whole sequestration thing work. And they might.

Re:It won't work

[Dipsomaniac]

Oh, balls. Look, cherry-picking your data to show what you want may convince some, but the fact is that using a year with an extremely strong El Nino effect as your starting baseline is dishonest.

Long term global temperature trends are still UP, not down.

Re:It won't work

[riverat1]

+1 Insightful

Re:It won't work

[AlamedaStone]

It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.

the real scientists are all on Fox News.

I've rewritten my response to this series of quotes three times now.

Scientists on Fox News as a rebuttal to the implication that there are powerful forces trying to scare and misinform the uneducated... just makes my skin crawl.

I have nothing personal against Republicans and conservative independents, although I disagree with them on many issues. Fox News is your enemy, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the hell did this get modded up as 'insightful'?

Skepticism and outright denial are two very different things, and that you conflate the two speaks volumes about the empty space inside your skull and the potent ideology that occupies it. That people have actually chosen to express agreement with you by making this moronic statement of yours more visible speaks further about the reactionary, swarm-like behavior of the AGW faithful and their tendency to condone assaulting sensible dialog. You're just as bad as the 'deniers', all of you, and I'm disgusted at the kind of conduct that both proponents and opponents of AGW theory exhibit.

The AGW debate divorced itself from rational thought a long time ago, and you have yourselves to blame for it just as much as reactionaries on the other side of the table. You all should be ashamed.

Re:It won't work

[osgeek]

And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.

Gotta run, so can't reply to everything, but that's a bit of a Pascal's Wager. Like the fallacy of the wager, the fallacy of that is that there are infinite things that can do us in environmental disaster, war, asteroids, gray goo, skynet, etc. As a society, we don't have time to evaluate and consider them all. Climatologists really need to toe the line on following the very best Scientific methods so that those of us sincerely interested in doing the right thing won't be turned off or confused by waters muddied up by a bunch of politics.

Re:It won't work

[TapeCutter]

Give it a rest, your the one who is stonewalling and name calling. Any genuine skeptic who claims to be an "adamant supporter of the Scientific method" should have figured out by now that climategate was a well orchestrated propoganda excersise that utterly failed to dent the science.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

No, I am making a prediction about what life would be like today. You said that the auto industry would not be (present tense) on life support it would be dead and buried. That puts the rest of the statements in the present tense.
Right now, we have nothing that can replace fossil fuels as an energy source within the next 20 years.
In my opinion, it would be more cost effective to address the symptoms of global warming than to try and remake our economies to try and stop it.

Re:It won't work

[bocin]

Never before has an established government tried to keep their citizens is as much fear as ours. No effort has been spared to instill this sense of insecurity. The media shouts the alarm in every possible way. Science is abused and used to declare doom and destruction. Boogie men lurk at every turn ready to rape our children and blow up our buildings. Even American citizens are turned into prospective terrorists. Why? To What Ends. Who benefits in the long run. Let us live our lives in peace, without fear mongering!!!

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not that "they must be wrong", but rather that they have the burden of proof. Essentially, the great expenditures asked by AGW require equally great justification.

Re:It won't work

[MrHanky]

No, you don't. If you did, you'd already know that the CO2 levels are rising (measurable, and an indisputable empirical fact), that CO2 absorbs more energy from infrared light than most other atmospheric gasses (also a verified fact) and that the CO2 almost certainly comes from the burning of fossil fuels (the C12 ratio is higher, due to fossil carbon lacking C14), and you'd accept that there is a warming trend, and that the warmest decade on record has occurred at a solar minimum.

There's absolutely nothing to this that resembles the "supernatural".

"Hidden data"? You have a wealth of open data to examine. Which algorithms are hidden? Have you even been looking? No? You're just making stuff up, or copypasting from unverified claims — all the while pretending that your own faults are the faults of science.

I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.

Re:It won't work

[shutdown -p now]

4 years is not a statistically significant trend on the scales we're talking about here. It's not about temperatures in your backyard, you know.

Re:It won't work

[huckamania]

Which really explains the need for this 'open' letter, which just happens to be hidden behind a pay wall.

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost. I'm also more than a little puzzled about how peer review became friend review for AGW supporters and fiend review for any doubters. Call me old fashioned, but I liked the IPCC report more when it still showed the MWP and RWP. If AGW is correct, why the need to change the temperature records? Weren't past IPCC reports peer reviewed (back when peer review maybe meant something)?

Re:It won't work

[517714]

Proponents of AGW are supposed to be scientists, not politicians. Infrastructures and policies are the domain of politicians. When scientists enter into that arena they cease to be disinterested observers and become legitimate targets for criticism by every hack as well as scientists who do not agree with their conclusions.

Re:It won't work

[MrHanky]

As I pointed out, there is no scepticism in osgeek's AGW denialism. It's simply ideology. Concluding from "this will be too expensive" to "this can't be happening" has nothing to do with scientific scepticism at all, and you make no argument at all yourself. I didn't conflate anything: osgeek isn't a sceptic, he's a denialist.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

According to not-very-new research (collated from a couple hundred different scientific studies), the Earth was warmer during the middle ages than it is now. The earth goes through regular warming and cooling periods, and we were already due for a warming. According to the same research, it's actually the Sun's fault, rather than greenhouse gasses.

Heck, some scientists think that cleaning up the air will actually cause MORE global warming, since those same gasses that supposedly block heat from leaving the atmosphere might actually be blocking more heat from entering the atmosphere in the first place.

Basically, nobody's sure about anything, and you can't go asking the entire world to change based on inconclusive data.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the data was cherry-picked to begin with...

Re:It won't work

[feepness]

For me it doesn't speak very well for the um... Climate believers(?) sense of rational argument. No, the opposing view isn't questioning our computer models or the accuracy of our data. Nope. They deny climate altogether!

Can you see this "climate"? People keep telling me there's air, but I'm not buying it!

Re:It won't work

[Svartalf]

Heh... Ironic, isn't it?

When one considers that we don't have any better trend data (the actual data we have only goes back about 50-60 years of proper measuring, coupled with extrapolations based off of measurements of things like ice cores and tree rings, neither of which actually provide the same data the measurements do...it becomes the same sort of remark.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Christmas Poo, osgeek did not say that proponents of AGW are wrong, he said that because what they are proposing a massive, expensive change that will affect 6 billion people, there arguments should be subject to more scrutiny. As a result they need to rise to the challenge and systematically prove beyond the shadow of a doubt they are correct, but they haven't. This is completely independent of whether or not they are correct.

Re:It won't work

[MightyMartian]

Which is rather like having a leaking septic field in your mansion, and when your poor neighbor complains, you just shrug and go "Well, we'd better just dig a ditch and hope that does enough to catch the shit."

The problem here is that at one level or another our economies are based on a destructive, and just as importantly finite resource. Sooner or later we're going to have a crash. Beyond that, there are lot of people whose economies are far behind who are going to be very badly effected by it all, and the industrialized and industrializing world saying "Well, we will all just have to deal with it" translates into "We're just going to keep vomiting CO2 into the atmosphere, and if your tiny island nation or your agrarian economy goes to hell, tough shit."

Re:It won't work

[Krahar]

Isn't it embarrassing for you to be proving his point so blatantly without yourself even being aware of it? He didn't write that AGW (whatever that stands for, I don't know) were wrong, he said that the consequences of their advice is very far-reaching, and since that is the case, it is prudent to make sure that it is right, and that is only possible if the science is open, and the science isn't open. I have no idea if that last claim is true. If you had wanted to say something sensible, that is probably what you would have written about. What you are doing instead is inventing a straw man and using it to shout him down in a most aggressive manner, so you are proving his point that in fact critics are shouted down. Then again, this is Slashdot, so perhaps we already knew that.

Re:It won't work

[MightyMartian]

So your complaint is with politicians being hypocrites? I would like to know what that has to do with the science?

Re:It won't work

[tmosley]

Sensible discussion...on MY Slashdot!?

This is the first time I've seen sensible moderation on this subject on Slashdot. I've been labelled a troll so many times, I gave up trying.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so because "Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies" they must be wrong.

Hate to be the English teacher here, but that's not what he said. Please reread and resubmit critique.

Re:It won't work

[VocationalZero]

The scientific method doesn't have "keep shouting the other guy down until he goes away" as part of the process.

They had to adopt this or the "I'm not talking to you anymore" strategy after the 9000th "debater" insisted on continuing to "question" the data and methods that have been approved by countless scientific societies.

you don't get to question the ethics of the guy with the opposing ideas just because he disagrees with you.

That is absolutely not true. It turns out you can, though you may have to ask those "boorish","loud-mouth", "antagonistic", "dogma-preaching", "name calling" jerks over at the local academy how and when it is appropriate to do so.

I know "climate scientists" who behave exactly that way, so pretending they don't exist won't earn you any points in this discussion.

Oh noes, a climatologist being arrogant and touchy? Wake me up never.

Re:It won't work

[osgeek]

No one really disagrees with the basics of your first paragraph unless they like denying reality or have some kind of ax to grind. It's the dire predictions that require a move to a carbon credit based economy that are much less credible.

I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.

More ad hominem. Progress making your point, none. Progress making my point for me - that sincere skepticism is met with a religious-like zealotry - quite significant.

Re:It won't work

[d1r3lnd]

Just because you have a collection of facts does not mean that you are guaranteed to be correct about what they mean. For example, here's another perfectly true collection of facts:

http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/piratesarecool.jpg

The fact is, even the best climate "models" are woefully inadequate - they have a hard enough time explaining the data we already have, let alone predicting what values we might expect in the future. They're also remarkably incomplete. Yes, I know they're "only models" and that means that they're simpler than real life. But do you know what they're modeling? The whole fucking globe, which is a complex fucking system. There's only so much simplification you can get away with, and to be perfectly frank, present models are missing too much.

Look at earlier models - with their 100 foot deep "oceans," and all the other completely completely ignored confounding factors. Do current models fix some of those flaws? Sure, but there are plenty of flaws they haven't fixed. Find me a climate model that accurately accounts for the effects of clouds. What about all the biomatter at the bottom of the ocean, which, by the way, we've barely even studied?

Yet for DECADES, these folks have been claiming that they know they're right, they know why, and we should engage in some kind of large scale terraforming project on the basis of their half-assed models.

Do humans have an effect on the environment? Undoubtedly. Do we know what kind of effect, and how much, and why? Not yet.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

You responded to osgeek's comment http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1645100&cid=32134102 : Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies. They should expect a high degree of skepticism and deal with it head on rather than politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up.
with

Oh, so because "Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies" they must be wrong.

which is a straw man argument. osgeek did not say they were wrong, he said they should expect skepticism, or in other words they should be prepared to display the correctness of their assertions that societies infrastructures and policies must be changed. This is an entirely appropriate stance toward scientists who are supposed to operate just that way, by evidence and proof rather than persuasiveness or authority.

Logically you can only have made this fallacious argument either accidentally or deliberately. If accidentally, then any conclusion or idea you propose must necessarily be questioned by us as the process by which you arrived at that conclusion/idea may contain many such logical fallacies. I'll guess that you're basically honest, but if this issue is important to you then it seems likely that your rational functions are being subverted by your emotional investment.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

No, it is more a matter of. It is cheaper (and less destructive of freedom)to address the problems that come for your island nation as they occur than to try and keep it from happening.
Ultimately the problem is that all of the AGW suggested solutions involve giving more power to bureaucrats and reducing the freedom of individuals to make their own decisions about how they want to live their lives.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Concluding from "this will be too expensive" to "this can't be happening" has nothing to do with scientific scepticism at all

You'd be making a really compelling argument if he had said it can't be happening. Since he didn't say that but that they should expect scepticism and meet it head on instead of "politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up" then it would seem that straw man arguing and insults are the most effective weapons at your disposal, which is to say you lack facts and reason. Otherwise stop with the straw man arguments and present your facts and reason.

Re:It won't work

[Abcd1234]

I don't care which side you agree with in any debate -- its the sign of a weak argument to require the silencing of your critics.

So, demanding scientists no longer be harassed and persecuted by individuals, law enforcement, politicians, and the media is now equivalent to "silencing of your critics"?

Interesting.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that chart using data from thermometers positioned at the exhaust of an air conditioner? :)

Re:It won't work

[Teancum]

For myself, I'm holding out hope for the good folks at the Emc2 corporation to get Robert Bussard's Polywell reactor to work, or that one of the other fusion technologies can get into production within the next decade or two. If that happens, the need to push for acres of solar panels plastered all over will no longer be an issue except for relatively small power needs in isolated environments (aka a very rural area far from any power grid). Solar power is one of several approaches we should be taking, but it doesn't have to be the only one.

There are applications of petroleum that go beyond simply burning it up as a fuel, so it won't completely stop all petroleum production even if some magic pill comes along and eliminates the need for gasoline powered automobiles.

BTW, once you get that 1 barrel of oil out of the tar sands of Alberta, do you realize how much energy it takes to get a gallon of gasoline? The electrical power consumption at an oil refinery for processing one gallon of gasoline is actually more energy in general than the total amount of energy, if consumed at 100% efficiency, that the gallon of gasoline can possibly produce. In this regard, gasoline and petroleum isn't really an energy source, but rather an energy storage medium. Adding in the energy expended to extract oil from the tar sands, it makes the gasoline even less of an energy source.

BTW, I also agree.... +1 insightful for the AC post I'm responding to!

Re:It won't work

[TapeCutter]

"Call me old fashioned"

No, I'm old fashioned, I don't own a mobile phone. You are simply repeating propoganda without bothering to understand the context. The data still shows the MWP and the RWP however it has been demonstrated time and again that they were regional anomolies thus they have less influence on the global data than previously thought. That kind of self-correction is how science progresses, if you think that it goes against the scientific method then you must be looking at a different method to the rest of us.

"Weren't past IPCC reports peer reviewed (back when peer review maybe meant something)?"

The more you speak the more you reveal your ignorance. The IPCC is a 4 yearly review of all peer-revived papers on the subject of climate, it has an annual budget of $5-6M sourced from over 200 politically diverse nations. Each review involves roughly 2500 unpaid scientists tirelessly pawing over the mind numbing details of tens of thousands of papers during those four years. Collectively those scientists represent virtually every reputable scientific body on the planet. Who do you suggest should peer-review what amounts to the most rigorous peer-review of peer-reviewed science ever conducted on any scientific question?

Of course for any genuine skeptic the answer to that question is to review the reports and data yourself but I doubt the political muck raking displayed in your post will allow that to happen.

Re:It won't work

[Teancum]

There may be rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The question, however, is what can be attributed as the source, what is the cause and what are the consequences of that CO2 rising?

BTW, in terms of the algorithms being used and looking for the "hidden data"..... you had better believe I've gone looking for it, and yes I've had some climatologists at a loss for explaining why some numbers have been changed on the electronic versions of the data which are simply missing from the hand-written records of earlier time periods.... particularly when the data was computerized at a much later date. I'm not necessarily saying that the warming trends are completely fabricated, but there has been tampering of the climate data for some time, a sort of "thumb on the scale" that has been distorting the data for political purposes rather than working with it as a science.

As somebody who was involved with inputting at least some of the raw climate data that is currently being used, I will assert as a fact and expert witness to that effect if called upon to testify that some of the climate data has been falsified. Not all of it, but enough to at least throw off some climate models as using invalid or even false data and making a mockery of those who think they have the whole world wide average temperature down to a fraction of a degree. The algorithms being used to manipulate that data have not been published either, as the data was "sanitized" and asserted to be the original source data when in fact it wasn't

Re:It won't work

[jmorris42]

> there is a large fraction of the population who do not understand the scientific method

It might help your team if YOU actually understood science and it's limits.

> Fact is there are some things where there is an absolute truth for (climate change, drug effectiveness, best way to handle nuclear waste)

The FACT is none of the things you mention will ever attain the level of FACT. For example, there is no 'best' way to handle nuclear waste, they are all judgement calls involving a multitude of positive and negative factors. Cost, risk, benefits, etc. Launching it into the Sun for example would (assuming a suitable containment to make a failed launch safe) be the ultimate in safety but would be insanely expensive and eliminates the ability to reprocess it in the future as technology improves. Burying it is pretty safe but eco nut found plenty to object to with Yucca Mtn. Drug effectiveness never seems to be 100% settled and side effects turn up years and years after a new drug is approved. Medicine in general is still as much art as science. And Climate Change is almost entirely opinion. Nobody is dealing with that as facts to be measured, cost benefit analyzed, etc. One side says we are Doomed! unless we turn to Socialism and the other side is basically saying piss off hippie.

> some things that will always remain judgment calls (whether fetuses are alive, how to handle illegal immigration)

Reeally? There is a side arguing a fetus isn't alive? I always thought the argument was person/not person. I wonder why we don't just constrain the government's interest to Citizen/not Citizen. Since the US Constitution sets that line at birth we could then debate a more sensible question of whether in light of modern neonatal medicine whether we should revisit that line.

And I'm really perplexed by the other side of the illegal immigration argument. We all agree they are criminals, right? (Hint: the word illegal is the tell) We all agree that if we really wanted open borders Congress could just change the immigration laws and dismantle the border checkpoints. But for some reason (I actually DO know why) one side in this argument wants us to DoubleThink that it is good to have laws regulating immigration but to argue for enforcing them is racist. And that we are supposed to believe that this doesn't contribute to the general lack of respect for law and order.

Re:It won't work

[sumdumass]

No, you don't. If you did, you'd already know that the CO2 levels are rising (measurable, and an indisputable empirical fact), that CO2 absorbs more energy from infrared light than most other atmospheric gasses (also a verified fact) and that the CO2 almost certainly comes from the burning of fossil fuels (the C12 ratio is higher, due to fossil carbon lacking C14), and you'd accept that there is a warming trend, and that the warmest decade on record has occurred at a solar minimum.

There's absolutely nothing to this that resembles the "supernatural".

Actually, he does.. and he isn't ignoring anything either.

You see, none of what you mentioned proved AGW, none of what you mentioned proves the earth will get warmer or cooler or anything that's being claimed by AGW. Those are known facts but as often is the case, what works in theory doesn't always work in practice. If it did, then they wouldn't be adjusting the data to make the models work and they wouldn't be adjusting the models to get them somewhat historically accurate but never predictably accurate. Let's put it another way, Co2- which is less then .000350 or so of the atmosphere and of which, only .000100 or so is being claimed to be a problem and somehow that 100 or so parts per million is going to have a different effect than the first 60% of it.

The bottom line is that we do not understand the science behind the climate well enough to makes claims like that. There is a big difference between likely being a certain way and actually being a certain way. As of now, just like with evolution and the big bang, it's only been shown to be likely, not certain that it's a certain way. And if you can't tell the difference between fact and evidence to support a theory, you should clearly state your political affiliation and stop pretending to be of a scientific mindset.

"Hidden data"? You have a wealth of open data to examine. Which algorithms are hidden? Have you even been looking? No? You're just making stuff up, or copypasting from unverified claims -- all the while pretending that your own faults are the faults of science.

This is so one sided it is laughable. UEA fought well and hard to remove their data sets from public scrutiny- So much that the UK finally passed a law mandating they hand it over after their "let hide everything" emails became public. Hansen and Mann have taken it so far that they do not even have the formulas for the original manipulations/normalizations to the original data sets. And seeing how you are on slashdot, I'm sure you have heard the saying Garbage in Garbage out, how in the hell can you question someone wanting to know if this isn't the case when a lot of the data sets available are manipulations based on forgotten techniques purposely hidden by their creators? No, burying you head in the sand does not make the things you do not like disappear thereby allowing you to falsely shift blame to others. If you are indeed that ignorant of the surrounding controversy, then I suggest you start looking into it by looking at James Hansen's interview where he said exaggerating the effects of climate change was perfectly fine because the ends justify the means. And no, that's not an exact quote, but it's a reasonable take on his statement.

I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.

I'll say this, you are the pot calling the kettle black. I started off replying to you to simply show you that theory does not make a fact but facts can make a theory. Then after reading how ignorant you seem to be about the subjects at hand including the concerns of skeptics, you started making me mad. You seriously have no room to scold anyone about anything based on the tripe you just rambled off. Correlation does not mean cau

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is this insightful? He said no such thing.

What he said was, if you are going to ask the entire global population to change the entire way in which they live, the reasons for it should be scrutinized to the nth degree and see if they stand on their own.

He never said they were wrong, and the fact that you put those words in his mouth simply prove his point.

Re:It won't work

[quokkaZ]

And you wonder why people get sick of hearing nonsense like "mystery models with hidden data"? Because it is fundamentally a lie repeated by people like yourself either willfully or through being too lazy to actually look and see what is publicly available. I recommend that you start at the handy page of links provided by the climate scientists who run the RealClimate site. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

On that page you will find links to NCDC raw station data which is used to compile the NCDC and NASA GISS global surface temperature reconstructions. You will also find links to the Global Paleo Climatology Network, maintained by NOAA, containing vasts amounts of proxy data such as tree rings ice cores etc. You will also find links to freely available climate model code. And lots more besides. Try visiting the NASA GISS site where just about everything they do is downloadable - data, papers, models, code - the lot.

This single page of links provides any thinking person who posseses the requisite skills, with sufficient information to begin their own evaluation of climate science. Or you could start by reading some of the published research.

People will stop saying "you are full of it" when you stop constructing straw men and telling porkies.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

No. If you're fucking retarded and keep spouting the same shit at a scientist who has evidence and proof that is widely accepted in his field, and you're just making shit up, you deserve to get hounded out of town. Retards like you make me sick. We've had the data for a while now. There are thousands of papers, millions of pieces of data to back it up. I am perfectly allowed to say 'it's a fact' that gravity acts as an inverse square law to a good approximation at non relativistic speeds. You can claim it's up for debate as much as you like, but it ISN'T.

The earth is round. That debate is over. The earth orbits the sun. That debate is over. The moon isn't made of cheese. That debate is over. The climate is changing, and it's anthropic in origin. That debate is over. The problem is that fucking idiots like you want to argue with these statements as a means of avoiding their consequences.

Now fuck off and die to leave the rest of us some air to breathe.

Re:It won't work

[sumdumass]

AGW (whatever that stands for, I don't know) were wrong

AGW=Anthropogenic Global Warming. Basically, it's the warming caused by man or thought to be caused by man. It's a pretty important distinction between global warming because it implicitly injects man as a fault in which it claims man has to change it's behavior.

Re:It won't work

[Teancum]

I fail to see how climate change is an absolute truth, other than the painfully obvious observation that a particular climate is always in flux and is at best an average over a given period of time for a defined location or region. When that window changes, the interpretation of that climate has also changed. That isn't a scientific fact, that is a postulate and indeed the very definition of the terms involved. It doesn't help that sometimes the area under review also changes in time, and other factors that should be considered even for the raw measurement of the data isn't taken into consideration either.

Asserting a postulate as a theorem is perhaps one of the problems with this debate, and one of several fallacies that are involved in the debate.

I'll go so far as to suggest that climate science has improve significantly over the past several decades, and testable hypothesis have been put forth and some very useful predictive models have been developed as a direct result of that study and the creation of those theories. Predictions of hurricanes and other weather systems, particularly over the relatively short term, is something that has improved to the point that it is indeed saving lives and making positive contributions to society as a whole... including helping those who are poor and the most needy.

The question that is being raised here, however, if this hypothesis of AGW is something that exists at the same standards as predicting where a given hurricane system will land over the course of the next week. I assert that it does not, but that it certainly is something useful to bring up in terms of general trends and at least raising some alarm about the topic. Alarm, however, doesn't mean to hit the panic button and claim that civilization as we know it is doomed to failure and that we as a species need to do something today or we will be extinct within a generation. THAT isn't science, that is fear mongering and using "science" as a tool to gain political advantage, perverting both the political process and the science along the way.

Re:It won't work

[Reservoir Penguin]

I am a little bit confused over why the used the current Russian National anthem as a theme for the video. They must have gotten confused over the fact that it uses the same music as the old Soviet anthem, but it does not have a word about commnism in it. Should do better research next time.

Re:It won't work

[tbannist]

Do your debates never end? Does the debate continue past the point where there is anything new to say? Do you let the debate run forever as long as one side is profiting from your lack of desire to take action? The debate over global warming is largely manufactured to delay the inevitable changes that will arrive. Why? Because it's cheaper to manufacture the debate than it is to change our ways.

Eventually every debate must end, when the critics have nothing worthwhile left to say, it's probably past the time to end the debate. It's been quite some time since climate change critics have said anything interesting, new or useful. A few of them have found minor errors, which they seem to invariable trumpet as the "final nail in the coffin of global warming" and yet their amazing breakthrough discovery always falls short of actually having an impact.

For all intents and purposes the debate is over, the climate change deniers have begun resorting to legal persecution of scientists, they began resorting to name calling a long, long time ago. It's been almost a decade since they began trying to censor the scientists and muzzle them in those countries in which they had power. And yet, when some scientists lay out the generally accepted facts of the situation and ask for an end to bogus legal prosecutions and lies, you accuse them of trying to silence their critics?

It's laughable really. You side with criminals, censors, and liars to accuse their victims of fraud, censorship and lies when they protest the abuse heaped upon them.

Re:It won't work

[Reservoir Penguin]

We must live on different planets then. On my planet the science of AGW has been completely discredited and the scientists shamed. In more honourable countries people commit ritual suicide when caught with their pants down like that. But I guess not in the liberal sphere of the Western world.

Re:It won't work

[huckamania]

"however it has been demonstrated time and again that they were regional anomolies"

That is propaganda and was completely ridiculous when the first 'scientist' thought it up. It's about as smart as the 'Greenland isn't really green' argument. We all know that, but there are settlements that are still under ice that weren't during the MWP. The most you could have said was that there was no data to support a global MWP and RWP, however even that is no longer valid. How many other regions have to show the same warming before you will admit that there have been global warm periods in the past? Or did it just happen to warm in China, South America, North America, Indonesia and the Northern Hemisphere at the same time? And why do the MWP and RWP offend so many AGWers? I have a hard time believing predictions about the future from people who can't get the past right.

It is the same with the hockey stick. I'm sure from your repeating of the AGW line that the hockey stick is also a proven fact in your mind, despite nature not cooperating with your facts.

I could just as well have put "an ice free arctic" or "global sea level rise" instead of "the hockey stick" in that last paragraph and it would still be a valid criticism. The arctic is recovering and sea levels are not rising any faster then they did in the past.

The idea that there are only positive feedbacks is completely ludicrous. Try to get a consensus on when the next ice age is going to occur or whether CO2 is hastening or delaying it. You can't have an ice age without negative feedback or admitting there are external forces which govern climate that are more powerful then the trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Don't you find it odd that ice ages have occurred during times of increased CO2?

If we were talking about Venus, I would heartily agree that CO2 is a prime factor in climate. But we aren't talking about Venus.

Re:It won't work

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Strange since that is just what scientist has been doing since the beginning of time. Studying earth to find the facts. You just has to observe the earth to see what is happning.

Its getting a lot warmer - on average.

Re:It won't work

[sumdumass]

And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.

If AGW is happening, you should be asking for completely revised infrastructures and policies, for you own sake. It is your responsibility and in your own interest to find out what the truth of this matter is. Skeptics shouldn't expect others to do this work for them.

With all due respect, how am I or anyone else supposed to know something happening unless someone convinces me it's happening? There can't be an if, unless there is an is. So if I tell you that this car was owned by a little old lady that stored it in a garage and only drove it to church on Sundays, are you going to believe me that it's a sound car or are you going to check into it more?

What I'm getting at is that there are so many people out there attempting to con us out of our money. With the global warming debate, we saw a backlash against high taxes and out of control government spending which saw a political change in power in the US for almost over a decade. Now, the global warming people are saying that increasing taxes and government spending is the only way to deal with this gloom and doom that is global warming. So convince me or your not getting my credit card information. And saying that I shouldn't be questioning you or whoever (the you is a figure of speech, not you specifically) but doing what you say is somewhat the mark of a goof con to begin with. I mean this is evident with almost every scam from loans to pressuring the elderly into paying for home repairs that won't be completed to scamming someone out of their life savings.

What you basically saying is ignore everything you have built up to guard against fraud and do what those that might defraud you want.

Maybe we live in different parts of the world, but I don't share your view of how skepticism has been dealt with. On the contrary, I find it commendable how some find the effort to continue arguing with, usually misinformed, deniers. But there comes a point when the discussion needs to be settled, because it could truly go on forever, or there will be no time left to act.

I'm not sure that the level of skepticism has been dealt with as admirably as you present. Data sets have been destroyed, lost, or otherwise withheld from people simply wanting to verify the results, scientists have conspired to make that happen, admitted to exaggerating the details because the ends justify the means and so on. Many of the skeptics questions like how water vapor or solar activity plays into the mix have been flat out rejected until eventually incorporated into models that still aren't reliably accurate. Perhaps if you're already a member of the quire, the preaching is enough to keep you convinced, however, many people aren't and they want some answers. Claiming that anyone prominent to get attention to the questions is somehow connected to big oil or a republican or something else that doesn't answer the question simply isn't enough.

Re:It won't work

[tgibbs]

It's the catastrophic predictions based upon mystery models with hidden data that bothers me.

"Mystery models with hidden data" is an urban myth. Any publication has to describe the models and the data well enough for another scientist to reproduce it. Many of the models and much of the data is freely available over the internet.

Re:It won't work

[bhagwad]

Here's something you should have figured out for yourself:

There are lots of theories that we take for granted and which we rely on scientists to tell us the truth. Take the General theory of relativity for example. Even though I have a background in physics, I still don't have the math expertise to prove it. Yet I "believe" in it. Why? Because all the scientists claim that it's true. They say they've proved it and over the last 100 years, no scientist has challenged it. So I take their word for it. I have to. I accept the general theory of relativity even though I haven't personally proved it for myself. The same holds true for the overwhelming majority of fields in science, maths, geology etc etc.

So can you say I'm blindly accepting the general theory of relativity? If by "blindly" you mean have it proved it for myself? Then yes. I'm blindly accepting it. But if you mean do I have reasons to believe it's true, then no it's not blind acceptance. I have very good reasons to "believe" it's true. Those reasons are that scientists believe in it. I can do no better and I challenge you to find another way (Hint: You can't go around studying for years to be able to prove something for every single field. I'll need a couple of thousand years for that).

In fact, I'm willing to bet you can't prove or apply the principles of aerodynamics for yourself. Yet you believe the scientists and engineers when they tell you so right? If you didn't, you would never set foot in an airplane.

The same is even more true with an interdisciplinary science like climate change. It's very easy for amateurs like me to pick up some jargon here and there and using it to prove either side of a debate. But unless we're pros, we don't know the half of it. Every theory has ifs, buts, and exceptions. And since there's no way in hell I'm ever going to reach a stage where I can prove or disprove it for myself, I'll have to take the second best option and listen to those who are in a position to do it. And when the overwhelming majority of such people say that human caused climate change is real, I believe them - savvy? Just like I believe those scientists who say that the general theory of relativity is true.

The only thing that's different about climate change is that scientist's positions can inconvenience vested interests. The government, big businesses and others who suddenly find they may have to change the way they live. So this has suddenly come up. Take all that out, and we would never have had this "denialist" charade.

Moral of the story: Just believe the majority of the scientists. They've no axe to grind and that's why they're there. If year after year, group after group of scientists from various disciplines, backgrounds, countries and agencies claim that anthropogenic global warming is really happening, then you'd be a fool to listen to anything else from TV, politicians or businesses. Q.E.D

Re:It won't work

[jhol13]

Is last decade really warmest or not?

This is not as easy a question as you seem to imply by saying it as a fact.

True, the last decade was warmest on the very few decades we have measured, but it is not statistically significantly warmer. That is, the reason for it being warmer could very well be just due to random fluctuations.

So was last decade really warmest? Yes, but it cannot be used as evidence of anything.

Then what do we know about CO2? We know that CO2 absorbs more energy than most, but not all, gases in atmosphere. We know that e.g. H2O absorbs much more. Could it be so that increasing CO2 decreases H2O in the air? I have seen a claim that there now are less clouds than previously, but I do not know how scientific this claim is.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the inherent disconnect in AGW (at least those of the casual science audience prevalent on slashdot) can be summed up by one of Richard Feynman's comments - we don't really understand something until it can be reasonably explained to the average sixth grader, which let's face it is probably about the science literacy level of your average citizen. As far as I know, beyond "An Inconvenient Truth" which, being made by a politician, cannot be described as impartial science, there hasn't really been the compelling argument at this level. Instead it has gone the bureaucratic interventionist route, which most Americans have a profound distrust for.

Peer review is well and good, but, especially with groundbreaking papers, errors often are overlooked for years. I'm a mathematician and I was fascinated to learn at a conference a couple of years ago that the Erdos-Renyi paper that effectively established the study of random graphs had fundamental flaws because the two authors (the most prolific in history and the one for whom the Hungarian academy of mathematics is named for) were not as careful as they should have been. It took almost 30 years for the flaw to be recognized and the true phase transition to be understood. Similarly, in my current paper, I realize the odds of anyone actually reading the appendices where I give a series of technical counterexamples are are slim, and that this part is unlikely to be scrutinized very thoroughly, even in peer review.

This is even more of an issue for AGW because you have climate scientists using statistical methods that are often abused by scientists who didn't pay attention to all of the qualifiers that the statisticians included on the tools (they can sound like many a drug ad sometimes). That's the part that concerns those of us who are concerned that causation is being inferred when the data is inherently noisy - most of the data is wherever we have historical records, not some representative collection of locations chosen scientifically. Most of the data is inherently imprecise (and possibly inaccurate) due to the limitations of instrumentation until at least 1800 and probably more realistically the early - mid 1900's. The accuracy can be adjusted for, the lack of precision, somewhat less so. Anyone who has done mathematical modeling knows that interpolation is a lot easier than extrapolation, and that the model can be skewed by data closer to the ends. In that regard, our data integrity is the worst possible - the early extremal data is our least accurate/precise and it naturally will have some of the greatest affect on the model. That is part of what causes the "Hockey Stick" pattern in most models.

You are appealing to authority for science which is something that the scientific method abhors. In point of fact, the NAS as a whole is only slightly more qualified than the NBA to take a stand on AGW as most members of the NAS have studied nothing at all related to AGW and so are not in a position to make a meaningful contribution on the subject. The same applies to Nobel Prize winners. I agree that personal attacks have no place in science, but that cuts both ways, and those who consider AGW flawed should not have their motives impugned out of hand.

Re:It won't work

[Xonstantine]

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost.

Dude, like, it's settled science. Didn't you get the memo from the Nobel laureates? We're talking about completely apolitical scientists with nothing but the concern for the well being of their fellow earthlings in their hearts. They don't have a political bone in their body or any agenda besides the little agenda of crushing capitalism and relegating the vast majority of the earth's human population into either grinding poverty or the graveyard.

Re:It won't work

[Xonstantine]

you get newspapers with front page stories saying "argh all ice is melting we're all gonna die in 2020!"

It's not just newspapers. It's folks like that Nobel laureate Al Gore. And when he and his 20 SUV entourage drive 200 meters to attend a conference after flying a private jet 2500 miles, he buys carbon credits from the company he has ownership stake in to offset it.

Re:It won't work

[dbIII]

Does anybody seriously deny that there is such a thing as climate?

Possibly, because after a while some of the arguments boil down to a conspiracy to create a world government and going around calling Jewish kids Nazis.
We are seeing the bad side of PR and extremist nutjobs getting decent funding. This is a new low point for PR companies even worse that the campaigns to encourage women to smoke in larger numbers back when very few women smoked.

Re:It won't work

[mpe]

And now all we need is to get loud-mouth aggressive "scientists" to stop labeling everyone they don't agree with as "nutball propaganda". The scientific method doesn't have "keep shouting the other guy down until he goes away" as part of the process. The scientific method doesn't resort to name calling and insult as a means of proving the hypothesis.

Such behaviour is fairly typical of politics. It's also very likely to be the case that when this happens the claim in question dosn't have much actual evidence to support it. Quite possibly that the advocate knows this to be the case but fears "losing face".

When I read this summary, I thought "hurray, the antagonistic, dogma-preaching 'scientists' were finally going to be told that debate IS allowed and questioning the data and methods IS allowed and you don't get to question the ethics of the guy with the opposing ideas just because he disagrees with you."

There's also the idea that only "climate scientists" are qualified to even say anything. It's not as if statistic experts can know about how best to use statistics, computer scientists can know how to write computer programs, historians and archaeologists might have some idea about past environmental conditions, etc.

And that's why every time you ask a strong AGW proponent to support his claims he resorts to name calling and saying things like "it's a fact" and "the debate is over". Never explain how you got to your conclusion, pretend the other guy is an idiot for asking, and you'll have "uneducated, scared, misinformed" people at your feet.

This is behaviour you don't tend to see from scientists in general. However you do tend to see from religious and political groups.

Re:It won't work

[BlueStrat]

Europe is an existence proof for how we can live pretty well with half the CO2 footprint, and high gas prices.

Europe would be a good example only if the US were to completely alter it's population distributions to match those of Europe. The US is BIG. The US population and it's cities and towns are much more spread out, with large areas of the continent that are relatively sparsely populated, but yet that population is a significant portion of the total population.

Even US cities are different. Most US cities aren't that old compared to most European cities, and the many cities designed/built (as well as expansions of existing cities) after the Model 'T' era were laid out with automobiles in mind. Many European cities are hundreds of years old, built when most people walked and those with freedom and means rode horses and horse-drawn wagons, carts, etc. This means the cities are much more compact, which makes things like mass transit, walking, and bicycling much more practical and economical.

As far as these scientists and their statement, I agree with others here who've expressed the opinion that they're only hurting the pro-AGW camp. The best thing they could do would be to advocate for a full disclosure of all raw data and have it made available to anyone, and set up something like the X-Prize for anyone that can come up with a decently-working climatological model whose code and algorithms can be released publicly and tested by anyone willing to do so.

The fact that those leading the charge behind AGW and cap-n-tax stand to make Sagans of dollars from it, along with more political power and government control over the people, coupled with this reluctance to release methods/data & attacks against anyone who questions their conclusions, makes me extremely skeptical.

There may be, in fact, an AGW crisis looming that threatens mankind. Unfortunately, the sloppy and ideologically- and politically-driven "science" and election-campaign-like tactics using personal attacks, etc have completely wrecked the debate and delayed or killed any chance of doing anything about it for years or decades.

The world just isn't going to give up many trillions in wealth, sacrifice many lives, reduce individual freedoms, lose national sovereignty, and destroy the standard of living of many millions without solid, verifiable, and dire reasons. This has only reinforced skepticism.

Strat

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Global average temperature keeps going up [wikipedia.org] - the planet is warming.

In other news... in the last 2 seconds of trading, the value of my stocks have increased by $100. So in an hour I will have made over $100,000! Because, like the global average temperature, over an incredibly long period of time it will continue to follow the same trend seen in an absurdly short period of time, right?

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Christian Louboutin Shoes

Re:It won't work

[Cidolfas]

I do believe this has been going on for a long time now. It's called publishing in peer reviewed journals. Thousands of times.

And that model holds up until the peer reviewed journals start rejecting alternate theories because they disagree with the AGW gospel.

When the baseline for your field isn't "here's the data, this is what I think it means as somebody who's spent a lot of time learning about it", and is instead "here's the data that fits with the theory our backers want us to prove, we justify it by saying there's a consensus, and kick blasphemers out of the consensus to keep it" then you're no longer science - you're religion.

Re:It won't work

[Solandri]

And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.

If AGW is happening, you should be asking for completely revised infrastructures and policies, for you own sake. It is your responsibility and in your own interest to find out what the truth of this matter is. Skeptics shouldn't expect others to do this work for them.

That is part of the problem feeding the skepticism too. We already have a solution to global warming, have had it for over 50 years: Switch our electricity generation to nuclear. Most of the people skeptical about AGW have been gung ho about nuclear for decades.

But no. The mere mention of nuclear sends the environmental groups into a conniption fit. Absolutely no way, no how, will they ever accept nuclear power. Even if it means we doom the Earth to fry in a CO2 bath. They not only want everyone to recognize that the problem (AGW) exists, they want the problem solved only in the manner they approve of (renewables like wind, solar, conservation).

IMHO that is what is contributing to a lot of the skepticism. The refusal by the environmental groups to accept the only energy solution we have ready right now which can stop AGW in its tracks. If they really believed in AGW and that we are in serious trouble unless we make massive changes to our infrastructure right now, then they should be willing to accept nuclear power despite its flaws since it's the only technology we have for probably the next few decades which can satisfy the world's energy needs without producing CO2. But they don't accept it, and that gives the impression of validating the conspiracy theory that there really is no AGW and that this is all just a bluff by environmental groups to try to "trick" everyone into changing the world's energy economy.

Re:It won't work

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Maybe you are putting too much into a word? Climate sceptics (as I believe they style themselves) do indeed have a streak of denial about them, and thus they easily become climate deniers, senseless as the word is. "Climate believers" is just as bad: it is not a religion, just an (oldish) theory with a small mountain of evidence in support.

But then, I am in the odd category off having read some of it, being convinced that the globe is warming due to increase in carbon dioxide, and not believing we can do anything effectively about it. Well, we could in theory, but I don't think it is politically possible.

Re:It won't work

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Read the papers then, and judge yourself. The basics are not very hard to understand, even with a modest background in physics or chemistry. Who cares about Al Gore? Besides, the ocean might at worst raise about 1 meter in 2100. I think Al Gore will be beyond caring by then.

Re:It won't work

[Troed]

Agree. It's almost like cherry picking the 19th century as the base temperature point for a linear extrapolation into the future, or the end of the 70s as a base point for arctic ice coverage.

Both starting points above were colder than the average appropriate time spans around them.

Re:It won't work

[cbreak]

Unfortunately, fosil fuels are not an energy source, they are an energy carrier. Just like batteries, liquid hydrogen and many other means of storing energy. The only energy source in the system earth is the sun.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

And now all we need is to get loud-mouth aggressive "scientists" to stop labeling everyone they don't agree with as "nutball propaganda". The scientific method doesn't have "keep shouting the other guy down until he goes away" as part of the process. The scientific method doesn't resort to name calling and insult as a means of proving the hypothesis.

Who are the scientists being "shouted down"? Where are their papers disproving AGW?

Oh, I forgot, Al Gore has got them all locked up at Guantanamo.

(Love your idea of improving the debate by labelling the scientists you disagree with as "scientists").

Re:It won't work

[medcalf]

So what you are arguing then is that when this same branch of science (climatology) was arguing in the mid-1970s that we were about to enter an ice age, then we should have been pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, because Science?

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

And when he and his 20 SUV entourage drive 200 meters to attend a conference after flying a private jet 2500 miles, he buys carbon credits from the company he has ownership stake in to offset it.

And your problem is what, exactly?

Gore thinks AGW is happening, he sets up a company to try and mitigate the problem. You've got some kind of problem with capitalism?

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

When one considers that we don't have any better trend data (the actual data we have only goes back about 50-60 years of proper measuring

So the thermometer was invented in 1950 in your alternate reality then?

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

Is that chart using data from thermometers positioned at the exhaust of an air conditioner? :)

Yup, that would be dumb.

I know, let's examine all the weather stations to find out which ones are badly sited and remove them from the record.

Pity that that tends to increase the measured warming trend.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I'm very disappointed that asking for baseline data and manipulation algorithms has been met with...

baseline data and manipulation algorithms.

Which the deniers then used to do... what exactly? Line their parrot cages?

Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies.

The ultimate denier argument - "I don't believe in AGW because it would cost me money".

Re:It won't work

[antirelic]

It is about political ideologues hijacking science. These people are not hypocrites. They believe in one ruling class and one proletariat.

Re:It won't work

[MrHanky]

I already pointed out that there is strong evidence that fossil carbon is the source of the CO2 due to the fact that it lacks certain isotopes that belong to atmospheric carbon. I also said CO2 absorbs energy from infrared light. It's in the comment you're replying to. And then you go on to say: "The question, however, is what can be attributed as the source, what is the cause and what are the consequences of that CO2 rising?"

No wonder you didn't find the algorithms you were looking for: you can't read.

Re:It won't work

[drinkypoo]

There may be rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The question, however, is what can be attributed as the source, what is the cause and what are the consequences of that CO2 rising?

Source and cause are for these purposes the same thing. Consequences have been well-known for decades. We know what an increase in environmental CO2 does to most known organisms on earth, and we very much do know what an increase in environmental CO2 does to the climate, speaking in general terms. Do we know what it will do in Kalamazoo on October 12, 2022 if we increase CO2 by 0.3%? Obviously not. Is this a relevant argument? No.

As somebody who was involved with inputting at least some of the raw climate data that is currently being used, I will assert as a fact and expert witness to that effect if called upon to testify that some of the climate data has been falsified.

Now prove that it's relevant.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, it's just a co-incidence that theories predicting "climate change" are much harder to falsify.

I'm pretty sure a number of the predictions respected climatologists made during the 80s and 90s about "global warming" turned out not to come true. All, in fact. So "global warming" might have suffered something of a credibility crisis mightn't it. Remind me again why corporations and political movements re-brand.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

And that model holds up until the peer reviewed journals start rejecting alternate theories because they disagree with the AGW gospel.

And that would be terrible if it happened.

But it has never happened.

Unless of course you are talking about papers like "EARTH'S HEAT SOURCE - THE SUN, Oliver K. Manuel, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT, VOLUME 20 No. 1 2009" which claims the sun is made of Iron.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, here's another perfectly true collection of facts: http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/piratesarecool.jpg

I'm not sure if you're reading that Graph right. The way it is it seems to perfectly show that there's Global Warming going on since the 1860s. It has Temperature on the y-Axis and time on the x-Axis, temperature steadily rising over time. Why on Earth they wrote arbitrary numbers of Pirates under the x-Axis is puzzling me, though.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost.

What data has been lost? What methods have been lost?

Call me old fashioned, but I liked the IPCC report more when it still showed the MWP and RWP. If AGW is correct, why the need to change the temperature records?

For fucks sake, just use the great gazoogle.

The description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports has changed since the first report in 1990 as scientific understanding of the temperature record of the past 1000 years has improved.

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

Weren't past IPCC reports peer reviewed

Of course not. Papers published in journals are peer reviewed. The IPCC reports are summaries of what is in the papers. Old papers are replaced by new papers. Science marches on.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them do deny the concept of average temperature, so yes they do deny climate.

Re:It won't work

[grumbel]

The fact that the parent was labeled a troll only confirms the pattern I've witnessed, even in Scientifically-minded communities like /., of shouting down or censoring skeptics.

If you want to play skeptic, you have to show evidence. If you want to go agaist the scientific consensus, you have to show lots of evidence. The average Joe Shmu climate change denier has none, instead he just repeats the points that have already been debunked over and over again. Its no surprise that scientists are getting annoyed by that, especially when those wrong points are used to make political decisions.

As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I'm very disappointed that asking for baseline data and manipulation algorithms has been met with stonewalling and name calling.

The data is available and to this day there has been no proof of manipulation. Its exactly these kinds of lies that hinder an honest debate.

Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies.

On a smaller scale they did it before with the ozone hole and guess what, it fucking worked.

Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.

They have and it obviously didn't work.

Here a little thought experiment: Lets assume for a moment that climate change is complete and utter nonsense, how would you expect the world to look like? I for one would expect there to be a large group of climate scientists opposing the climate change theories and quite a bit of data showing that it isn't happening. How would the world look when climate change is right? I would expect huge industries, whose business depends on polluting the earth, to oppose the scientific evidence and lots and lots of FUD in the debate aimed at discrediting the scientists.

Somehow the situation today looks a hell of a lot more then the later one, then the first.

Re:It won't work

[Alef]

Gotta run, so can't reply to everything, but that's a bit of a Pascal's Wager. Like the fallacy of the wager, the fallacy of that is that there are infinite things that can do us in environmental disaster, war, asteroids, gray goo, skynet, etc.

Maybe so, but then you have to weigh those different risks against each other and try to find out which are worth considering at this moment. If there were, right now, thousands of scientists calling out for immediate action against the formation of gray goo, and even humanly visible signs of it present in nature, it would certainly deserve our attention. However, as it stands, do you honestly argue that all of these other risks are currently at the same level of credibility or imminence as climate change?

I agree that there are a lot of rhetorics, simplifications and plain errors in the public debate at the moment. That is unfortunately how the world and the dramaturgy of our media works, especially considering the vast economical and political stakes involved. It is also the issue that most people get convinced by emotional arguments rather than cold data and logic, so arguing over data have a tendency to come second in public discourse. Like it or not, but this is human nature. However, that mustn't deter us from finding the facts of these matters.

Re:It won't work

[Cassius Corodes]

That's mostly an urban myth - see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a biologist by profession. I've seen exactly what you describe happen during the evolution vs creationism/intelligent design debate. Intelligent design is a pretty unpopular opinion here on slashdot, so I wonder why the anti-AGW crowd are employing the exact same tactics as the creationism/intelligent design crowd.

To members of the anti-AGW crowd: if you don't like the science, do it yourself. Devise new methods. Analyze the data in novel ways. And you know what? If you do good science, climatologists will listen with much more respect and reason than you are currently giving them. It's easy to present a case that makes sense to a scientist. It's damn impossible to do that with someone who has a preconceived ideology they hold onto like a favorite toy.

Re:It won't work

[Cassius Corodes]

What's the climate like there?

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

And what would you propose replacing them with right now?

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

1) it depends upon what the meaning of is, is. (yes, I did use present tense. I should have been vaguer. You're being pedantic, and you know it.)

2) The symptoms-addressing is more of a future problem than a present problem, so it has the same 20-year horizon. The one thing that might make sense to address now/ASAP, is warming in the arctic. Intuition says that's going to have nasty feedback effects in the future. However, if you decide that you're addressing symptoms, intuition is hardly a reliable guide, and it seems like you are buying heavily into the very models that we're not dead sure of -- what action addresses what symptoms, what is the magnitude of the action, what are the predicted side-effects? We might end up, saying balancing ozone destruction against warming, or acid rain.

3) If we won't have a fossil fuel replacement in 20 years, then we should start developing one in 1980. Failing that, now. I would, in fact, like to see the market work on this one, and the best way I know of to get the market moving is to convert the hypothesized external cost of carbon emissions, integrated over all modeled futures, into a tax, and phase it in on a schedule that we hope tracks the rate of non-GHG energy innovation, or maybe pushes it at little bit. I'd rather not have the government choosing favorites, except perhaps proven ones (things show to work in Europe where they already have half our footprint), and ones to help in the 3rd world.

It's the integration-over-all-outcomes parts that's the real problem. Just as certain banks and hedge funds recently did, I very much get the impression that lots of people are only considering the most-likely outcomes. For the US, most-likely is not-that-bad, and for people (like me) who live in the Northeast, or many Canadians, well, it might even be positive (shorter winter, summers no hotter than what I grew up with in the South, ok). But the tail of outcomes contains some extremely high-cost outcomes of distinctly non-zero probability, at least using the models that we have now. Their cost-weighted measure is enormous -- if we trust the models. And do we trust the models, more than, say, coal-industry spokesmen?

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

Says wikipedia (not a certain source, I know):

Despite substantial uncertainties, especially for the period prior to 1600 when data are scarce, the warmest period prior to the 20th century very likely occurred between 950 and 1100, but temperatures were probably between 0.1C and 0.2C below the 1961 to 1990 mean and significantly below the level shown by instrumental data after 1980. The heterogeneous nature of climate during the 'Medieval Warm Period' is illustrated by the wide spread of values exhibited by the individual records.[12]

Here's some reasonable data somewhat supporting your solar intensity hypothesis. The problems are that (1) now that we can observe intensity directly, we haven't observed large enough changes (2) your assertion about the relative warmth of the MWP seems to be not quite correctn and (3) where's the huge pile of sunspots?

I found no problems in anything that you referenced, because you referenced nothing. If you want to make a case, please support it. The "standard sources" (Wikipedia, top hits in Google) don't.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

And do we trust the models, more than, say, coal-industry spokesmen?

No, I don't trust the models more than a coal industry spokesperson because the people who are preparing the models have at least as much of an agenda as the coal-industry spokesperson.

Re:It won't work

[Jawnn]

No. All we need need to do now is realize that an awful lot of the "disagreement" is indeed coming from "nutball propagandists", i.e. those with no credible expertise on the subject but who nevertheless weigh in and blather incessantly about that which they have (usually) no real understanding. Real scientists know that well reasoned disagreement is an essential part of the scientific process. Without a desire and willingness to entertain alternative hypotheses, the whole thing is prone to falling prey to group-think or even a simple mistake. The problem is that those who do not understand science or the scientific process will, when they have an agenda to advance, seize on the fact that good science is always being questioned and hold that up as "proof" that even the most well established facts "aren't proven". That, in a nutshell, is exactly what all the right-wing noisemakers and their fan-bois are doing in the climate change debate - demonstrating their ignorance of the scientific process. For that, they deserve every bit of the derision that gets heaped upon them by those who know better.

Re:It won't work

[Coryoth]

That is propaganda and was completely ridiculous when the first 'scientist' thought it up. It's about as smart as the 'Greenland isn't really green' argument. We all know that, but there are settlements that are still under ice that weren't during the MWP.

Really? You wouldn't happend to have any reference at all for that would you? The settlements under ice that is ... there were Norse settlements on Greenland, and the historical records spoke of an Eastern and a Western settlement. For some time no-one quite believed in the Eastern settlement, until they eventually found it, not quite where people were expecting. So, two settlements known from records, two settlements found. Are either of those settlements under ice? It seems Google maps and satellite photos can come to out aid. Consider these Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:
 
  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlment map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.
 
Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How abut on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

Obviously not "under ice", but rather sitting in what are nice green pastures (the benefits of being situated in fjords). So, the question remains -- what of these mysterious settlements that are still "under ice"? How do we know they're there? Certainly no historical records of any kind mention anything other than the Eastern and Western settlements, which as we saw are clearly far from "under ice". No one has found settlements under ice that I'm aware of. So please ... enlighten me, I want to know about these under ice settlements.

Re:It won't work

[CrimsonAvenger]

Gore thinks AGW is happening, he sets up a company to try and mitigate the problem. You've got some kind of problem with capitalism?

Some people have problems with the idea of paying yourself to take care of a problem that you caused.

Not sure why, mind you, but there it is....

Re:It won't work

[schon]

you'd already know that the CO2 levels are rising (measurable, and an indisputable empirical fact), that CO2 absorbs more energy from infrared light than most other atmospheric gasses (also a verified fact) and that the CO2 almost certainly comes from the burning of fossil fuels (the C12 ratio is higher, due to fossil carbon lacking C14)

The question, however, is what can be attributed as the source, what is the cause

So, did you just not understand the post you were replying to, or are you deliberately ignoring it in the hopes that nobody will notice?

I've had some climatologists at a loss

Just like you have MrHanky at a loss because he can't explain the source of Co2, right?

Re:It won't work

[Alef]

And what agenda is that? Making money through grants? Because I am pretty sure any climate scientist would easily double their salary by joining the coal-industry lobby. Frankly, I am amazed more of them don't given the amount of distrust they apparently have to face from the public (who have actually hired them).

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

I disagree, very much. I know one climate scientist, and I know quite a few people who do that sort of modeling (it's all variations on finite elements, with various hard parts stirred in). Some of them are doing stuff that is completely far-out, meaning, trying to model the process by which a star goes nova. The obvious question is figuring out how the model diverges from reality, how to test that, and how to fix it. That's pretty much their focus. As far as agendas go, I suspect it is the other way around -- if the models keep telling you that we have a serious problem, eventually you might start telling people that it looks like we have a serious problem.

The coal industry, in contrast, has a duty to their shareholders to promote the further profitability of the coal industry by whatever legal means there are, and they are not required by law to tell the truth except in certain special circumstances (SEC reports, testifying under oath, that sort of thing).

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some who don't deny climate change, but question the anthropogenic part of it. They are still being labeled "climate deniers", which is pretty unwise because it leads to in- vs. outgroup processes, radicalizing even the ones who have an open mind.

Re:It won't work

[Attila Dimedici]

Because I am pretty sure any climate scientist would easily double their salary by joining the coal-industry lobby.

And you would be wrong. Look at the numbers, as various climate scientists have increased their advocacy of AGW, their grants have skyrocketed. If you look at the amount of money given to AGW skeptics by various fossil fuel companies, it is dwarfed by the money given to AGW promoters by fossil fuel companies.

Re:It won't work

[Lars T.]

There is no such thing as AGWs. "Global Warming" has now become "Climate Change".

Yup. Of course not the way you insinuate it happened: Frank Luntz, a political consultant (and now FOX News commentator), whose specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”, did his job, and thus spoke in 2002

“'Climate change' is less frightening than 'global warming.' ... While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge”

Now compare speeches by president Bush from 2001 and 2003, when talking of the issues of Global Warming. Not only that, the administration made it a policy for all government employed scientists to use the new-speak word.

Re:It won't work

[Alef]

We already have a solution to global warming, have had it for over 50 years: Switch our electricity generation to nuclear.

Sure, although you haven't addressed the issue with vehicle fuels, which if I recall correctly is about half of the total energy consumption.

The refusal by the environmental groups to accept the only energy solution we have ready right now which can stop AGW in its tracks. If they really believed in AGW and that we are in serious trouble unless we make massive changes to our infrastructure right now, then they should be willing to accept nuclear power despite its flaws since it's the only technology we have for probably the next few decades which can satisfy the world's energy needs without producing CO2.

You could be right that the lack of pragmatism in some environmentalist groups is counterproductive contributes to skepticism, but I think you are simplifying the gamut of opinions quite a bit. Where I live, I would say that the majority of AGW supporters, which is essentially everyone, accept nuclear power as the lesser of two evils. In fact, so much so that we are entirely dependent on it, and have no coal or oil power whatsoever nowadays. And this is in spite of the fact that we were affected by the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster and remember it well.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

Some people have problems with the idea of paying yourself to take care of a problem that you caused.

Would the carbon be more offset if he bought the offsets from someone else?

I just don't understand your problem.

Re:It won't work

[517714]

Cats cause global warming. Cats lie in sun and absorb heat. Before man, cats lived in the forests where the forest canopy prevented very much light from reaching them, and they were not able to absorb heat and contribute to global warming. Since the industrial revolution, people have accepted cats into their homes where they can lie next to the windows in sunbeams absorbing vast amounts of radiation. In the last half of the twentieth century, man provided cats with canned and dried foods that allowed cats to lie in sunbeams for longer periods of time thereby accelerating global warming. In the last decade, "scientifically balanced" catfoods were developed that improved cats health and increased the heat absorption of cats significantly. We need to kill all the cats and bury or eat the corpses to prevent Felinogenic Global Warming. Join the AntiFGW society today! Eat a cat for humanity! I know this is ridiculous, but it goes almost as deep as your argument.

Your logic is so flawed that it boggles the mind.

You are stating a hypothesis that explains the statistically based conclusion of AGW scientists, but you are not stating the theory. This has no more validity than the arguments of Creationists who likewise cite only information that seems to support their so-called theory. Both suffer from having "a slight scientifically orientation".

The warmest decade on record occurred long before man evolved. Solar cycles are eleven years, that makes it pretty difficult to fit a decade in the minimum half of the cycle. I suspect that you are in fact referring to the solar minimum of 2008-2009. In which case your statement is just plain wrong, it is more correctly that the solar minimum occurred in the warmest decade in recent history. Claiming causality where it clearly does not exist is simply lying.

Re:It won't work

[Rockoon]

Hah, yeah... when you eliminate mostly northern ones.

You would THINK that badly situated instruments would be location agnostic.. normal distribution and all that...

..but most of the ones that are decided to be "bad" by the graph makers are the ones with cooler than average records.

Pity that selectively eliminating the northernmost readings for later years tends to increase the warming trend.

Re:It won't work

[517714]

Precisely that, is what peer-reviewed scientific journals are for. Have you been reading them?

Why can I not find them on the IPCC website? Instead they present marketing documents which simply do not make a convincing case to someone who has been trained in experimental procedure.

Re:It won't work

[CrimsonAvenger]

Would the carbon be more offset if he bought the offsets from someone else?

I just don't understand your problem.

Didn't say I had a problem with it, actually.

Though I do think that I have issues with a guy who spends his time talking about the horrors of emitting carbon, while reminding you that if you just give him money, the horror will go away.

Sounds a bit like a televangelist, frankly, and while I may not have less respect for that sort than you do, I'm pretty sure I don't have more respect for that sort than you do...

If Al Gore really wanted people to take him seriously about his carbon-offset company, it would have been set up as a non-profit. As is, the fact that he's shilling for an idea that'll make him a lot of money if we buy into it taints the idea, just a little.

Re:It won't work

[Atzanteol]

That's because the actual science is far too complex to explain to everybody such that they will "get it." Do you understand quantum physics? Maybe. But I don't. So I accept what experts tell me because, well, *they're experts and I'm not*. The science is there if I wish to educate myself (to double check the experts) but if I don't take that opportunity then my best option *is* to accept the scientific consensus.

And if you get a guy like me shouting that quantum mechanics is wrong the media does a disservice by portraying me on an even playing field with those who know what the fuck they're talking about.

Almost *no* politician (none perhaps?) is even remotely knowledgeable enough about the actual science involved in climate change to say that it is wrong. Anybody who listens to them over *actual* scientists is an even greater moron.

Re:It won't work

[Xonstantine]

I don't have any problem with people making money honestly, but Al Gore isn't. He's the 21st century version of a snake oil salesman. Worse, he preaches an energy impoverished lifestyle for all of the proletariat, but consumes stupendous amounts of energy himself. I don't know about you, but I think it lends a certain amount of credibility when evangelists actually manage to live the life they are calling/demanding other people to live.

Re:It won't work

[berbo]

you're being willfully ignorant. Obviously the major source of additional atmospheric CO2 is combustion of fossil fuels, e.g combustions of isooctane

C8H18 + 17 O2 -> 8 CO2 + 18 H20

http://www.altfuels.org/backgrnd/fuelchem.html

Re:It won't work

[MightyMartian]

And you don't think the conservatives haven't hijacked science for their own agendas? I mean, I'm seeing school boards trying despite SCOTUS rulings forbidding it to teach creationism in school. We watched an administration which stifled scientists and rewrote reports.

Politicians of all stripes will do this. Blaming the left and liberals for what conservatives do is just plain hypocritical.

Re:It won't work

[MightyMartian]

Reality doesn't give a crap about your political preferences or ideological leanings. Industry is perfectly welcome to deal with the issue. In part because so many governments shield their polluting industries from the real costs of what they do (just look at the cap on BP over the Gulf spill, if that isn't basically the taxpayer underwriting corporate pollution, tell me what is), we already have the system you rail against in reverse.

The problem we face is will oil become prohibitively expense before or after the damage we've done becomes hopelessly irreversible? Beyond that, there are other serious issues. Oil is an incredibly important resource in materials production. Plastics, nylons, lubricants, drugs, and on and on and on use oil. In fact, probably the single most idiotic use of complex hydrocarbons is for transportation and energy production. When the oil runs low and the prices permanently spike, it isn't just a tank of gas that's going to get outrageously expensive, it's a whole host of things that consumers don't often recognize as coming from oil. Now maybe some day we'll be able to go to Titan or to some of the comets and mine all the hydrocarbons we could ever want, but in the meantime, putting oil into a car is a ridiculous waste of a chemically valuable substance.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully endorse the above CO2 tax because it's two-fold. Clean up alleged global warming, and obesity across the globe! If you charge everyone along the way of production, food prices would skyrocket. Pretty tough to gain any weight when it costs $100 for a gallon of milk or $300 for a cheeseburger!

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe's model simply cannot work for the United States. It might work on a small scale for the north eastern states, but the rest of the country is simply too spread out and too suburban. Public transport is simply not cost effective for the majority of the United States, even if there were a huge cultural shift that encouraged it, for example. Almost no one can do things like bike to work, it's simply too far. Even doing something as simple as going to the grocery store can be a 30 min drive or more.

Re:It won't work

[huckamania]

Maybe settlement was too strong a word, but there are structures that have been revealed by retreating ice. Even the Sandnes farm you mention was preserved by permafrost. I'm sure it wasn't permafrost when they were actually farming there.

Typical that you would so casually ignore 90% of my post and then rebut with photos of settlement not covered by ice to prove some pedantic nonsense? I never said they were all under ice or that even a significant percentage are under ice, so I don't see how that helps this discussion at all.

Re:It won't work

[Krahar]

Thanks. :)

Re:It won't work

[tgibbs]

As far as these scientists and their statement, I agree with others here who've expressed the opinion that they're only hurting the pro-AGW camp. The best thing they could do would be to advocate for a full disclosure of all raw data and have it made available to anyone, and set up something like the X-Prize for anyone that can come up with a decently-working climatological model whose code and algorithms can be released publicly and tested by anyone willing to do so.

The notion that the code and algorithms for climate models is secret is an urban legend. Model algorithms are described in published scientific papers. Code for a number of models, as well as quite a bit of data, both raw and processed, can be found here.

Here is an independent group that is rewriting the GISTEMP temperature-reconstruction data as an open source project.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Global Warming is still used. It appears in the latest issue of Nature and PNAS, as well as in recent (2010) issues of Science, PRSocA, PRSocB, JPhysChemA, Ecology, JEnvironQ, PLos One and many others.

That they "don't even call it global warming anymore" is just as false as most of the claims made by lay-critics of climate science.

Re:It won't work

[BergZ]

But that's just the problem is that respectable journals aren't rejecting alternate theories "because they disagree with the AGW gospel" they reject alternate theories because they disagree with our observations of reality.

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

You are making claims that can be supported (or not) with numbers, it would be helpful if you provided some.

Y2K Census data if you take the data for metro areas (this is conservative) sort by density, then compute the cumulative population, you find that:

1. 40 million people live in metro areas with density exceeding 2000 per square mile
2. the next 20 million, 1395 to 2000 per square mile (60M)
3. the next 20 million, 1200 to 1395 per square mile (80M)
4. the next 40 million, 1032 to 1200 per square mile (120M)
5. the next 40 million, 777 to 1032 per square mile (160M)

Out of the Y2K total of 281 million people, about 20% (60 million) live in metro areas more dense than 2000 people per square mile. Over half live in places denser than 777/square mile, which may not be dense enough. To make the case that we're not like Europe, we'd need similar numbers, but it seems safe to say that an awful lot of people live in decently dense places (note that Atlanta metro (692/mi^2) did not make the top half -- they are at the 176M cumulative mark)

Because these are metro areas, there is still room for tighter and looser clustering -- so for example, there are surely parts of the SF/Oakland Metro area that are too spread out for commuting (there is the small matter of the Bay Bridge), but there are also tight clusters within less-dense metro areas -- for example, the Boston Metro area is at the 143 million mark (last 40 million above) at 926 ppl per square mile, but I start my commute in one town of 4900/mi^2, cross a town of 7900/mi^2, cross a town of 1800/mi^2, and end in a town of 2100/mi^2. This suggests that metro areas may be too granular, but it also suggests that what matters more than density, is distance to work; I would not be surprised to discover that there's a higher percentage of people working-from-home in some of interesting, very-low-density places.

The median commute distance in the US (as near as I can tell, it is hard to determine exactly) is somewhere around 11 miles. This may be a more important number than mere density, because some of the big metro areas have expensive housing and long-distance commutes (SF/Oakland, in particular, as well as NY, and Boston, for that matter). But, a 10-mile commute is doable by bike -- in particular, doable by an old fat guy on a cargo bike. I knew this when I started, because I used to ride 10-mile time trials as a kid and they were no big deal.

Re:It won't work

[MrHanky]

The heat trapped by cats is energy the cats don't have to convert from food they eat, i.e. energy trapped in plants and then in animals eating the plants. The heat trapped by CO2 from fossil carbon wouldn't be absorbed in the atmosphere otherwise. QED, you're an idiot.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

The scientific method only works on things you can test repeatedly in a controlled environment. It does not apply to evolution (no one has observed one species become another, go ask a professor, no one has), it doesn't work for climate change (you can't control for all of the variables), it doesn't work for the big bang, as again, no one has re-created the event in the lab. The bottom line is these "scientists" are nothing more than glorified detectives, using scientific tools to try to discover the past or predict the future, both are outside of the purview of science. Add to that the fact that they destroy the careers and lives of any other individuals who propose competing theories and these people are little better than the snake oil salesmen of yester-year... except they want billions of your tax dollars taken at gunpoint to prop up their flimsy theories.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your statement is that the links to NCDC raw station data gives results which are suspect. The raw station data is only as good as the station siting and data collection methodology. The site:http://www.surfacestations.org/ shows some of the problems with the data collection and it puts forth the suspected reason for increasing temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century from this type of station. i.e. the stations are surrounded with encroaching heat sources which skew the record higher when those that do not have encroaching heat sources show a decline, no change or only a slight change to the positive. Your mention of this as a counter argument to support AGW is in fact an appeal to authority because you assume that the NCDC data is inviolate. A true scientist would not make the assumption in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The fact that Michael Mann has not released his complete data and algorithms for his late 90's studies refutes your claim that skeptics are too lazy to do the work. Steve McIntyre at http://climateaudit.org/ has gone into great detail concerning his attempts to have Mann stand by his work and provide the necessary information to replicate his results. Mann has steadfastly refused to do so and ridicules those who attempt to replicate his studies without the missing algorithms. The upshot is that in order to duplicate Mann's work, an algorithm which spuriously amplifies any data with an upsurge at the end by a factor of 370 must be used. This algorithm amplifies noise and carefully chosen tree ring data sets which show an increase and thus provides the blade of the hockey stick even though NO real data is used....just noise. ... The fact that Mann is silent and does not defend his work by releasing all data and algorithms is highly suspicious and is one of the reasons why the AG in VA is involved in determining the use of public funds to accomplish his work.
Ah yes tree ring data sets. First of all, Researchers who gather those cores deny that the data can be used for temperature proxies. The Queens College Oak Cores were recently forced to be revealed under a FOIA request. This was the source of well over 100 of the tree ring proxies used in Mann et al, 2008. That of course was Mann's attempt to duplicate his work at the turn of the century. The keepers of the data FLAT OUT STATE that these cores are worthless for temperature reconstructions and to put them to such use is dangerous. BAD SCIENCE is being practiced by climate scientists, and when they begin to be found out the data is withheld or otherwise mysteriously disappears. re..the original CRU data.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

The letter is of course an appeal to authority which really has no basis for being put forth except to try and show to the unwashed masses that scientists support those who believe in the hypothesis of AGW. The difficulty is that almost every one of the signers has not done the work they are supporting nor have they peer reviewed by attempting to duplicate the results. They ASSUME that the climate researchers have not engaged in improper procedures.
This is why the AG of Virginia is investigating Mann.He is suspected of wrongdoing. And we now hear an uproar from his supporters.
Steve McIntyre has quite an explanation of how he attempted to replicate Mann's work and was prevented from doing so by the refusal of Mann to release all his data and algorithms. http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/
I will not go into all the nasty little tricks and denials that Mann tried and which were exposed in climategate, but I will say that based on Mann's behavior it would seem that a jury of ordinary persons would not believe him.
The appeal to authority is evident in your post. The NCDC has data which has been called into question. The belief is that 90% of the stations have been subject to URBAN HEAT INDEXING. This will make the temperature increase in the latter half of the 20th century. When those 10% quality stations are used it seems that there has been very little temperature increase. GBo to the website and see for yourself. Yet here you are making an appeal to authority rather than replying to a question raised about the quality of the data.
When a theory is put forth such as AGW. It can be disproved by showing that the predicted results did not occur or were incorrect. This has already happened. And the proponents of AGW just dissemble and change the expected results in the future and wave their hand and say that the results which did not occur were not important. This is like religious cults repeatedly predicting the end of the world on a certain date and then when the world continues on they ust say they were incorrect in interpreting the signs. AGW supporters have repeatedly made insane claims and then when those claims were disproven they just say nevermind. THIS is not science it is religion with a cloak of scientific process thrown over it.

I know you will say name one prediction that failed. Here it is: James Hansen was asked in 1988 what would be one of the most evident results of climate change in the next 20 to 30 years. His reply was, after much reflection, that the West River Drive, visible from his office in Manhatten, would be underwater. Well it has been 22 years and the Hudson River is not even attempting to climb up its banks to prove him right.
False spurious claims which are proven untrue highlight the nature of Climate science. A "SCIENCE" driven by computer models and misinterpreting the real world processes.

Re:It won't work

[ShakaUVM]

>>Europe is an existence proof for how we can live pretty well with half the CO2 footprint, and high gas prices.

If we switch to nuclear power, we'll halve our CO2 footprint.

You know... kind of like France.

Re:It won't work

[shutdown -p now]

If the value of your stocks has increased by $100, then what you should do is look into why it happens. If you have a reasonable explanation which implies that it's not just a fluke, and which will apply in the future unless conditions change, then, yes, you should reasonably assume that the value of your stocks will keep increasing by $100.

Temperature increase is an effect of AGW. We have noticed that effect, and looked at the cause - and our knowledge of physics and understanding of Earth's climate show that our CO2 emissions account for a huge part of it.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

No, I mean most of the ones that are described as "bad" by the "climate auditors". When the "skeptics" complained about the quality of some weather stations being used to generate the US average temperatures the scientists thanked them for their work and recalculated the trends without the "badly sited" stations.

The warming trend without the "bad" stations was bigger. Once again that's the "bad" stations chosen by the "skeptics" based on photographs of their installation, not the stations with anomalous records removed by the actual scientists.

Hah, yeah... when you eliminate mostly northern ones.

You would THINK that badly situated instruments would be location agnostic.. normal distribution and all that... ..but most of the ones that are decided to be "bad" by the graph makers are the ones with cooler than average records.

Pity that selectively eliminating the northernmost readings for later years tends to increase the warming trend.

Wrong. You obviously don't know what a trend is. Why would one expect cooler stations to show a smaller warming trend than hotter stations?

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

Didn't say I had a problem with it, actually.

Though I do think that I have issues

Huh?

If Al Gore really wanted people to take him seriously about his carbon-offset company, it would have been set up as a non-profit. As is, the fact that he's shilling for an idea that'll make him a lot of money if we buy into it taints the idea, just a little.

Once again, what's your problem with capitalism? Is there something wrong with making money?

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

Not just France, however. It's not just nukes.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

statistics is measeured in probabilities not facts

          not a single % of probability mentioned in the entire topic

                          back to the drawing board gentlemen

Re:It won't work

[Rockoon]

Oh, well I was pointing out that by 1991, the NOAA had purged 75% of the dataset it offers.

The killer is the bias involved. The number of Canadian sites used went from 496 to only 44, a 91% reduction. Things like this are important because most of the sites in Canada are pretty much ideal with regards to urbanization: there hasn't been much. In America, many also nearly ideal sites with regard to urbanization are also no longer used (sites in mountains, and so forth.)

The stations that are left are questionable not only because they may have obvious problems, but also because they have been cherry picked.

Re:It won't work

[ShakaUVM]

>>Not just France, however. It's not just nukes.

No, but nukes are an easy way of meeting every CO2 target for the United States. If other green power gets cheap enough, then them too. But nuclear is the only green technology right now that won't raise energy costs from switching from coal.

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

You are aware, that without breeder reactors, we're not terribly far from "peak uranium", right? Something like a hundred years at current consumption, which is much lower than the replace-coal consumption rate.

Re:It won't work

[ShakaUVM]

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=18741&Cr=uranium

Re:It won't work

[dr2chase]

Didn't know that; that's somewhat good news. Nonetheless, I'd like to stretch it out as much as possible (I can trace some tiny part of my ancestry back to William the Conqueror's apple-keeper -- it's good to take the long view, right?) The claims made for thorium reactors are interesting, to say the least, and we've got a lot of it.

Re:It won't work

[Rogerborg]

Where are their papers disproving AGW?

First, where are the raw data, and the collation methods, that the AGW scienticians used to come to their conclusions? The key criticism of AGW scienticians is that they will not release those data, for a variety of reasons from "They ar3e too complicated for you too understand" through "They're on a collection of napkins and Post It notes from 30 years ago. Plus, the dog ate them." right through to the popular "Don't wanna, can't make me."

That is the problem; science done in the dark is no different from voodoo.

Re:It won't work

[Eunuchswear]

First, where are the raw data, and the collation methods, that the AGW scienticians used to come to their conclusions?

"scienticians"? You are a troll. This conversation is finished.

Re:It won't work

[An Onerous Coward]

Do those leading the deny/delay/"the science isn't settled" charge not also standing to make Sagans of dollars? If you're going to assume that a monetary interest devastates the credibility of the AGW side, you're going to have to explain why your skepticism is so selective.

>> There may be, in fact, an AGW crisis looming that threatens mankind. Unfortunately, the sloppy and ideologically- and politically-driven "science" and election-campaign-like tactics using personal attacks, etc have completely wrecked the debate and delayed or killed any chance of doing anything about it for years or decades.

Ask any police officer. They get this exact same reasoning from every guy they arrest for assaulting his wife. The occasional arrogance and poor judgment by a few scientists -- in the face of a steady deluge of viciousness and stupidity from their opponents -- does nothing to undermine the legitimacy of the science.

>> The world just isn't going to give up many trillions in wealth, sacrifice many lives, reduce individual freedoms, lose national sovereignty, and destroy the standard of living of many millions without solid, verifiable, and dire reasons. This has only reinforced skepticism.

According to the Stern Report, the investments needed to mitigate warming will only be a couple percent of world GDP, whereas the effects of climate change itself could amount to 20% of GDP. If we were measuring accurately, and calculating the value of burning fossil fuels by including the additional risk every ton brings -- and it's poor economics not to -- then suddenly fighting climate change is like printing money, and burning oil is like burning money.

Before I invest any more effort in you, I need to know: Are you a denier or a skeptic?

Re:It won't work

[DrDitto]

It is not possible to perform controlled experiments to prove AGW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments You can only perform "natural" or "quasi-experiments".

Re:It won't work

[hkmwbz]

There is no such thing as AGWs. "Global Warming" has now become "Climate Change".

That's bullshit. It has always been climate change, specifically global warming. Nothing has changed. Except the denialists/creationists have another talking point they can keep spewing to dishonestly mislead others.

Fuck you, and fuck your retarded lies.

Re:It won't work

[hkmwbz]

Proponents of AGW can be anything. What they all have in common is that they accept scientific facts. AGW denialists, on the other hand, deny scientific facts. Because of their ideology. Rather pathetic.

Re:It won't work

[hkmwbz]

And that model holds up until the peer reviewed journals start rejecting alternate theories because they disagree with the AGW gospel.

Aha. So how is it that scientists like Richard Lindzen are still getting their papers published? I mean, he's an AGW skeptic, and has published several papers critical of AGW. Now, they turned out to be flawed in the end, but the point is, he got them published.

Doesn't really fit your insane little idiot denialist world, now does it?

When the baseline for your field isn't "here's the data, this is what I think it means as somebody who's spent a lot of time learning about it", and is instead "here's the data that fits with the theory our backers want us to prove, we justify it by saying there's a consensus, and kick blasphemers out of the consensus to keep it" then you're no longer science - you're religion.

Indeed. The former is how climate scientists operate. The latter is how denialists operate.

Re:It won't work

[hkmwbz]

When I read this summary, I thought "hurray, the antagonistic, dogma-preaching 'scientists' were finally going to be told that debate IS allowed and questioning the data and methods IS allowed and you don't get to question the ethics of the guy with the opposing ideas just because he disagrees with you."

Hmm, this is exactly like reading yet another creationist rant. Sure you didn't post in the wrong story?

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe would be a good example only if the US were to completely alter it's population distributions to match those of Europe. The US is BIG. The US population and it's cities and towns are much more spread out, with large areas of the continent that are relatively sparsely populated, but yet that population is a significant portion of the total population.

Good point...

Even US cities are different. Most US cities aren't that old compared to most European cities, and the many cities designed/built (as well as expansions of existing cities) after the Model 'T' era were laid out with automobiles in mind. Many European cities are hundreds of years old, built when most people walked and those with freedom and means rode horses and horse-drawn wagons, carts, etc. This means the cities are much more compact, which makes things like mass transit, walking, and bicycling much more practical and economical.

...but this is all a reason to do something about it, not ignore it. The US model doesn't work.

As far as these scientists and their statement, I agree with others here who've expressed the opinion that they're only hurting the pro-AGW camp. The best thing they could do would be to advocate for a full disclosure of all raw data and have it made available to anyone, and set up something like the X-Prize for anyone that can come up with a decently-working climatological model whose code and algorithms can be released publicly and tested by anyone willing to do so.

As someone already pointed out, they have:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

The fact that those leading the charge behind AGW and cap-n-tax stand to make Sagans of dollars from it, along with more political power and government control over the people, coupled with this reluctance to release methods/data & attacks against anyone who questions their conclusions, makes me extremely skeptical.

I'm not sure who these people are, but I'm certainly not one of them. I'd love a sagan or 2, but I'm doing it for my child. And everyone elses.

There may be, in fact, an AGW crisis looming that threatens mankind. Unfortunately, the sloppy and ideologically- and politically-driven "science" and election-campaign-like tactics using personal attacks, etc have completely wrecked the debate and delayed or killed any chance of doing anything about it for years or decades.

And you don't think the anti-AGW lobby has more to lose and has had more detrimental effect on the debate? Who has more peer-reviewed journals on their side? Humans are sloppy. The scientific method strives to correct this sloppiness... wait a minute, that sounds familiar- RTFA: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689

The world just isn't going to give up many trillions in wealth, sacrifice many lives, reduce individual freedoms, lose national sovereignty, and destroy the standard of living of many millions without solid, verifiable, and dire reasons. This has only reinforced skepticism.

How about this for a solid argument (one I personally would like to see a lot more often): FOSSIL FUELS ARE FINTE. Pretty verifiable, no? Lets start reducing our usage now, while we can and before we have to. Regardless of AGW or even nature GW, we WILL run out of oil. That will be pretty dire as well - unless we do something about it NOW (try "the Party's over' for more: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865714827).

Re:It won't work

[JimFive]

"Exactly. Most of the comments here are the classic example of the echo chamber.", he said unreflectingly.

FTFY

Re:It won't work

[toporok]

Damn, beat me to it!

Re:It won't work

[MikeBabcock]

Obviously you completely ignored the context of my comment, both the parent to it and the article its attached to.

The way the scientists in question are behaving is an attempt to convince people, not an attempt to just do science. They're getting involved in public opinion and politics and disliking the media attention that always comes with that.

Whether you're a politician, a preacher or a scientist, if you start making big public statements, the media will ask you stupid questions and you need to figure out how to answer them.

Integrety

[riverat1]

Too bad the denialosphere doesn't have to live up to the same standards of integrity that scientists have to.

Re:Integrety

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Too bad the denialosphere doesn't have to live up to the same standards of integrity that scientists have to.

Too bad the AGW-promoting scientists didn't live up to it first.

If they'd made their data available in the first place, so others could check their work, we wouldn't be having this problem now.

Instead they tried to suppress debate and lost or corrupted the original data, to the point that if there IS a problem we won't be able to reliably document it.

Sorry, that's not "science".

Re:Integrety

[sznupi]

What are you talking about?! They have God Allmighty on their side (who also explicitly gave them whole Universe to exploit as they see fit), the absolute standard of integrity. Way beyond the league of some fallible blasphemers...

Re:Integrety

[SpeZek]

[citation needed]

The data is available. Read Nature or other journals.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please post your FULL history of email to slashdot so we can judge whether you are doing valid "skepticism"? If we find any evidence that you are not, then all your otherwise valid points shall be discarded.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is crap like this modded up? Does this person seriously believe every scientist was keeping AGW data in the dark? Is there really a lack of information available? And why should we trust this data to armchair scientists to begin with? The data gets released when the analysis is released

Re:Integrety

[Obfuscant]

The data gets released when the analysis is released

You are confusing "nice, pretty plots in a journal article" with "data".

Data is what one starts with. Journals do not want you to publish "data", it's boring and needs to be analyzed and worked up. Journals want procedures and results.

Were journals to be filled with data, they'd be 1) huge, 2) even more expensive than they are now, and 3) boring. Were journals to publish data along with the manuscript, it would not have taken years and dumb luck to catch the "super scientist" who was duplicating his data and plots for years. No, I don't remember his name, and I don't remember enough of the details to google it.

And why should we trust this data to armchair scientists to begin with?

What is there not to trust? You do realize, I hope, that a large number of "climate scientists" are "armchair" in the sense they aren't trained as climate scientists to start with. And that a large amount of astronomical data comes from "armchair scientists". Science is science. You don't need a Ph.D to be a scientist.

Does this person seriously believe every scientist was keeping AGW data in the dark?

Do you seriously believe that every scientist is involved in AGW research so every scientist has AGW data?

The guy who created the hockey stick brouhaha certainly did keep the data "in the dark", in that he did not release it to other scientists.

Why is crap like this modded up?

Because it isn't "crap", and maybe the moderators who modded it up are getting sick and tired of the name calling and insulting attitude of those who push AGW down the rest of our throats. Just a thought, Anonymous Coward.

Re:Integrety

[Cyberax]

"If they'd made their data available in the first place, so others could check their work, we wouldn't be having this problem now."

They did.

"Instead they tried to suppress debate"

They didn't do it.

"and lost or corrupted the original data"

They hasn't done it.

"to the point that if there IS a problem we won't be able to reliably document it."

They hasn't done it.

You really should have present us documents of every second of your life. You hasn't done this, so we can safely assume that you are raping your daughter every day.

Re:Integrety

[labnet]

OK, so lets look at the quality of the CRU climate data as logged here http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt
I'll even quote some bits for you.

OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm
hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform
data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.

I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough
into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and
semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog.
I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.

Now, this is a clear indication that the standard deviation limits are not being applied.
Which is extremely bad news. So I had a drains-up on anomauto.for.. and.. yup, my awful
programming strikes again. Because I copied the anomdtb.f90 process, I failed to notice
an extra section where the limit was applied to the whole station - I was only applying
it to the normals period (1961-90)!

Probably the worst story is temperature, particularly for MCDW. Over 1000 new stations! Highly
unlikely. I am tempted to blame the different lat/lon scale, but for now it will have to rest.

If I fix that, I get:...14 stations LESS than the previous exercise. That'll do, surely? It's not going to be easy to find 14 missing stations, is it? Since the anomalies aren't exactly the same. Should I be worried about 14 lost series? Less than 2%. Actually, I noticed something interesting.. look
at the anomalies. The anomdtb ones aren't *rounded* to 1dp, they're *truncated*! So, er - wrong!

The problem is that the synthetics are incorporated at 2.5-degrees, NO IDEA why, so saying they affect
particular 0.5-degree cells is harder than it should be. So we'll just gloss over that entirely ;0)

So, under /cru/cruts/version_3_0/fixing_tmp_and_pre/custom_anom_comparisons, we have a
'manual' directory and an 'automatic' directory, each with twelve 1990 anomaly files. And
how do they compare? NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!

This shows me the quality of data climate science works with is poor.
There needs to be rigorous peer reviewed climate data collection standards (which won't improve the historical data.. like for example, which stations had concrete jungles grow around them, how were they calibrated (including traceability) etc)
The raw data must be publically released (then it can't be fiddled with later)

Until then, I will assume GIGO.

Re:Integrety

[TapeCutter]

Sorry but anyone who insists on parroting the climgate propoganda as fact is simply not paying attention.

Re:Integrety

[IICV]

The guy who created the hockey stick brouhaha certainly did keep the data "in the dark", in that he did not release it to other scientists.

You want some AGW data? Here's an aggregate of a bunch of different universities' measurements. I look forward to your analysis of it.

Oh, do you want Michael Mann's (the hockey stick guy) data specifically? Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.

The whole "show us the data" thing was kind of an issue before, but now there's just no excuse. I bet you still don't know what to do with it, even now that you have it. I sure don't.

Re:Integrety

[IICV]

Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.

Is what I meant to say. Clearly there's a conspiracy to keep this data from your oh so capable hands!

Re:Integrety

[tsm_sf]

OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.

This has been uttered in every lab, office, factory, school, and probably church since the dawn of the personal computer. This is why people say they "work" with computers instead of "playing" them, because you need to do "work" to get everything "working". This note is a conversation from one "worker" to another complaining about the amount of "work" he needs to do.

This shows me the quality of data climate science works with is poor.

So you think that one note you clearly do not understand would affect data collection methods in every other lab or office around the world, but only those dealing with climate? Your logic compels you to entirely reject science and all it stands for!

Re:Integrety

[riverat1]

Ha! I knew someone would call me on that. It's an unfortunate error I make from time to time. I hope you noticed I spelled it correctly in the body.

You know the vast majority of data on climate, I'm sure over 95% of it, is freely available if you care to look for it. The small part of it that isn't freely available is not enough to make much difference one way or another.

Re:Integrety

[arcticinfantry]

How pray tell was this modded insightful? A generalization/perjorative and little else. Where are my mod points when I need them? PLease somebody mod this down. The Gods of Objectivity are screaming for it.

Re:Integrety

[tmosley]

No, actually, they didn't. The data that was released in those publications was "corrected". The original data was thrown out. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

I'm also a scientist, and let me tell you, I keep EVERYTHING (as does everyone that I have ever dealt with). I have lab notebooks in my lab going back to the 70's, full of every bit and byte of data that we have generated, across countless comings and goings of post-docs, technicians, and research associates.

Re:Integrety

[riverat1]

You work with what you have. The temperature records they are working with have been collected over the past 150 years or so by hundreds of different entities around the world without any consideration of some of the things they're being used for now. It'd be great if we could go back and redo the observations but we can't. Of course the more recent the observations the better confidence we have in them especially since the 1950s.

Lots of raw data is available at the National Climate Data Center. Interestingly processing that raw data without making adjustments for the vagaries of the data collection process produces substantially the same answer as the processed data does.

Re:Integrety

[hsthompson69]

Mod parent up. The destruction of original data by CRU was arguably a crime against humanity if you actually believe AGW is true. It'd be like destroying the original stone tablets the 10 commandments were on, except you can't just go back up the hill and get more after smashing the golden cow.

Re:Integrety

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Interestingly processing that raw data without making adjustments for the vagaries of the data collection process produces substantially the same answer as the processed data does.

But we only have their word for it. The code that generated this result was not released.

Re:Integrety

[tbannist]

Keeping everything is a luxury some people do not have, some people have to live with budgets and limited resources. As far as I understand the data still exists, the CRU just doesn't have it's copy of the raw data anymore. Presumably anyone sufficiently interested could gather the raw data themselves, but that would be costly and unlikely to advance anyone's agenda.

Re:Integrety

[riverat1]

Go to the NOAA/NCDC web site to get their code. It's available. Go the the NASA/GISS web site for their data and the Model E code, one of the major GCM's. Read the published papers for methodology. It's mostly out there if you care to put in the work to examine it. There are links to lots of data and code on this page.

Re:Integrety

[Xonstantine]

Yep, going by their leaked emails, those scientists at the CRU were bastions of integrity. Nothing unethical about conspiring to hold back data they were legally obligated to provide or conspiring to deny alternative theories access to peer review so they can then handily dismiss skeptics for not having any published peer reviewed papers.

Re:Integrety

[sumdumass]

The point and problem isn't the raw data itself. It's the modifications and justifications made to the raw data that's primarily important that's also lost. The raw data contains information that wasn't used as well as information that was, the notes contained justifications for using or not using or adjustments to those data points and so on.

You see, years and years of research is built off of these manipulations or normalizations and other studies are based off the fruits of this manipulation. You can't take the raw data and recreate the science without the justifications for the manipulations. Have you ever heard the saying "garbage in garbage out"? Well, it goes here too. If they were wrong on that initial data manipulation, then everything built from it could very well be wrong too. You can take the raw data and never see the same results and with those varying results, come up with completely different conclusions in works built from that.

Here is a small and very simplified example, suppose we start with 1 and add multiples of .10 in progression. The raw data would lead you to believe that it would go something like 1.0, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30 and so on. But when the data gets manipulated (legitimately or incorrectly), we could get .95, 1.05, 1.15, 1.25, and so on. Now someone builds from that data, and they manipulate it because of the heat island effect, and they build it into .90, 1.1, 1.20, 1.3 and so on. But what if the heat island effect has already been accounted for on half of the data from the first compilation, then to be correct, we might need something like .95, 1.05, 1.2, 1.3 to be accurate. Notice how the gap between the second and third value is different then the .10 value? However, without the methods and justifications, you have no clue that the first half of the data is wrong and reprocessing the raw data without the methodology will not produce comparable or compatible results.

So anyone with sufficient interest is pretty much screwed at this point- even though the raw data or portions there of can be found.

Re:Integrety

[drewhk]

Yes, ALL the data from ALL of the institutes were thrown out? Forget the CRU, there are MANY others.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll ask again:

"You know the vast majority of data on climate, I'm sure over 95% of it, is freely available if you care to look for it. The small part of it that isn't freely available is not enough to make much difference one way or another"

Where is intentionally violating FOI laws in your definition of Integrity?

Where is intentionally not releasing your data to people you think merely want it to be critical of you in your definition of Integrity?

Reread Cargo Cult Science. Discuss what Richard Feynman believes Scientific Integrity is with Phil Jones behavior.

Phil Jones has no integrity. Period. Full stop.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue (for me) isn't whether the data is available *now*, or even whether it shows AGW is correct or not, it's that the data was not made available until very recently. Please tell me how the original hockey stick theory could have been properly peer reviewed without the raw data? And this was the single most important study used to author the original IPCC report, and the very basis of the "scientific consensus". If scientists are getting a little edgy about attacks on the scientific method, maybe they should try applying it.

Re:Integrety

[tmosley]

lol, filing cabinets are so expensive.

We worked on a shoestring budget for three years prior to finally getting some industry and grant funding. I would have moved the data to my garage if I had to. YOU DO NOT THROW AWAY DATA. PERIOD. This is not a luxury, it is the ultimate necessity. A scientist throwing away data is like a plumber throwing away tools, or a car dealer burning his cars, or like a farmer salting their fields. It is self destruction. No scientist who isn't trying to hide something would ever do this. The only time it is ever in danger of happening is when a PI dies and there is no one ot take over his project, but even then, the department will usually keep all their records for this very reason. To have long established research refuted or questioned because you can't produce the original data is the height of embarrassment, and is liable to get a department's funding cut.

Re:Integrety

[Rockoon]

Sure, GISS offers data, but we dont know the veracity of its compilation. This is in fact the story of a programmer tasked with producing such a compilation, and he is throwing his hands up and saying its damn near impossible to do it with any confidence due to the situation with the REAL backing dataset.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm also a scientist, and let me tell you, I keep EVERYTHING (as does everyone that I have ever dealt with). I have lab notebooks in my lab going back to the 70's, full of every bit and byte of data that we have generated, across countless comings and goings of post-docs, technicians, and research associates."

I'm sorry but that is simply not believable. I have NEVER met a scientist that kept EVERYTHING. Much less one that kept everything from their post-docs, techs and RA's. Or associated only with professionals that kept everything.

You seriously want me to believe that everyone associated with you recorded every piece of data they every encountered in the course of their work? That means if a piece of equipment took a thousand measurements you have all of them, not just the reported value, for instance. You have every piece of correspondence. You have recordings of all of your phone calls. Etc.

In simple terms, you are lying. Or possibly greatly deluded.

Re:Integrety

[riverat1]

The guy you're referring to work at the CRU in England, not at GISS in the US. The GISS data is a separate compilation from the CRU although I'm sure they overlap to a large extent.

Do you want to just throw up your hands and say we don't know anything or should we do the best we can with what we've got imperfect as it is?

Re:Integrety

[Rockoon]

Do you want to just throw up your hands and say we don't know anything or should we do the best we can with what we've got imperfect as it is?

I want those responsible for the bad state of the data as it is today to be removed from positions of any authority over the data. Only then can we discuss what to do about the data that is there, how to prevent things getting worse, and most importantly how the existing data can be used given its condition.

Until then, there is no reason to believe that such a compilation has any integrity at all. Mixing adjusted with unadjusted data doesnt get you anything, and not even knowing what those adjustments are.. well..

CRU's Jones stated in those hacked emails that the GISS data is inferior, yet here we are talking about using the GISS data instead of CRU's.

The kicker of it all is that there is data that both GISS and CRU claim to be raw data, for the same station and time, yet they disagree. How can this be? Is one right and the other wrong? Maybe both are wrong? Thats the situation we are in and throwing your hands up is just about the only reasonable choice until the people who put us here are no longer the governors of the data.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

And so here we go again. Mann et al 2008. This is a discredited bit of work because of Mann's insistence on using tree ring proxies. And before you go off on a rant about how wonderful Mann is and how great a scientist he ius and how 255 great scientists support him....Just realize that the people who collected the 105 tree ring proxies state ABSOLUTELY that they should not be used for temperature reconstructions and that such use is dangerous. The statements are absolute that there are many factors other than temperature which influence tree ring growth and therefore they CANNOT be used as Mann has tried to use them. His Mann et al 2008 is invalid on its face as the data cannot be correlated to temperatures.
The Queens University researcher Mike Baille who is custodian of the oak tree proxies is quoted:

Oak as a Temperature Proxy
The scientist who had been withholding the data, Michael Baillie, ridiculed the idea that his Irish oak data was relevant to temperature reconstructions, saying that it would be “dangerous” to use this data for reconstructing temperature. Hannah Devlin of The Times:

        However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.

        Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.

        “It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.

        “In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.”

Mann et al 1999 is the work that was called into question as in THAT work Mann refused to provide data and algorithms to allow his work to be vetted and duplicated. They fact that you post misleading links and mischaracterize the dispute is a telling bit of AGW propaganda.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually read Mann et al 2008? They create all the graphs both with and without the tree ring proxy data, because of those concerns. Seriously, RTFP before you go off on a rant like this.

Re:Integrety

[riverat1]

The bad state of the data as you put it is due to the fact that it's been collected over the years by hundreds or thousands of different entities under various conditions and various amounts of diligence. Until recently at least it was not collected with the intention to use it for global temperature studies. It has nothing to do with anyone who is working with it today.

Jones is entitled to his opinion that his CRU data is better than the GISS data. I'm sure you'd get an argument from the GISS guys about that.

Differences between GISS and CRU can be attributed to differences in their processing algorithms. In the end their answers aren't that much different. When multiple groups independently use their own methods and come up with substantially the same answers that increases your confidence in what they are saying.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

The only point that I would like to make is that, they are basing this all on 'data' the is unreliable. Ask the climate scientists, we've only been able to collected data that can be considered 'solid' since 1950 (anything based on tree-ring data should be thrown out. Period). Carbon was 1300ppm in the Cretaceous, right now it is at around 450ppm. Plus you want to be taxed for breathing, driving your car, taking a crap, and anything else that could be considered green-house producing activity. Here in Amerika, we are already taxed enough (hell for my less-than-40k a year, I was taxed over 10k), if anything doing any kind of cap-n-trade would mean throwing the economy into a depression but yeah to hell with all those poor unemployed people because anymore tax will just prevent any job from being made period as it currently does.

The environment is not a political issue, it is a social issue. So if you want to all save-the-world please send your dollars that way but keep off of the tax-payers back. Let that free market work and vote with your dollar.

Re:Integrety

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS post will be deleted because someone is deleting posts which do not agree with global warming. I have posted 5 times and each time it gets deleted. If this is the way slashdot operates it may as well be renamed CIRCLEJERK because that is all that it amounts to.

Re:Integrety

[tbannist]

Sorry, if I don't agree with you, if you're working with a budget it's ok to not keep data that somebody else is responsible for archiving anyway. The data hasn't been destroyed, it's archived and kept by a different organization.
Media Matters seems to have a reasonable explanation of the situation.

I will reiterate, the point here isn't that the data isn't available, it's to attack the credibility of the CRU for trivial reasons. Their results are nearly identical to every other organization that is independently investigating climate change. The data is available and their data construction could be replicated if anyone really wanted to do so.

The reason no one is doing so, is because they already know that there's not enough value in doing so. There are multiple independent organizations who have all reached the same conclusion. Neither the pro-AGW or the anti-AGW people really think there's any value in duplicating the same basic research again. It's just a convenient way to criticize one research group for the sake of criticizing them. It's not about good or bad science, it's about political manipulation.

Re:Integrety

[hkmwbz]

The destruction of original data by CRU

Why are you mindlessly parroting this lie? No data was destroyed. A small part of a local copy of some data was deleted. The original data still exists. It is not gone. Why do deniers always insist on lying?

Re:Integrety

[hkmwbz]

The original data was thrown out.

Nope. No data was thrown out. A small part of a local copy of some data was deleted. The original data still exists. It is not gone. Why do deniers always insist on lying?

Re:Integrety

[hkmwbz]

Because it isn't "crap", and maybe the moderators who modded it up are getting sick and tired of the name calling and insulting attitude of those who push AGW down the rest of our throats.

Yes, how terrible. "Forcing" science and fact on people. Evil!

Re:Integrety

[hkmwbz]

It's the modifications and justifications made to the raw data that's primarily important that's also lost.

Nope. Nothing was lost. A small part of a local copy of some data was deleted. The original data still exists. It is not gone.

You see, years and years of research is built off of these manipulations or normalizations and other studies are based off the fruits of this manipulation.

Correction: Years and years of research has confirmed those studies.

Specifically...

[timeOday]

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against former UVA faculty Michael Mann. In criticising Cuccinelli's lawsuit, I'm not even saying he has to admit or agree with everything or anything that Mann wrote. But political persecution of scientists is bad... like 15th century Vatican bad.

Re:Specifically...

[symbolset]

But political persecution of scientists is bad... like 15th century Vatican bad.

Tell that to Michael Mann. The "persecution" he's suffering is nothing but payback for the persecution of other scientists who dared to investigate issues and come to unapproved conclusions that don't support the AGW agenda. That's not science, it's a cult. He's due a thorough investigation and the rest of his cohort too.

Re:Specifically...

[TapeCutter]

It's not the first time Mann has been attacted, among other unsuccesfull attacks by polticians was a senate inquisition into his hockey stick paper. The inqustitors lost when their star witness testified in Mann's favour. Science won when in 2005 the star witness published Mann's updated paper that both adressed their minor critisisims and extended the results to 2000yrs ago.

However, if we're going to have inquisitions then we should also look at the witches at the heartland institute, CEI, and other like minded think tanks who sell their powerfull propoganda spells to vested intrests.

Re:Specifically...

[masterwit]

Like Monty Python Bad:

Sir Bedevere: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.

---Are there? Oh well, tell us.

Sir Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?

--Burn them.

Sir Bedevere: And what do you burn, apart from witches?

--More witches.

--Wood.

Sir Bedevere: Good. Now, why do witches burn?

--...because they're made of... wood?

Sir Bedevere: Good. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood?

--Build a bridge out of her.

Sir Bedevere: But can you not also build bridges out of stone?

--Oh yeah.

Sir Bedevere: Does wood sink in water?

--No, no, it floats!... It floats! Throw her into the pond!

Sir Bedevere: No, no. What else floats in water?

--Bread.

--Apples.

--Very small rocks.

--Cider.

--Gravy.

--Cherries.

--Mud.

--Churches.

--Lead! Lead!

--A Duck.

Sir Bedevere: ...Exactly. So, logically...

--If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood.

Sir Bedevere: And therefore...

...A witch!

Re:Specifically...

[517714]

I absolutely agree that it appears the Cuccinelli is on a witch hunt. But shouldn't he have been taken down by other AGW supporters for his bad science? They instead have moved in lock step to silence critics.

Re:Specifically...

[riverat1]

For once I'd like to see some real evidence of Mann's "persecution" of other sciences. And no, some comment in an email is not evidence by itself.

Re:Specifically...

[riverat1]

I'm not aware of any seriously bad science from Michael Mann. If you're referring to his original hockey stick graph it has been substantially borne out by any number subsequent studies using different data sets.

Re:Specifically...

[517714]

He was the primary author of: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/048.htm

Refering to Figure 2.1b: "We do not show standard errors for the CRU land data using the Jones et al. (1997b) method as tests suggest that these may not be reliable for land data on its own." The standard errors are "an inconvenient truth". The method is apparently suitable any time it supports the prejudices of the author. "Thick solid curve - as in (a). Two standard error uncertainties are centred on the CRU curve and are estimated using an optimum averaging method (Folland et al., 2001) and include uncertainties due to urbanisation but not due to uncertainties in thermometer exposures." This violates proper experimental procedures; one does not exclude any uncertainties - EVER. That is serious bad science.

Re:Specifically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to break it to you, but Galileo was just fine and dandy publishing his stuff until he started including not so veiled political attacks at fellow researchers and politicians in his works. Granted, political persecution is not a great thing, but in that era was par for the course. That said, it should not be construed as scientific persecution. Also, it should be pointed out that the best extant data at the time disagreed with Galileo's position.

Re:Specifically...

[GlenRaphael]

[Michael Mann's] original hockey stick graph [...] has been substantially borne out by any number subsequent studies using different data sets.

No it hasn't. At least, not if by "different data sets" you mean data sets that don't intersect with his. The long-term hockey-stickness of the result comes from just a few of the same cherry-picked proxy sets reused over and over again in slightly different combinations.

Suppose Mann does a study using ten data sources including one that goes back a long time and has a hockey-stick signal - say, the Graybill bristlecone series - and nine others that just contribute noise to the mix. If some other researcher does a study that *also* includes Graybill's strip-bark bristlecone pines (a type of data that the National Academy of Sciences said "should be avoided") but swaps out one or more of the nine "random noise" series, it'll probably still have a similar shape. That doesn't mean Mann's conclusion was correct. It might just show GIGO. The output is related to the input.

One problem here is that we don't have a lot of really long data sets. The few we do have have been snooped and massaged a hundred ways - researchers *already know* what shape they have in the inputs before they do the analysis. Reusing data sets invalidates a lot of the standard verification statistics.

Another problem is that the people doing these studies don't seem to be specifying clear and objective input criteria. The researchers just pick a bunch of series they happen to have convenient access to. So there's no way to exclude the possibility that unconscious biases encouraged selection of input sets that specifically got the results they wanted. The fact that by coincidence they keep reusing the *same* sets over and over even when others are available does tend to argue in that direction.

Another problem is that different people are using different definitions of "hockey stick" and what it means for one result to be "like" another. RealClimate likes emphasizing the "blade" part, so for them it seems like even borehole studies that only go back to 1600 are said to"confirm" a HS, even though all that shows is it's warmer now than it was in the Little Ice Age - which no skeptic ever doubted. For the skeptics the main issue is with the "shaft" part - how large was the variance over the last two thousand years? Long-term proxy studies that get their main shape from tree rings tend to be flat in the past because tree rings aren't good long-term temperature proxies, tend to have a sudden upswing in the modern era because some sort of "calibration" step or arbitrary ad-hoc selection data-snooped the choice of a particular set of trees that happen to have a recent growth pulse, and don't drop again at the end because the last bit of data ("regression towards the mean" in a set that suddenly jumped due to a random growth pulse) is arbitrarily discarded and replaced with the instrumental record ("Mann's trick" to "hide the decline"). Long-term (thousand-year or longer) proxy studies that don't get their primary shape from tree rings tend to show a larger variance in the past, a warmer MWP (roughly as warm in 1000-1100 as in recent decades), and a colder Little Ice Age than Mann found.

One example of a study that doesn't rely on tree rings for its fundamental shape is Moberg: Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613 - 617, 10 February 2005. Quote: "According to our reconstruction, high temperatures - similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990- occurred around AD 1000 to 1100, and minimum temperatures that are about 0.7K below the average of 1961-90 occurred around AD 1600. This large natural variability in the past suggests an important role of natural multicentennial variability that is likely to continue. He

Re:Specifically...

[ukyoCE]

Even worse, it lets dishonest (or stupid?) people perpetuate the Glenn Beck fallacy of criticizing Mann and AGW by pointing to Cuccinelli's blatantly political persecution as evidence that Mann and AGW are suspect.

See this ridiculous post in this very thread for a great example:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1645100&cid=32140124

Re:Specifically...

[AthanasiusKircher]

But political persecution of scientists is bad... like 15th century Vatican bad.

Umm... can you name the scientists who were persecuted by the Vatican in the 1400s? Throughout most of the middle ages and early Renaissance, the Catholic Church was a primary sponsor of scientific and technological research.

Perhaps you're thinking of a few incidents in the 17th century (Galileo, Bruno, etc.)? Two hundred years give-or-take... who cares....

No mention

[rmushkatblat]

And, of course, they say nothing about the subversion of the peer review process discussed in the emails.

Re:No mention

[techno-vampire]

I was thinking the same thing. Apparently, subverting the peer review process to keep contrarian papers from being published is OK; complaining about it in public is EVIL.

Re:No mention

[moogsynth]

I was thinking the same thing. Apparently, subverting the peer review process to keep contrarian papers from being published is OK; complaining about it in public is EVIL.

You're right. Here are some of the conclusions the scientists have made about climate change.

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

Well go on then, refute them. I eagerly await your reasoned discourse replete with accurate facts and figures explaining why it is all, in fact, a crock and a sham! If the evil money-grabbing scientific conspiracy community won't accept or peer review your findings, then I'm sure Slashdot will. What have you got to lose, eh?

Re:No mention

[BitHive]

This attitude is like saying you're never going to use open source again until all open source developers admit that the Debian OpenSSL incident proved that open source is fundamentally and flawed.

Re:No mention

[techno-vampire]

Well go on then, refute them.

I am not a climate scientist. I don't even play one on Slashdot. I don't claim to be qualified either to refute or to prove those claims. I am, however, pointing out that any time somebody who is, in fact, qualified, claims to have had a contrarian paper rejected for publication, the AGW fanatics attack him like starving piranha.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

Well go on then, refute them. I eagerly await your reasoned discourse replete with accurate facts and figures explaining why it is all, in fact, a crock and a sham! If the evil money-grabbing scientific conspiracy community won't accept or peer review your findings, then I'm sure Slashdot will. What have you got to lose, eh?

Certainly! Just give me access to the raw, un-adjusted data that these scientists have been hoarding for decades. Oh wait, they keep destroying it. Also, lets look at what their models from 10 years ago predicted that the weather would be for the next 10 years and compare to the historical record. Those are supposed to be accurate, right?

Re:No mention

[sexconker]

* (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 the sun. The planet has warmed in the past. The planet has cooled in the past. The planet's history shows that it was significantly warmer during it's most hospitable eras than it is now.

* (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.

Most of the increase, sure. But how much of the total percentage? The impact the rest of nature has astronomically outstrips the impact humans alone have.

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

Completely false.

* (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.

These changes are only "unprecedented" if you describe "modern times" as spanning only the last few centuries. The planet has undergone more severe changes than any doomsayer has predicted - life, including human life, has done nothing but flourish. If species X suffers, so be it. If species X happens to be humans, then so be it. Life adapts or GTFOs.

* (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.

If by "threatens" you mean "threatens to change", then you're right. People who own expensive property might lose it. Governments who control key ports or shipping routes might lose them. The change the politicians fear is upsetting the current balance of power. They don't give a shit if people or other animals die en masse.

Most lifeforms prefer a flooded planet to one where all the water is locked in ice, anyway. If humans ever did get the ability to control the climate, who would decide what the ideal amount of ice is? Who would decide what the ideal sea level is? The ideal number of hurricanes per year? The ideal temperature?

As always, follow the money. Global warming is pure political bullshit, and the "science" behind it is a joke.

Re:No mention

[tgibbs]

Certainly! Just give me access to the raw, un-adjusted data that these scientists have been hoarding for decades. Oh wait, they keep destroying it.

Sorry, but somebody has been lying to you. The raw, unadjusted data is owned by various national meteorological services, and it has not been destroyed. Some of it is available for a fee, but quite a bit is available freely. You can find it here

Also, lets look at what their models from 10 years ago predicted that the weather would be for the next 10 years and compare to the historical record.

Certainly. Such a comparison may be seen here

Re:No mention

[Rakshasa Taisab]

While you don't need to prove or disprove AGW, you _DO_ need to prove that those rejected papers upheld proper scientific standards. Else you're just another denier shouting CONSPIRACY.

Re:No mention

[FooAtWFU]

Here's how the Wall Street Journal puts your point:

The implicit claim that scientists are better qualified than nonscientists to answer ethical questions points to the broader problem with the liberal attitude toward science. It seems to be more about asserting the political authority of scientists than adhering to the scientific method. This is very clear in the global-warming debate, in which, as last year's "Climategate" scandal showed, scientists disregarded the scientific method in order to promote an ideologically favored hypothesis. In ignoring the scandal and pushing ahead with its "climate" agenda, the Obama administration has shown that it is more interested in ideology than science.

It then goes on to talk about the recent "americans are bombarded with cancer" report:

"This is an evenhanded approach, and an evenhanded report," Dr. Leffall said. "We didn't make statements that should not be made."
He acknowledged that it was impossible to specify just how many cancers were environmentally caused, because not enough research had been done, but he said he was confident that when the research was done, it would confirm the panel's assertion that the problem had been grossly underestimated.

He is confident that once the research has been done, it will confirm the conclusions that he has already reached--conclusions, by the way, that would seem to point in the direction of a vast expansion of government power, consistent with the administration's ideology. Is this what the president meant when he promised to restore science to its proper place?

(Agreement with or refutation of the specifics of the case being made are left as an exercise to the reader.)

Re:No mention

[techno-vampire]

True, and I'm not qualified to say. However, the impression I got from the quotes from Climategate was that the members of the CRU didn't care if they upheld proper standards, they were going to get them rejected because they didn't like their conclusions. Of course, that's only one layman's opinion. YMMV.

Re:No mention

[intheshelter]

Here's my attempt. . .
(i)-(v) All are partially false, conceited, grandiose claims by scientists who don't have the knowledge to understand the complex interactions on our planet.

There, done. I've provided just as much proof for my claim as you provided for yours. Look like I can grandstand too!!

Re:No mention

[MikeBabcock]

Many of those points are in fact being refuted by the "naysayers".

The debate is being quashed by those who agree with the points you've just made, instead of being debated.

Those on the side of "massive human effect on climate change that can be reversed by social changes" (as I like to say) have quality assurance and record keeping issues in some cases that have made themselves look bad. That's not my fault, or anyone else's but their own.

Do good science or suffer the consequences. In this case I'd argue the climatologists didn't do good science. In fact, as far as I've read, they're not even documenting their assumptions.

Re:No mention

[astar]

I will take a shot at it.

First of all, there is the interesting question of quantification. I have seen some predictions that start with the CO2 stuff and come up with a lag time of what, 600 years. science does not have to be quantified by any means, but none of your points are very interesting without some verified numbers. overwhelming natural processes is a bit interesting, but it is not that anyone can really claim that natural processes should dominate. Now I do like the acidification of the ocean claim.

but being a bit nasty, I might make a nice physical claim that increased insolation would allow me to predict a nicely corresponding global temperature increase. but, since insolation seems to have increased 25% over the past, very long, period without an obvious death of the biosphere, maybe i am missing something somewhere. Now it seems the awg computer models change whatever it is that think of as their physical basis rather often, if i feel emperical, I guess I would say the models are going to continue changing their code significantly. but plug in long term isolation and tell me what the awg models say. my, such settled science.

so i am probably narrow. I really think of an interesting model as a set of partial differential equations. nice physical basis. and i have not done that stuff for a long time. but i sometimes see comments on slashdot from people who sound like they might really know something about reliable modeling of physical processes and they did not seem very impressed with the awg types.

on models, I recently saw something about a problem with duplicating the cosmic background radiation models. I do not recall any claims of hiding the basis of the models or hiding the data and i bet it is all very physical, but you go from having a signal to not having a signal. computer models are maybe only maybe 60-70 years old. sort of science, and sort of math, but probably not science in the way Jones wants to think. You can phrase an aspect of the problem in an interesting way: did a computer model ever yield a new fundamental principle of the universe?

Re:No mention

[MikeBabcock]

Certainly! Just give me access to the raw, un-adjusted data that these scientists have been hoarding for decades. Oh wait, they keep destroying it. Also, lets look at what their models from 10 years ago predicted that the weather would be for the next 10 years and compare to the historical record. Those are supposed to be accurate, right?

That would be good science. The climatologists pushing this agenda aren't into good science or they'd let their findings stand on their own instead of pursuing this politically as they already have.

I think its rich that a group of scientists is complaining about legitimate backlash from the media for legitimate issues they've had with their science instead of just admitting that they screwed up, as they've done before.

I'd love to know what this letter would've looked like before we knew about wave theory, or relativity, or before chaos theory (although it seems climatologists do ignore that one regularly). We'd be hearing about how matter is made up of particles which have neatly orbiting electrons because this hadn't been refuted yet, as though you have to agree with every long-standing theory that hasn't been refuted to be a good little boy or girl.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

What subversion ??? put up facts please - not inuendo !

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere.
Are there enough data points to confirm this? There are millions of acres of land in Alaska alone, but the data from temperature stations considered acceptable world wide numbers only 3,000. With present computers and equipment at its cheapest ever, we should have millions of temperature stations to get a true mean global temperature.

(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.
Climate has changed throughout history, and will continue to change. Whole civilizations migrated because their lifestyle could no longer be supported by where they lived. Many civilizations are now extinct. Are we any different today? Why should western civilization survive? The United States and Europe combined cannot hold a candle to the pollution spewed by China; will their carbon emissions destroy us? Is climate change so dangerous that we should attack now?

Re:No mention

[Draek]

Many of those points are in fact being refuted by the "naysayers".

Cite them.

The debate is being quashed by those who agree with the points you've just made, instead of being debated.

Prove it. And I do mean proof, not just a random conspiracy theory.

Do good science or suffer the consequences. In this case I'd argue the climatologists didn't do good science. In fact, as far as I've read, they're not even documenting their assumptions.

Then read some more.

Re:No mention

[SomeKDEUser]

You can make any sufficiently large body of text say anything using selective, out-of-context quotes.

You may also not know this, but papers are usually reviewed by more than one guy. Also, the decision to publish does not belong to the reviewers, but to the editor.

I have seen many cases of papers with a "reject" review based essentially on personal feud or conflicting pet theories. Believe it or not,this is very transparent, and the editor usually goes for more opinions.

In the end, the journals have a strong incentive to publish good papers, with good data/analysis, which will get cited more, thus improving the journal's impact factor.

Finally, if you like conspiracies, ask why the emails with the selective quotes heavily emphasised were released just before Copenhagen, were a few parties were very keen on there not be any agreement...

Re:No mention

[ChunderDownunder]

These scientists are forced to used subversion???

Crikey, it's a new decade - better alternatives such as mercurial, git and a host of others exist.

Re:No mention

[Daetrin]

"'* (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.'

Most of the increase, sure. But how much of the total percentage? The impact the rest of nature has astronomically outstrips the impact humans alone have."

False. The impact the rest of nature has is, or at least was, mostly balanced. It varied from around 200 ppm during ice ages to 300 ppm during interglacial periods. Ice cores indicate it was at about 260-280 ppm in the middle of the 19th century. It is now at 380-390 ppm and rising by 2 ppm per year, or a little over 0.5%. Over a geological timespan that is _huge_ and entirely swamps out all natural cycles we're aware of currently. (If it didn't, those natural cycles would have prevented it from rising much above 300 ppm.) I tried to do some math awhile ago given the amount of fossil fuels we burn every year and calculated that ought to equal an increase of a little over 3 ppm per year. Perhaps i didn't do the math exactly right, or perhaps not all the carbon is making it into the atmosphere, or maybe the biosphere is trying to compensate but not able to fully do so.

"These changes are only 'unprecedented' if you describe 'modern times' as spanning only the last few centuries. The planet has undergone more severe changes than any doomsayer has predicted - life, including human life, has done nothing but flourish. If species X suffers, so be it. If species X happens to be humans, then so be it. Life adapts or GTFOs."

First of all, it is mostly unprecedented if you take a look at the timespan over which it is occurring. The change from 200 ppm to 300 ppm usually takes place over tens of thousands of years. We've seen an increase approximately equal to that amount just over the last 200 years.

Second of all, "Life adapts or GTFOs." Exactly. What part of realizing your actions have negative consequences and adjusting your actions to avoid those consequences isn't "adapting"? Yet when some people say we ought to adapt you're apparently telling them to STFU and stick with the status quo. The universe certainly won't care if species X suffers, but i'm pretty interested in making sure my species isn't species X.

"As always, follow the money."

You mean like the oil corporations that make billions in profit per year, would suffer from a switch to other fuels, and fund studies and lobby groups to prove that global warming is false? (BP: $240 billion revenue, net $16 billion. ExxonMobil $310 B, net $19 B. Royal Dutch Shell $278 B revenue, $19 B net. Chevron $273 B, $23 B net.) Who do you propose is offering more money than they are to prove that global warming is true?

Re:No mention

[WeatherGod]

I see that you are mixing up two different situations. One situation was that some climate scientists felt that a particular journal had an editor that was accepting papers that they felt were not good enough to be published. So, they threatened to boycot the journal. No publications were rejected because of their actions, they simply took their business elsewhere.

The other issue had to do with the process of authoring one of the sections of the IPCC publication. The IPCC publication has many authors, and there are always going to be disputes about what to include and what not to include. Their objections were over-ruled and those items were included.

Sounds like business as usual for science, and cooler heads prevailed.

Re:No mention

[ShakaUVM]

>>You may also not know this, but papers are usually reviewed by more than one guy. Also, the decision to publish does not belong to the reviewers, but to the editor.

The issue in question with Climategate was Phil Jones getting people to boycott a journal because they put a skeptic on their editorial board. From what I've heard, the journal did go downhill after that, but... chicken, egg, etc.

There's also an apparent issue with the IPCC using non-peer-reviewed papers in their reports. According to Fox (I know, I know), the majority of the sources cited in AR4 were not peer-reviewed, and they quoted partisan groups like the WWF (not the pro wrestlers) quite extensively. I haven't verified this claim, so take it with a grain of salt.

Re:No mention

[shutdown -p now]

The implicit claim that scientists are better qualified than nonscientists to answer ethical questions points to the broader problem with the liberal attitude toward science.

Whether the planet is warming or not is not an "ethical question".

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, that subversion they had totally planned out, had all the editors of the journals in a room together, had paid off all the reviewers, and locked up or killed anyone that disagreed with them.

what? none of that happened? it was a throwaway comment? surely not!

Re:No mention

[tgibbs]

The planet is warming due to the sun.

Nope. We are actually in a solar cooling phase, which is masking somewhat the increase due to CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, the solar cooling trend will eventually reverse, and we'll then have solar heating on top of CO2-mediated warming

The impact the rest of nature has astronomically outstrips the impact humans alone have.

Technically correct. The planet is estimated to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it would be if there were no natural CO2. The anticipated temperature increase due to man's emissions of CO2 is only a fraction of that, but still enough to be a serious problem.

These changes are only "unprecedented" if you describe "modern times" as spanning only the last few centuries. The planet has undergone more severe changes than any doomsayer has predicted - life, including human life, has done nothing but flourish.

Also correct. Current theory does not predict that global warming will wipe out humanity. But substantial sea level rises and changes in the climate in regions where most of the world's food is grown would be far more disruptive than in the prehistoric world.

Re:No mention

[rmushkatblat]

Indeed - making bad puns is a wonderful way to attempt to derail a thread.

And, in case you somehow don't know the meaning of the word:

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

Also, I totally didn't mean to spawn a thread.

Re:No mention

[DrDitto]

How can you completely prove AGW using the scientific method? You can't stick the earth in a test tube. You cannot perform repeatable experiments with controlled variables. Thus you can only prove sub-components of AGW that may support the *theory* of AGW.

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

The implicit claim that scientists are better qualified than nonscientists to answer ethical questions points to the broader problem with the liberal attitude toward science.

Whether the planet is warming or not is not an "ethical question".

What to do about it is. The AGW scientists aren't just saying AGW is happening, they are saying the only way to stop it is to give the government complete control over all economic activity (and if we don't do it now it will be too late--something they have been saying for over 20 years, if they are right, it is already too late, so why bother).

Re:No mention

[SomeKDEUser]

Boycotting a journal because they have people you think are idiots ont the board is a sane, reasonable and good thing to do.

As for quoting the WWF, well why not, as long as the quote is attributed and deemed valid. Clearly, the WWF care about the issue and say a lot about it, so even if they mostly say nonsense (and I am not a fan of their's, though they are not nearly as bad as loathful greenpeace), the odds are they also at times make sense -- and even if it is luck. In science, proper attribution is important.

As for fox, well, unlike the scientists, their typos/misatributions/errors are sadly usually intentionnal. Do yourself a favour, and stop watching it: the signal to noise ratio of stuff getting to you will improve.

Re:No mention

[Barrinmw]

Well, if the Medieval Warm Period was global, wouldn't that put some doubt on their argument that this heating is unprecedented?

Also, during the time of the Dinosaurs, the C02 concentrations were much much higher then they are now, there was no ice at either pole and the Earth got along just fine. The oceans weren't so acidified that shellfish couldn't exist. But now, with our C02 levels a 10th of what those were, somehow its going to spell disaster for everything we know?

Re:No mention

[CrazyDuke]

I actually did read some of those emails, and I find it funny that those emails where complaining about what you are complaining about. Apparently, they thought, or felt, hell I don't know if they had any evidence. But, regardless, they where complaining that one of the Journals had been taken over by some kind of special interest group, subverting the peer review process. And, one of them suggested that they boycott the journal, circumventing what they felt was a corrupted peer review process.

So, now we've got one "side" bitching that the other is subverting the peer review process and vice-versa; and, neither is acknowledging their own hand in the matter. I find this oh, so amusing. ...and sad, very sad.

Re:No mention

[shutdown -p now]

What to do about it is. The AGW scientists aren't just saying AGW is happening, they are saying the only way to stop it is to give the government complete control over all economic activity

Funny, I'm not aware of any proposals calling for "complete control over all economic activities". Most, in fact, call for making the externalities explicit - i.e. companies/countries that pollute should pay correspondingly - which strikes me as a good idea in general, regarding of GW. Yes, there's also a push for clean energy sources, but, again, mostly via economic incentives, and regulation (e.g. emissions) is generally trailing far behind.

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

"And, of course, they say nothing about the subversion of the peer review process discussed in the emails."

Why would they mention something that only exists in the fervent imagination of political hacks and conspiracy theorists?

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

You haven't heard about the proposals to regulate back yard barbecues? Or California's banning of new fireplaces in people's homes? Or the fact that if the EPA regulates CO2 under the Clean Air Act the same way it regulates the other gases that come under the Clean Air Act it would mean that shopping malls, even stand alone Walmarts would come under these regulations?

Re:No mention

[rmushkatblat]

If you haven't read the emails, don't even bother replying. Once you have, get back to me. If you still hold that stance then arguing with you would be about as fruitful as headbutting a brick wall.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

re (i) The planet has cooled over the past 10 years. Also it has never been proven that a rise in carbon dioxide results in higher surface temperatures on this planet.
re (ii) CO2 levels have increased but this is a non toxic gas that living being such as yourself exhale on a regular basis.
re (iii) Given that global temperatures have been falling over the past 10 years this statement is pattently false.
re (iv) If the planet becomes warmer due to natural causes like it did in the middle ages it will make more land farmable and habitable to human beings. Look at how most humans live in tropical areas of the planet where crops grow redilly. Yes some people will have to move if nature causes temperatures to change but luckily we have legs and automobiles and planes and boats to make this much easier.
re (v) Given that warmer temperatures cause greater crop groath your prediction of famine is down right silly. Ocean levels havn't risen. Predictions of rising ocean levels have been revised downward twice as they fail to come true each time.

So Al Gore has been claiming that we must act within the next 10 years or all will be lost. He has tried to scare us with claims of drought famine rising ocean levels and much worse. The problem is he has been saying this for 20 years. I am tired of the scare tactics. Please don't post bulletpoints with no facts in them. I have refuted them with no facts either since this is the level of intelectual effort they are worthy of.

Good day.

Re:No mention

[ManFromNowhere]

Ask and you shall receive:

(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.

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

You do realise the papers talked about in the climategate emails were published and did make it into the IPCC reports, right? And that with 20/20 hinsight Jones opinion of those papers was correct because they have definitely not withstood the test of time.

What I find amazing about climategate is that in 10yrs worth of emails the propogandists could only find a handfull of quotes to take out of context and twist to suit their agenda. Similarly in 20yrs worth of IPCC reports the only genuine error found so far is the himalayan date which despite the scrutiny of an army of psuedo-skeptics was actually found by IPCC scientists. If the psuedo-skeptics could claim similar standards of self-skeptcisim half as good as that then the "psuedo" part could be dropped and I could call them scientists.

Re:No mention

[shutdown -p now]

I don't see how regulating the amount of emissions amounts to "complete control", though. We already regulate other polluters - for good reasons - so why not CO2?

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

Schizoprenic media is nothing new. The opinion columns in the WSJ have always been in violent disagreement with the news section on the issue of AGW. The same schizophrenic behaviour was evident at the WSJ during the tabacoo/cancer debate.

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

I don't see how regulating the amount of emissions amounts to "complete control", though. We already regulate other polluters - for good reasons - so why not CO2?

So, that means regulating everybody, because everybody emits CO2. If we regulate every activity that causes the emission of CO2, we regulate every activity. Now you may be fine with that idea, but don't try and say that you haven't heard of proposals for complete control of all economic activity, because you just called for it.
Additionally, I don't consider CO2 a pollutant. Please list one other pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act that the complete absence of would destroy the overwhelming majority of life on this planet.

Re:No mention

[ShakaUVM]

>>Boycotting a journal because they have people you think are idiots ont the board is a sane, reasonable and good thing to do.

I wasn't necessarily criticizing the move, just explaining what it was in the context of the Climategate emails.

>>As for quoting the WWF, well why not, as long as the quote is attributed and deemed valid.

Because they're a partisan group making non-peer-reviewed claims that then get incorporated into AR4 and then treated like gospel? It's problematic.

>>Do yourself a favour, and stop watching it: the signal to noise ratio of stuff getting to you will improve.

I don't watch it, except very occasionally. It was an online article linked to from somewhere else.

And I take rather the opposite approach - I try to read articles from as many viewpoints as possible, find out on which facts they disagree, and then research those facts myself. If you never listen to Fox, or always listen to Fox (replace Fox with any other information source), you'll end up with biases because your assumptions were never challenged.

Re:No mention

[arcticinfantry]

You should actually read IPCC AR4. The "facts" you state above are not facts at all but are conjectures which the group of scientists have "90%" confidence in. There are already plenty of climate scientists who question those above statements, so I feel no need to do the same. Do have any *real* facts to bring to the argument? Or can we expect more confused rhetoric?

Re:No mention

[arcticinfantry]

Is Michael Mann the exclusive moderator of this thread?

Re:No mention

[arcticinfantry]

Um, No. I think this is a point that more objective people have been trying to make repeatedly. It *is* possible to read the ClimateGate letters in total and want an investigation of particular people/instituions completely independent of your thoughts on Anthropogenic Global Warming. To argue as above only makes you look like a nut.

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

Just for the sake of argument let's say the CRU were totally corrupt and in the pocket of the evil geniuses of the NWO. How then do you explain that the independently derived GISTEMP dataset (nasa) closely matches the HADcrut dataset (CRU)?

Others have pointed to the raw data for HADcrut, a small portion of wich is hard (but not imposible) to obtain due to nationalist obstuctions. GISStemp does not suffer from that restriction, the raw data and source code is all publicly available here and has been indenpendently reconstructed here

As for chaos theory, it was discovered by Lorenze while working on a weather models. Climatoligists are aware that climate is the statistics of weather and that chaos theory does not apply to climate over human time scales.

"I'd love to know what this letter would've looked like before we knew about wave theory, or...We'd be hearing about how matter is made up of particles which have neatly orbiting electrons because this hadn't been refuted yet, as though you have to agree with every long-standing theory that hasn't been refuted to be a good little boy or girl."

You are trying to make all science into an "argument from authority" wich it is not. Popper's "republic of science" demands you accept the best testable explaination until you can falsify it or come up with a better one, this has nothing to do with authority and everything to do with logic and skepticisim. Your statement shows you simply do not comprehend the relativity of wrong and utill you do you will never really appreciate the utility of science that is staring you in the face while you type your refutation of it.

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

Yes the Earth has been warmer in the past and the last time it was this warm New York was 140 feet below sea level. As for life flourishing, the last time the Eath's oceans became acidic due to excess CO2 was during one of the 5 great natural extinction events.

Comparing human induced changes over human time scales to natural changes over gelogic time scales is a pointless philosphical exercise that has zero relevance to the current predicament of our civilisation. Ignoring the difference would indicate we are no more intelligent or adaptable than fermenting yeast in a sealed container.

Re:No mention

[shutdown -p now]

So, that means regulating everybody, because everybody emits CO2. If we regulate every activity that causes the emission of CO2, we regulate every activity.

Wow, what a strawman. By that logic, we already regulate every activity - ever heard of taxes?

Additionally, I don't consider CO2 a pollutant. Please list one other pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act that the complete absence of would destroy the overwhelming majority of life on this planet.

It's a matter of quantity (like so many other things). We're not talking about regulating how you breathe, or how cows fart. We're talking about regulating extremely large-scale emissions (in cases of cars, small emissions that add up very quickly due to large scale of the phenomenon), that, by all scientific accounts, have direct observable and undesirable long-term effect on our environment.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd trust that website a lot more if it wasn't owned by a company that was founded by Al Gore's former communications director.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

No mention of Geo Engineering? That's not science!
No mention of HAARP because it's a state secret? That's not science!
Locating substandard semiconductor based sensors near AC units, Asphalt Parking Lots, Garbage Burning Bins? That's not science!
No mention of the effects of the Sun? That's not science!
No mention of the corruption of the Existing Cap and Trade? That's not science!
No mention of a nation giving up sovergnity? That's not science!

And interestingly enough the captcha is "costly"
Yes, allowing non-science to influence treaties which nullify parts of our constitution and conning local government agencies like the EPA is not only costly but treasonous.

The AGW propaganda is toast. Get over it.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

I think the specific thing you are referring to is the publication of the Soon and Baliunas paper in Climate Research in 2003. It was a paper that should not have been published without major revisions. Among the criticisms of the paper they used precipitation proxies where they should have used temperature proxies and they took regional temperature changes as global changes. Half of the editorial staff resigned when the publisher wouldn't allow the chief editor to print a rebuttal of the paper. Even the publisher eventually admitted it should not have been published without revision. Like the editorial staff Phil Jones questioned why anyone would want to have their name associated with a journal that would publish such junk. Maybe that's why the journal went downhill.

The majority of sources cited in AR4 were peer reviewed (12900/18500 according to one {skeptic} source). The IPCC AR4 report has 3 sections.

Working Group I is about the physical science basis of climate change. I believe you'll find that nearly everything cited in the WG1 section is peer reviewed and anything that wasn't probably could have been.

WG II is about the impacts and our vulnerability to climate change. There are more non-peer reviewed references in this section but I'd be surprised if the peer reviewed cites didn't outnumber them still.

WG III is about mitigation, what we can do about it. By its very nature it has some political aspects to it and cited many government, NGO, and business sources as well as peer reviewed papers. This is where you will find most of the non-peer reviewed cites in the AR4 report.

Finally, a paper is not necessarily worthless just because it is not peer reviewed. I think you have to examine it on a case by case basis to determine its worth.

Re:No mention

[tbannist]

It appears the Wall Street Journal is wrong. The "Climategate" scandal showed no such thing, this has been independently confirmed by two separate investigations. That entire first paragraph reads as classic anti-AGW propaganda, no small part of that is because it blatantly misrepresents the facts.

In the second situation, it is possible to determine that there are more of something that previously thought without determine exactly how much more. For example, if you have two rabbits and one day you see dozens of rabbit ears in your backyard, you can probably sure that you have more than two rabbits now without actually rounding them all up and counting them. If you see more than four rabbit ears, you are pretty likely to have more than two rabbits.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

The AGW scientists aren't just saying AGW is happening, they are saying the only way to stop it is to give the government complete control over all economic activity ...

No, what scientists say if they say anything is the best way to control global warming it to stop emitting such large quantities of CO2. They leave the issue of complete government control to others.

It's never too late to do something. The more you do and the sooner you do it the better, easier and cheaper the result but as long as we keep spewing CO2 into the atmosphere it'll keep getting worse.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

How about ozone? Without the stratospheric ozone layer which absorbs 93-99% of the high energy ultra-violet light the surface would become pretty unlivable.

Re:No mention

[khallow]

You do realise the papers talked about in the climategate emails were published and did make it into the IPCC reports, right?

There's still the sticky matter of intent. Those emails make the intent clear. Now, maybe the people in question cooled down after the heat of the moment and didn't carry through on their threats. Or maybe they did, but failed due to obstacles in their path. We don't know from the emails, but it's showing more of that blatant and emotional anti-scientific bias that colored their thinking and probably their research.

Re:No mention

[tgibbs]

I'd trust that website a lot more if it wasn't owned by a company that was founded by Al Gore's former communications director.

You can play this kind of "n degrees of separation" game with almost anybody. But it's not a matter of trust. The website provides citations to the original scientific literature and links to the data. You can check it all yourself if you are interested enough to take the time to develop the expertise.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

Of course climate models just model climate, not weather. Climate only describes the bounds of the weather system. Another way to look at it is that climate is the carrier signal that the weather rides on like the audio signal on a radio carrier wave.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, that was downright painful to read. I'm no grammar Nazi. A few spelling mistakes I can tolerate. But failing to capitalize the first word of almost every sentence? Come on...

Re:No mention

[Troed]

Sure, I'll select two:

Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times

There's no scientific support for the statement above. Some models predict that to be the result, but the feedback processes speculated to behave that way are currently not well understood. The time period "in modern times" is equally badly qualified, we do not have information more than a few decades back to support such a statement.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic

There's dubious support for the statement above. It relies on interesting measurements of ocean pH levels (where? No such thing as a global pH level) from centuries ago - and it's trivial to show that the equipment of that time did not have the accuracy needed for the claim to be well supported. It's also a politized statement since "more acidic" is meant to convey a picture of impending doom, where "going from basic 8.179 in 1751 to 8.104 in 1994" will likely just result in a sigh.

Here comes the interesting part: You, me, and all scientists in the audicence know what I've written above is true. Fanaticism around the area of AGW will however result in "interesting" replies to this post, as well as (likely) moderations both ways. Why? When did proper caveats with regards to how well a scientific hypothesis is supported become something negative to point out?

Re:No mention

[Troed]

How then do you explain that the independently derived GISTEMP dataset (nasa) closely matches the HADcrut dataset (CRU)?

Because they're not independent, of course. You know better than this. Or did you mean their modifications and not just the actual data?

Re:No mention

[ShakaUVM]

Good information, thanks.

Sure, a non-peer-reviewed paper isn't necessarily worthless, but that's where you get problems like the Himalayan glaciers melting prediction and such. And sources like the WWF are honestly just going to be too biased to really be used... they're the same folks that said that 10,000 species a day were going extinct and whatnot back in the 80s, which means that by nowadays we only have something like -10,000,000 species left on the planet.

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

Sorry, there have been scientists who have lobbied for government control. There were scientists who said that if we didn't do something by some year 5-10 years in the future (a date that is now past) it would be too late to stop the "tipping point".

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

That's a good counter argument, however, the EPA only regulates ground level ozone. My understanding is that ground level ozone never rises to the stratospheric layer of the atmosphere and ozone from the stratospheric layer of the atmosphere never drops to ground level. This would make ground level ozone have no positive impact on the livability of the earth, unlike the CO2 that they are proposing to regulate.

Re:No mention

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Here's how the Wall Street Journal...

Sorry, you already lost me. The WSJ lost all credibility when they were bought by Fox and the nature of their articles began to change dramatically. You see, Fox is the corporate "news" that went to court to assert their right to fire journalists in their employ who refused to lie to viewers and sign agreements to not talk about public health risks posed by a drug company that was a large advertiser. To be clear, Fox was correct, they do have that right... but they also now have ZERO credibility as a news organization and even less when expressing their "opinions" about how controversial topics are portrayed.

Re:No mention

[TapeCutter]

GISTemp and HADcrut both refer to cleaned data sets. They are "independently derived" in that they use diffent statistical methods and different error correction, for example HADcrut ignores anything inside the arctic circle where as GISSTemp extrapolates data inside the arctic circle. Of course there is a large overlap in the raw instrumental data since there is only one set of raw instrumental data prior to sattelites.

If you don't trust any of those methods then it's not hard to do your own "back of the envelope" analysis using the raw weather station data and/or raw sattelite data and come up with a trend that is not much different to the more accurate figures in either of the cleaned data sets. In fact you don't even have to use all the raw data, just pick a hundred stations at random from across the globe and use a least squares fit, you will still get a similar degrees per decade trend. The reason this is possible is that when a genuine trend exists in noisy data it is really not that difficult to find it.

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

(ii) I would like to see where someone reputable has said this one. Every place I've seen it mentioned says humans are responsible for less than 2% of CO2.

(iii) This is also untrue. Methane has 200x the effect of CO2 yet no one is proposing doing anything about methane.

Those two right there, from the AGW scientists themselves, shows that ALL regulation is about keeping people under the thumb of government NOT about doing something to fix the problem.

Re:No mention

[astar]

Yah, I did not realize it was so offensive. I will try to do better. Might be too much internet messaging on my part.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

You're welcome. I always strive to be informative.

Exxon-Mobile was cited in the AR4 report. Are they too biased as well? 10,000 species a day sounds pretty hyperbolic to me. Can you provide a reference? I imagine they could have said 100 a day but even that seems pretty extreme. Maybe if you include all microorganisms.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

I don't see how you're going to control CO2 emissions without some sort of government intervention. Any suggestions? And not controlling CO2 emissions is not an option IMO.

Scientists are people, citizens and they have families. If they see a problem they believe need urgent attention they have as much right as anyone to state their position.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

I knew it wasn't prefect. All I'll say is that it's not an either/or thing with CO2. Pollution is too much of something where you don't want it. It's like salt. You can die from having too little or too much salt in your diet. It's been nearly 20 million years since atmospheric CO2 levels have been as high as they are now. The biosphere is adapted to levels below 300 ppm. Between global warming and ocean acidification I believe we've got too much CO2 now.

Re:No mention

[Attila Dimedici]

And not controlling CO2 emissions is not an option IMO.

Well, that is your problem, because I'm not convinced that controlling CO2 emissions is all that important. Many of the organizations that are pushing government intervention to stop AGE were saying that government intervention was needed to stop this, that or the other "OMG the world is going to end if we don't act now" problem before they got on the AGW bandwagon. And that is why most AGW skeptics are skeptics, the people who are pushing AGW have been saying "OMG, the world's going to end if we don't do X" my whole life. So now when they "OMG, AGW, if we don't do X, the world's going to end," I just don't believe them (by the way, that X in the quote is more or less the same with each "crisis").

Re:No mention

[ShakaUVM]

>>10,000 species a day sounds pretty hyperbolic to me.

The actual numbers vary pretty widely, but that's what was tossed at us when I was in zoo school back in the 1980s (at the San Diego Zoo, no less).

Just a quick browse on the WWF site reveals that in the time it takes you to read this sentence, another species will have gone extinct!

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/

They're saying here 50,000 per year, but honestly nobody really knows any numbers, so they just make up statistics and call it fact. Here's there pulled-out-of-their-ass guesswork in a nutshell:
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/

"IF we are losing just 0.1% of species a year and IF there are a million species on the planet..."

Yeah.

Re:No mention

[bhiestand]

How can you completely prove AGW using the scientific method? You can't stick the earth in a test tube. You cannot perform repeatable experiments with controlled variables. Thus you can only prove sub-components of AGW that may support the *theory* of AGW.

Since you're so knowledgeable about the scientific method, please explain to us how we can completely prove anything using the scientific method.

Eagerly awaiting your reply.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

Are you sure it was 10,000 a day rather than 10,000 a year? That's more in line with what the WWF claims. There are probably 10's of millions of species but most of them are bacteria. Most of the animal species are insects. Who knows what genetic knowledge we are losing with all of those extinctions?

Re:No mention

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all nice and good, but if most the data had been measured propped in the first place then there wouldn't be such results.
See: http://surfacestations.org/

Re:No mention

[ShakaUVM]

Let's say it's 100,000 a year, which matches their "200-500 species a day going extinct".

That was back in the early 80s. It's been 30 years, so 3,000,000 species would have to have gone extinct since then. There's only 2-10 million "interesting" species on the planet. I think we'd have noticed, to be perfectly honest.

Do you know where they came up with that number? There was a study back in the 70s where they taped off a section of land in the middle of nowhere, counted the species in it, including insects, then came back a year later and recounted. If they didn't see the same beetle there a year later, they considered it "extinct". This poorly run study was the basis for all of these hyperbolic claims. Based on other claims, peo

A better way of exposing these claims as bullshit is to see that the WWF counts species as "near threatened" as part of this list, which means pretty much any animal anywhere in contact with humans (near threatened is the lowest category after "least concern"). Or another way of looking at it is that only nine endangered species have gone extinct since the 1970s in America.

Re:No mention

[Troed]

Better ;) Although using the word "raw" is somewhat in error still, both HADCrut and GISTemp use data from GHCN which has already been "adjusted". That both datasets show the same signals is thus expected.

Using them as validation of eachother - "independent" - is thus statistically dubious at best.

I'm of the opinion that the UHI adjustments done in GHCN are in error, and that station dropsouts are biasing any derived results. That does not mean that there isn't a positive trend, there is, it just looks somewhat different over the 20th century and it would track the satellite data (UAH) much closer over the same time periods if corrected.

Re:No mention

[riverat1]

The reason to act now is that even if we stopped increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere tomorrow the warming trend would continue for another 50 years or so primarily because of the thermal buffer of the oceans. You don't think controlling CO2 emissions is important but the vast majority of climate scientists studying the issue disagree. Hmm, who am I going to believe.

Re:No mention

[tgibbs]

Except that the ocean data and the satellite data agree with the surface data. And multiple analyses of the biases in the surface measurements have found that the errors are unable to account for the measured trend.

Re:No mention

[DrDitto]

It is not possible to perform controlled experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments You can only perform "natural" or "quasi-experiments".

Re:No mention

[bhiestand]

It is not possible to perform controlled experiments:

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

You can only perform "natural" or "quasi-experiments".

That's completely irrelevant to my point. You said:

How can you completely prove AGW using the scientific method?

I said:

...please explain to us how we can completely prove anything using the scientific method.

The point is that you CAN'T prove anything with the scientific method because there are no proofs in the scientific method. Really, you're looking in the wrong place if you expect proofs.

When you demand that the scientific method "prove" something, you're just demonstrating that you have no understanding of the method. Sorry, your credibility on the subject is shot until you can demonstrate otherwise.

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

I don't find it sad. I find it to be a good thing that scientists refuse to put up with denialist bullshit. When the right-wingers took over the journal, the only right thing to do was to boycott it. Nothing sad about weeding out unscientific bullshit.

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

The supposed "subverting the peer review process" is just an invention by right-wing religious loons. Yes indeed, lying that someone subverted the peer review process, and then repeating that lie in public (complaining about it) is EVIL. Lying about science and scientists to undermine scientific facts that don't match your religion/ideology is EVIL.

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

Those emails make the intent clear.

Yes, the intent to reject crappy "research". How terrible!

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

I'm of the opinion that the UHI adjustments done in GHCN are in error, and that station dropsouts are biasing any derived results.

That's because you are an ignorant denialist who places ideological opinion before scientific fact.

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

The supposed "subversion of the peer review process" is just an invention by right-wing religious loons.

Re:No mention

[hkmwbz]

I have read the e-mails that were supposedly showing "subversion of the peer-review process". Turns out that, like the rest of the manufactroversy that is "climategate", it was a bunch of right-wing quote-mining. AGW denialists are as dishonest as creationists.

You know what's like headbutting a brick wall? Trying to have a rational, reasonable debate with creationists/AGW denialists.

Re:No mention

[sexconker]

The impact the rest of nature has is, or at least was, mostly balanced. It varied from around 200 ppm during ice ages to 300 ppm during interglacial periods. Ice cores indicate it was at about 260-280 ppm in the middle of the 19th century. It is now at 380-390 ppm and rising by 2 ppm per year, or a little over 0.5%. Over a geological timespan that is _huge_ and entirely swamps out all natural cycles we're aware of currently.

How can you bring up a "geological timespan" when you only refer to data a few hundred years back and at choice "interglacial periods"?

Not only is CO2 not the only contributor to the greenhouse effect, the accuracy of ice core samples is terrible - and still global warming nutjobs have to obfuscate and cherry pick that data.

You've drank deep of the Warm-Aid.

Your other points are just plain wrong.
No, the changes are not unprecedented. Earth has been hotter or colder than you have ever seen and more so than any model predicts. Life flourished.

Political action is not biological adaptation.
Economic action is not biological adaptation.
Life must adapt - not your lifestyle.

If humans can't survive in a dramatically hotter or colder world, so be it. Regardless of what caused it (hint: It's not humans).

Oil companies make lots of money! They must be the ones who stand to profit from the legislation and fear mongering. Oh wait. The legislation and fear mongering is completely COUNTER to the oil companies' current practices. You talk in billions when the proposed legislation will have entire nations' economies upheaved. Trillions of dollars worth of bullshit. You post gross and net why? Just because gross is bigger and it makes your point seem scarier. Protip: Those margins are between 5 and 8%. Proposed legislation creates a false market where people simply trade numbers in a database - no actual goods or services are exchanged. Pure, adulterated, profit.

Re:No mention

[sexconker]

Ignoring the difference would indicate we are no more intelligent or adaptable than fermenting yeast in a sealed container.

Hate to break it to you - we aren't.
Life as we know it will cease to exist on this planet. We will have had nothing to do with it. We will be powerless to stop it. Life will rise again. This will repeat until the Earth's core solidifies, the magnetosphere wanes, our atmosphere is stripped, our liquid water evaporates and solidifies, the Earth becomes a barren, lifeless rock, etc.

Re:No mention

[DrDitto]

I personally do not believe you have any understanding of the scientific method. How many peer-reviewed scientific papers have you published? Because I've got over a dozen.

What I am referring to is "scientific fact". A scientific fact can be verified with a controlled experiment. As quoted in wikipedia (which obviously should not be taken as factual): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

"Scientific facts are generally believed to be independent of the observer: no matter who performs a scientific experiment, all observers will agree on the outcome."

Facts can also be observations that are used to support theories. The Theory of Evolution itself will always be a theory. The individual observations themselves are facts.

Re:No mention

[Daetrin]

I'm not sure if your response is 50% failure to fully read what i wrote and 50% deliberate misconstruction, or just 100% failure to fully read.

"How can you bring up a 'geological timespan' when you only refer to data a few hundred years back and at choice 'interglacial periods'?"

I'm not sure where you got this. I said that in the past "It varied from around 200 ppm during ice ages to 300 ppm during interglacial periods." Those records span hundreds of thousands of years. Then i cited the value from the mid 19th century, which is the point at which the measured values started to rapidly diverge from the patterns they followed in the past.

"Your other points are just plain wrong. No, the changes are not unprecedented. Earth has been hotter or colder than you have ever seen and more so than any model predicts. Life flourished."

That's clearly a failure to read. What i said was "First of all, it is mostly unprecedented if you take a look at the timespan over which it is occurring." I then went on to show how the values over the last 200 years have changed much more rapidly than they have in the past. To repeat, i never denied that it has been hotter and colder in the past than it is now, nor will i deny that life as a whole did fine during those periods. I'm just pointing out that conditions seem to be changing far faster now than they ever have in the past. It's not clear that most species can adapt to such a rapid change, and it's not clear that humans would be happy in the world that resulted from those rapid changes.

"Political action is not biological adaptation. Economic action is not biological adaptation. Life must adapt - not your lifestyle."

You never specified biological adaption. You just said "Life adapts or GTFOs." Why does the adaption have to be biological? Many species take actions to adapt the environment to themselves. They build nests, they build dams, they change the environment they find themselves in to make it more suited to themselves. Humans are certainly the most extreme example of this, but all the traits that allow us to organize ourselves, make plans and carry out actions using technology are all traits that arose through perfectly natural circumstances.

I think it behooves us to be one of the species that adapts our world in beneficial ways, rather than one of the species that pays no attention to the actions they take (figuratively speaking) and suffers from the consequences. (Although to be perfectly fair i presume all species are a mix of the two factors, but it's still better that we personally lean as far towards the beneficial side as possible.)

Would you argue that sewers and sewage treatment plants are somehow cheating because they're politically and economically motivated projects rather than just dealing with tons of sewage "naturally"? If we have a problem, something that adversely affects our lives, we should solve it in the most effective method possible, not stick to some arcane rules about what's "fair" or "natural" or not.

"the accuracy of ice core samples is terrible - and still global warming nutjobs have to obfuscate and cherry pick that data."

This would be a fair point, if it's true, in fact it's rather the key point. If ice cores are accurate then you can't deny anything i said about the rapidity of the changes. If the ice cores are entirely inaccurate then nothing i said about the speed of those changes holds up. I'm not sure how we could debate that particular issue since i presume neither one of us are experts in the field (at least i sure know i'm not.) I could ask my glaciologist friend if they know any details about the subject, but i'm not sure if it's something they've focused on.

"The legislation and fear mongering is completely COUNTER to the oil companies' current practices."

You were the one who said "As always, follow the money." originally. That sounded stupid to me because economically the ones with the biggest

Re:No mention

[sexconker]

I'm not sure where you got this. I said that in the past "It varied from around 200 ppm during ice ages to 300 ppm during interglacial periods." Those records span hundreds of thousands of years. Then i cited the value from the mid 19th century, which is the point at which the measured values started to rapidly diverge from the patterns they followed in the past.

The data behind those claims is scaremongering based on an infinitesimally small window in the 19th century and specific cherry picked time periods at points further back.

I won't dignify anything else by reading or responding to it. You're a global warming zealot who cares nothing for the actual science.

Not going to entertain any of your delusions with any further reading or response.

Re:No mention

[bhiestand]

First I'll apologize for getting so snarky in my initial reply. I don't usually do that, but I've been busy lately and perhaps quicker to snap at people online than I should be. Re-reading it a couple days later it does come across harsher than I intended. Now back to the discussion.

I personally do not believe you have any understanding of the scientific method. How many peer-reviewed scientific papers have you published? Because I've got over a dozen.

I'm not used to seeing paper count as the e-peen measurement around here, and I have no intention of starting now. I'll concede that even if you're lying and have published zero papers with zero impact, your zero will trump my null answer. I'd also like to assert that you could have so many awards that you use your Nobel as a paperweight. Either way, I'll grant that you may have credibility and go back to trying to figure out what you're arguing.

I think we may be miscommunicating (sic says Mr. Spellcheck), so I'll rephrase my original reply to you.

Again, what you said:

How can you completely prove AGW using the scientific method? You can't stick the earth in a test tube. You cannot perform repeatable experiments with controlled variables. Thus you can only prove sub-components of AGW that may support the *theory* of AGW.

That comes off as an attack on AGW because "the theory cannot be proven". It's a frequent criticism on Slashdot, the blogosphere, and the public in general. I've heard the same arguments against Evolution my whole life, and I tend to react harshly when I hear them.

So I'll ask again. Are you criticizing AGW/Climate Change by saying that it cannot be proven? Do you consider this a flaw in this/these theories, or any other theories? You seem to go on to make the same argument I was originally getting at when you try to school me on theories vs. facts, so I can only hope we were miscommunicating.

What I am referring to is "scientific fact". A scientific fact can be verified with a controlled experiment. As quoted in wikipedia (which obviously should not be taken as factual): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

Hmph. Now you've got me sounding like the weird one. I'd argue that you prove facts with the empirical rather than scientific method, but I think we're generally in agreement on this point. I should have said you "don't prove theories with the scientific method". Which you obviously agree with, which leads me back to the original complaint...

What are you driving at when you say you can't prove AGW? That complaint is usually followed by "you can't _scientifically prove_ it therefore we shouldn't do anything about it".

Re:No mention

[DrDitto]

So I'll ask again. Are you criticizing AGW/Climate Change by saying that it cannot be proven?

I am criticizing the frequent rhetoric where people assume AGW is scientific fact. I am criticizing what I perceive as some "group think" amongst the academic climate change community. I spent the last 7 years in a PhD program and am quite familiar with the "group think" aspects of academia. Circle the wagons and shoot outwards.

What are you driving at when you say you can't prove AGW? That complaint is usually followed by "you can't _scientifically prove_ it therefore we shouldn't do anything about it".

Actually my view is that society should apply some actuary science here (i.e., risk management). GW is happening whether we like it or not, thus a fair amount of money should be spent on researching/improving our ability to adapt. AGW may or may not be happening, and it may be irreversible if it is. Nonetheless, there exists some non-zero probability that AGW is indeed happening and that it is reversible with modest or drastic worldwide action. Thus I absolutely believe we should be purchasing some modest insurance policies (modest meaning 1-3% of global GDPs). What I find unrealistic is calling for such drastic change, given the uncertainties involved, that global economies and balances would rapidly shift.

As an example, I believe the risks of AGW probably outweigh the risks of nuclear power generation (which could *substantially* reduce CO2 emissions).

Re:No mention

[Daetrin]

Ah yes, refusal to discuss serious issues in a calm and rational manner with the people who disagree with you. Truly the hallmark of intelligent and open minded non-zealots everywhere.

Like the Flat Earth Society

[Foobar of Borg]

All these ridiculous denials of basic scientific principles reminds me of the Flat Earth Society. It's interesting to read about them because, no matter how much evidence was accumulated, they could always fashion some reason why the Earth was flat and the evidence was misunderstood. Hell, even when satellite images showed a round Earth, Shenton (FES head) remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye."

We have essentially the same thing today. No matter how much evidence is shown for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and so on, the fundamentalist wackos will rail against it and find some rationale for continuing in their thoroughly disproved ideas. About 25% of the American public cannot in any way be convinced, no matter how much evidence is shown them. These are the same people who think Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and who still believe Obama is a Kenyan citizen and George W Bush actually cares about them and their Christian religion.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Mike Van Pelt]

Freeman Dyson is none of those things, and he's expressed skepticism about the whole climate change panic.

How do you refute him, when none of your ad-hominims apply to him? Or do you just come up with another ad-hominim?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RightwingNutjob]

Looking at 150-4000 years of noise on a billion year old planet and declaring that the sky is falling unless we start riding our bikes through the freezing cold while they jet around the world to Raise Awareness is not anything close to science. Period. And demanding drastic cultural changes as a hedge against uncertain extrapolation with ginormous error bars on it is not within the realm of scientific inquiry. Period.

Science, with a capital S and maybe some ones and exclamation points after it is about truth, not activism. The merit of an investigator is the quality of his discoveries, not the quantity of his pronouncements.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[MadUndergrad]

Dyson doesn't deny the science - he disagrees with the severity and importance of the consequences. I think he's wrong, but he's no denier.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah but if we followed your logic to its logical conclusion. It was back in the day a irrefutable 'fact' that the earth was flat. You know who came up with that idea? A small fringe 'wacko'. If we allow only what current 'consensus' is then the VERY theories you hold dear would not exist. In fact they probably would be non existent or wrong. You may call them wackos and dismiss *ALL* of their ideas just because you *feel* that it is 'right'. But *REAL* science doesnt just dismiss bad ideas. It accepts them. It proves they are wrong. It makes real science better. If you do not think that way. You need to button your hole as you are just one of the wackos you hate. You have categorically dumped everyone into 'one bucket'. You have accepted as 'fact' what others have told you on the internet. You do not even BOTHER to say 'what if they are wrong?'. You feel it is better to just attack your critics as 'wackos' and give them derogatory names, and making up statistics (25% ha!). You would see 1 out of 4 posts on all of the message boards out there saying it was wrong (more like 1 out of 20 but that is just a guess). See how I used science there?

    Take this as an interesting wacko idea that I recently read here. The canals of mars were not made with water but the very sand that blows around there. Yet you would have asked me last week I would have said water. But now there is another theory on the board. Now the water guys will need to prove it better or change their minds. *THAT* is how science works. Not by calling people wackos or using ad-hominims attacks.

    Here is another take away I heard last week. It is just a theory but an interesting one at least. That since we are using less CFC's we may actually be making global warming worse. Now I may not be the brightest bulb on the planet. But the way we keep 'messing around' with the atmosphere on a global scale we *COULD* make things worse or way better. Perhaps we need to think before we leap?

Signed

'right wing christian george bush voting wakco'.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who wishes to actually "learn" and debate the science with actual climate scientists who published in peer reviewed journals I suggest www.wattsupwiththat.com. The skeptic, ooohh bad word I know, the skeptic blog is run by Anthony Watts who is a meteorologist and contains many posts by climate scientists and others.

Like any blog today, there are the occasional idiot posts or comments from layman or trolls, but for the most part many good discussions take place. Of note is that outrageous skeptic arguments are debunked along with the outrageous proponent arguments. To those who aren't active in the field there is a lot of good science to be learned from this site.

P.S. I'm not affiliated with the site in any way, but I do read it quite often and thought to pass it along for any fellow /. ers who might want to read about the current mechanisms that are debated within the field.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

The reverse is also true. I would argue that the fundamentalists on evolution's side are much, much worse. When I point out that dinosaurs couldn't have evolved their way through the mass extinction, because it would have required rapid, species-universal evolution (otherwise there would not be the threat of mass extinction), the few responses that aren't ad-hominem attacks are handwaves or the infamous: "You obviously don't understand evolution..." which is equivalent to "It's true, because it's in the bible." argument.

Basically, the problem is that the scientific principals are being undermined. It's hard to buy into theories when observation so commonly disagrees with prediction. Flat Earthers are funny because they refute the observable world -- but so do the proponents of the "Climate change" movement, when every predictive model made falls flat. Evolution, climate change (as it's understood), and other theories are commonly refuted by the observable world or have no observable models -- so they are not even true science, rather just thought experiments and allegations!

Evolution, for example, was crafted with a complete lack of data in its time, which has since had data piled around it in order to verify/vindicate its origins. This is bad science and bad practice. BAD. It also is non disprovable -- as an experiment, conjure whatever evidence it would take to refute evolution[climate change] in your eyes. This should be simple, if it is a true science. Then, turn around and offer the imaginatory refutation as fact to someone who believes in evolution[climate change] as fiercely as you do, and say "since evolution[climate change] can't explain that, evolution[climage change] has been wrong all along!" and watch the fireworks. They will warp the very foundations of reality to show you how you're wrong, don't understand evolution, and that evolution TOTALLY explains it. Is that really science? No. It's religion and politics posturing itself as science. It is scientific blasphemy and it should be cause for serious concern, rather than considered PROOF THAT IT'S TRUE! as it is now.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RenderSeven]

Exactly! The thing I take equal issue with is that *any* criticism of AGW activism is immediately dismissed as AGW denial, and it's not true. I agree the earth is warming, agree that we caused at least some and maybe even all, and buy into 95% of the science. But if I point out that maybe some of the proposed regulations in response to AGW are a bit silly and ineffectual and certainly costly, I'm a 'denier'. There is at least some good science that suggests we will not be dead in 10 years, and that science should not be dismissed out-of-hand as heresy. The pro-AGW fanatics are just as guilty as suppressing criticism and debate as the anti-AGW fanatics.

If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[houghi]

Well, the Earth is flat AND round. Like a pizza.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Grishnakh]

There's a problem of time here that I think a lot of people miss.

Anthropogenic global warming is a very, very new theory. Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute. Now, when people bring that up, the excuse is that "well, back then, climate science was in its infancy". Ok, fine, but it's only 30 years later.

Compare this to evolution. That theory goes back to the mid 1800s, before we even knew anything about DNA. It's been well-supported by all the evidence so far, especially now that we know about DNA. There's no one alive now (except any Highlander types perhaps :-) who was alive before the theory of evolution became widespread, so the only people who deny it are the fundie Christians and Muslims (apparently, much of the population of Turkey believes in Creationism). Everyone else doesn't see any type of conspiracy or ulterior motives, and there's over a century of evidence gathered, so not only is it accepted by most scientists (there are some fundies in there though), it's accepted by most of the public too.

Climate science is much, much newer, and many of us remember things before all this global warming hoopla came about, so it's normal for skeptical people to be distrustful, especially when it's easy to see ulterior motives. There's no ulterior motives for evolution: who's going to profit from pushing it if it isn't correct? Textbook makers? However, AGW is a different matter: there's definitely money to be made and power to be had by pushing it. When you're telling everyone that they need to pay a big tax for their CO2 emissions because supposedly it's causing the earth to warm up, why do you think they're not going to balk and question your scientific results?

No one questions that some emissions are harmful: anyone who's been alive for over 3 decades can tell you how much worse car exhaust used to smell, especially before emissions controls in the 70s. Metro areas (esp. LA) have much cleaner air now because of it. However, this is different from CO2 emissions, which are created in large amounts even in an engine that burns its fuel at 100% efficiency. When you also notice that nature itself creates a lot of global warming gases when it makes volcanoes, how can anyone not question the idea that human-produce emissions are so much worse? And then when you consider that climate change is an extremely long-term process, which we've only been studying seriously for a few decades, and that a few tens of thousands of years ago, the sea levels were very different and people were able to walk from Asia to America and from Europe to the British Isles, it's perfectly natural to wonder just how accurate these scientists' theories are. They haven't had much time to test them at all.

Calling people names for disagreeing doesn't exactly help either, though that seems to be a typical play from the liberal playbook: anyone who disagrees is called a "racist", or a "moron", etc.

As for Obama's birth, it's never been proven he was born in Hawaii. According to the birthers, the Certificate shown isn't proof of that, and at the time, people could bring infants into the country and get such a certificate. Of course, they don't have any proof that he wasn't born in the US, but they have raised a valid question, which I don't believe has been sufficiently answered. IIRC, one of Obama's relatives even claimed that he was born in Kenya, and that they witnessed this. I don't know that we'll ever know for sure either way what the real truth is, unless we invent a wormhole machine to look into the past. Personally, though, I think they should amend the Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to be President anyway. The Presidential natural-birth requirement made some sense back in the late 1700s, but not any more. But while they're at it, they should also remove the citizenship-by-birth that currently exists. Most other countries don't have it, for good reason; they r

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[angelwolf71885]

if AL " Socialist " Gore is right about global warming then please explain to me " The Year Without A Summer " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer when several volcanoes erupted releasing tons of CO2 and sulphuric dioxide and heat absorbent volcanic ash caused there to be snow in July in 1816 Gore should be water boarded until bubbles stop

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[blueg3]

That's really not true, at least among reasonable people. Once you get into specifics of consequences, and then really when you get into what the best solution is, people quickly disagree.

And yes, realistically, nobody should be surprised that there are probably similar numbers of anti-global warming and pro-global warming idiots.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

Welcome to the internet, AC. I'm amazed that you've learned how to computer so quickly. I only have one question: Did you have to go to the imdb for that post, or did you simply type it out from memory?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

Gravity, for example, was crafted with a complete lack of data in its time, which has since had data piled around it in order to verify/vindicate its origins. This is bad science and bad practice. BAD. It also is non disprovable -- as an experiment, conjure whatever evidence it would take to refute gravity in your eyes. This should be simple, if it is a true science. Then, turn around and offer the imaginatory refutation as fact to someone who believes in gravity as fiercely as you do, and say "since gravity can't explain that, gravity has been wrong all along!" and watch the fireworks. They will warp the very foundations of reality to show you how you're wrong, don't understand gravity, and that gravity TOTALLY explains it. Is that really science? No. It's religion and politics posturing itself as science. It is scientific blasphemy and it should be cause for serious concern, rather than considered PROOF THAT IT'S TRUE! as it is now.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

The reverse is also true. I would argue that the fundamentalists on evolution's side are much, much worse. When I point out that dinosaurs couldn't have evolved their way through the mass extinction, because it would have required rapid, species-universal evolution (otherwise there would not be the threat of mass extinction)

Huh? What part of mass extinction do you not understand? The dinosaurs did not evolve their way through the extinction, they went extinct! Species that were better suited for survival evolved into the lifeforms that dominate the planet now.

Evolution, climate change (as it's understood), and other theories are commonly refuted by the observable world or have no observable models -- so they are not even true science, rather just thought experiments and allegations!

You mean such things as the observations of speciation? The rich fossil record showing clear evolutionary paths to species on the planet now? The fact that the abundance and diversity of life on the planet all share the same biological chemistry? Hell, how about the common cold evolving into resistant strains every season? I take it you don't "believe" in the common cold either.

Evolution, for example, was crafted with a complete lack of data in its time, which has since had data piled around it in order to verify/vindicate its origins. This is bad science and bad practice. BAD

What the hell are you talking about? How is it bad science to test a model with new data?

It also is non disprovable

Here is an observation that would falsify the theory of evolution: a fossil record that does not change over time.

hen, turn around and offer the imaginatory refutation as fact to someone who believes in evolution[climate change] as fiercely as you do, and say "since evolution[climate change] can't explain that, evolution[climage change] has been wrong all along!" and watch the fireworks. They will warp the very foundations of reality to show you how you're wrong, don't understand evolution, and that evolution TOTALLY explains it.

Your argument does not follow. Just because some proponents of evolution do not understand the science does not mean that the science is bad.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[MikeBabcock]

Feel free to reverse what you said about fundamentalists and apply it to the whackos who believe our carbon output outstrips that of dying trees (and other natural causes).

it applies both ways.

I see a lot of fundamentalist whackos on the "science" side of the fence too. And they're not promoting good science, just like the big bang will never be good science.

Good data and repeatable results. How about hypotheses based on the theory in question that result in accurate predictions?

Climatologists have not successfully predicted climate outcomes. Astrophysicists are still figuring out where all the mass of the universe is and why our numbers don't match up to the existing theories. No wonder people who can read and think for themselves don't blindly accept these things.

Feel free to come forward with logical assumptions you're making when you speak and it won't bother me one bit. "Assuming the universe started with a big bang (as defined x or y), the universe should be expanding at an ever decreasing rate and that should cause ... which we can test for by .... "

Some people just can't get their heads around the egos involved. Work with a few scientists for a while and you'll notice how often egos get in the way of data.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[SpeZek]

Dinosaurs evolving their way out of mass extinction? What are you talking about? Who believes that? Sounds like a strawman to me.

Evolution had a lack of data? What about things like Darwin's finches, or the moths? A fossil record clearly documenting morphological changes over time? Of course evolution is falsifiable; show me a bunny rabbit fossil, or any other modern animal, buried in the same layer as a t-rex fossil, and you've just disproved evolution.

Just because you can't come up with methods, doesn't mean there aren't any.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[NeutronCowboy]

Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.

Wrong. The rest of your comment is pretty much as spectacularly wrong as the tidbit I quoted.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[daem0n1x]

If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.

Yeah, like the oil business.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[tgibbs]

Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.

Actually they weren't. It is illustrative of the level of propaganda being generated by those who hope to discredit climate science either on ideological or financial grounds that this long-debunked urban myth continues to be repeated and believed.

When you also notice that nature itself creates a lot of global warming gases when it makes volcanoes

This too is a falsehood. But like the first it continues to be repeated. This is the hallmark of crank pseudoscience, whether it be creationism or AGW denial: no false argument ever dies, no matter how conclusively it has been debunked.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RenderSeven]

Perhaps that's true. I wish it were true. But I have seen very few discussions of consequences or cost/benefits that don't quickly descend into accusations of denial. Even the more moderate proponents of action seem more comfortable with dismissing people as 'deniers' rather than be challenged by criticism, no matter how considered, grounded, or restrained. For some reason it seems to be a subject that doesn't bring out the best in people.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Draek]

That's as much the fault of AGW denialists as it is of the fanatics. Just look a few posts above yours, how somebody who's merely expressing his concern for the measures proposed to combat AGW is used to prop up the validity of the denialist movement.

If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.

Sure. But the mark of a true skeptic (as opposed to a denialist) is that a skeptic can eventually be convinced, and this has been going long enough that true skeptics are somewhat scarce these days.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[daem0n1x]

I happen to agree to the AC. And your reply to his post is just as incoherent as your original post.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RenderSeven]

Sure! Point taken!! But grant me that Goldman-Sachs will make a killing trading carbon credits; that government subsidies to green business will make GE a king's ransom; that Home Depot profits will spike when the incandescent bans take effect. Wherever the money goes, wherever politicians make it go, it probably shouldnt have gone there. Absofreakinlutely the oil business is included.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure no one's ever thought of any of these "issues" with evolution before. Congratulations, you have single handedly, in one Slashdot post, destroyed the foundational theory in Biology and one of the most empirically supported scientific theories we have. The Nobel committee should be calling any day now.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[bkeahl]

It isn't denial of the scientific method by most people who disagree on Global Warming theory. It's the fact that the researches abandoned the scientific method by discarding facts that invalidated, or at least cast serious doubt upon, critical components of the theory.

In reality, many in the Global Warming Research community are the flat-Earth types. Sailors came back announcing they lost sight of shore and didn't fall off the edge of the planet and were called heretics and often eliminated. Don't want to spread false information you know.

In comes the Global Warming researchers who find evidence their data has flaws. Bury the evidence. Luckily for them they were all on the same page so the 'scientific method' could be ignored in the interest of promoting dogma and protecting research funds. Then the emails and other information surface. What happens? Those who want to point out the Earth may not be flat are called names like wackos. Usually accompanied by overall anti-Conservative rhetoric and references to fringe elements.

It looks to me like there's plenty of flat-Earth thinking spread across the ideological spectrum. Sound familiar?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

show me a bunny rabbit fossil, or any other modern animal, buried in the same layer as a t-rex fossil, and you've just disproved evolution.

Like gingkos, sharks, coelacanths, crocodiles, grasshoppers, wasps, ants, aphids, and termites?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[daem0n1x]

Wherever the money goes, wherever politicians make it go, it probably shouldnt have gone there.

So, who should make it go? Blood-sucking corporations nobody has elected?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

you have single handedly, in one Slashdot post, destroyed the foundational theory in Biology

Any scientist holding evolution as the foundational theory of biology should find a new line of work -- that's analogous to saying string theory is the foundational theory of physics.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[NeutronCowboy]

Those are not modern animals. And it's Geckos, not Gingkos.

You really don't understand evolution. Go read a book or something.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[ShakaUVM]

In comes the Global Warming researchers who find evidence their data has flaws. Bury the evidence. Luckily for them they were all on the same page so the 'scientific method' could be ignored in the interest of promoting dogma and protecting research funds. Then the emails and other information surface. What happens? Those who want to point out the Earth may not be flat are called names like wackos. Usually accompanied by overall anti-Conservative rhetoric and references to fringe elements.

Precisely. The real story behind Climategate was the pulling back of the curtain, so to speak, on the anti-scientific culture of secrecy, data-hiding and FOIA-dodging that Phil Jones and his merry band were up to.

What rabid partisans on both sides can't understand is that there are MORE positions than just:
1) AGW is real, and we must do everything we can to stop it, and
2) AGW is a fraud, and we must ignore all science to the contrary, and sue scientists that support the notion.

I think it's a real problem. I also think that most of our proposed solutions are either ridiculously too expensive for the benefit (paint our roofs white), horribly designed (i.e. Kyoto), or impractical (ask people nicely to stop driving cars). I also think that Climategate revealed very serious problems with the inner workings of the climatology community. Not fraud, as Fox reported, but rather anti-scientific behavior. For a field desperately trying to win respect as a real science, so to speak, it was a tremendous blow.

Also, sites like Real Climate.org don't really help very much. They're so partisan that they even defend real mistakes that Phil Jones, or Al Gore, or whoever, make... even when they're clearly wrong.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

With few exceptions, EVERY biologist holds evolution as the foundational theory of biology.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

I typed it out but went to imdb to verify: I'd forgotten the "I award you no points" part.

Anyway, since you responded I'll play ball. You say that a theory "crafted with a complete lack of data in its time, which has since had data piled around it in order to verify/vindicate its origins... is bad science and bad practice"; I would argue that this rejection of observational inductivism is actually the BEST science. I assume by "verify/validate" you mean "confirm", aka attempt--and fail--to falsify. The theory of evolution is, of course, extremely falsifiable: one giraffe in the cretaceous blows the whole thing out of the water.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[element-o.p.]

And yet, rather than logically dissect his arguments, you resort to ad-hominem attacks, instead. Interesting.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

Huh? What part of mass extinction do you not understand? The dinosaurs did not evolve their way through the extinction, they went extinct! Species that were better suited for survival evolved into the lifeforms that dominate the planet now.

Perhaps you should consult with your fellow believers before saying "Dinosaurs did not evolve." I was practically tarred and feathered for saying Tyrannosaurus Rexes more likely died than became turkeys during some "feather fossils discovered!" article only a few months ago.

What the hell are you talking about? How is it bad science to test a model with new data?

If only it were tested! Instead, whenever any new data is introduced, it's immediately tethered to evolution through unfounded assumption! They could crack open a lava bubble that has NEVER had exposure to the outside world, find extremophiles within, and call upon evolution to explain how they got there from the primordial soup -- rather than say "Well, this disproves the wild ASSUMPTIONS we were so callously making these last 200 years, so I guess we have to fall back on actually considering some of the observable data we've had independant of the inference we've cloaked each and every finding with!"

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[moortak]

"Anthropogenic global warming is a very, very new theory. Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute. Now, when people bring that up, the excuse is that "well, back then, climate science was in its infancy". Ok, fine, but it's only 30 years later." Well I can't vouch for the 70's, but by 1980, when Cosmos came out, people were already discussing the greehouse effect. It played a role in episode 4 "Heaven and Hell" of that series. So even a year out of the 70's even popular science works were discussing global warming. That seems to imply it wasn't the newest cutting edge science.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

I don't disagree that the original post was full of shit, but I would consider those animals modern. The issue is with how we define "modern." The common interpretation would be that a modern animal is an animal whose species has currently living specimens. The definition you are probably using is the idea that an animal is modern if it evolved to its current form within a certain period of time from the current date.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[daem0n1x]

Yeah, right. Scientists don't know nuthing. I always discuss global warming with my neighbour Joe. He hasn't finished high school, but he knows a lot more than them puffed nuts, with them numbers and formulas, specially after he downs a few beers. He's a fuckin' genius!

And what if he's wrong? It ain't like global warming's gonna affect us, anyway. Not like that Big Bang thingy, if that ain't a lie, oceans will rise and we're all gonna die!

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[SpeZek]

Sure, I'd love to see you show me a modern species (as in, not a family, order, or genus).

Your post shows your flawed view of taxonomy. Just because, for example, coelacanths, or sharks, are known in popular culture to "have been around" for millions of years, that doesn't mean they've been the same scientifically.

Yes, sharks have looked like sharks (by which, by popular parlance, means their silhouette hasn't changed much) for a couple hundred million years, but that's because that's body type that fits their niche; there have still been hundreds of species of sharks, all significantly different, progressively building on each other, and you will find no modern species at the same period as an ancient, extinct one. So, go ahead, show me a Galeocerdo cuvier or other modern species dated at the same time as a trilobite.

Your argument is akin to saying that computers haven't evolved, because they still look pretty much the same superficially and still do the same job. If you look at a 486 and an i7 with no technical knowledge, they look the exact same. They fill the same niche, using many of the same tools. But, if you look in a landfill, you'll see all the 486's a couple feet down, and only a couple i7's on the top, and you'll probably realize that the 486 came first. Actually examining them would confirm it.

If evolution is false, and, say, all animal life emerged at a single, simultaneous point, there should be plenty of examples of species from different time periods juxtaposed together. There would be bunnies with trilobites. Remember, also, that we're dealing with very long timescales here. Saying sharks and insects have looked sort of the same (i.e. the orders have existed for a couple hundred million years) isn't really an argument, it's just sort of dumb. We know that fish have looked like fish and bugs looked like bugs for a while now.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Iskender]

Perhaps you should consult with your fellow believers before saying "Dinosaurs did not evolve." I was practically tarred and feathered for saying Tyrannosaurus Rexes more likely died than became turkeys during some "feather fossils discovered!" article only a few months ago.

This may sound a bit harsh, but: the reason people don't want to listen to you is not that you somehow have the "wrong" opinion.

Rather, it's because you appear unable to make a coherent argument. For instance, you claim to have said that the Tyrannosaurus Rex species more likely died than turned into turkeys. Mainstream science agrees with you on that. Now why did you say that then if you're against current mainstream biology? You need to sort either your language or your thinking to become more coherent in your message.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

Perhaps you should consult with your fellow believers before saying "Dinosaurs did not evolve." I was practically tarred and feathered for saying Tyrannosaurus Rexes more likely died than became turkeys during some "feather fossils discovered!" article only a few months ago.

You still misunderstand. I'm not saying dinosaurs did not evolve. What I am saying is that your idea of evolution is way off base. The dinosaurs did not evolve BECAUSE of a mass extinction event, the species that survived did so because they had an evolutionary advantage.

If only it were tested! Instead, whenever any new data is introduced, it's immediately tethered to evolution through unfounded assumption!

It is tested, just not in the sense that you seem to think it is. Every time some new piece of data is uncovered that further validates evolutionary principles, we are testing the veracity of the theory.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

So I point out a few animals that are still around and suddenly it's not good enough? That was the point of my first post, wasn't it? It COULD never be good enough. You would NEVER be satisfied. You'd always have SOME way to keep the argument going. "Well, not until you show me... a... kangaroo... and a penguin... will I ever believe that evolution isn't true!"

By simply typing "living fossil" into google, you'll find a few species that date back. Valdiviathyris quenstedti, for example, was around BEFORE the dinosaurs. It doesn't prove anything to you, though, does it? Because you could never, ever be satisfied. Not even if they found a rabbit from the cretaceous in the arctic, wearing plastic sneakers.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Cyberax]

"When you also notice that nature itself creates a lot of global warming gases when it makes volcanoes, how can anyone not question the idea that human-produce emissions are so much worse?"

Do you think you're the first who thought about this and everything else you've said? Ha. Basically, one can never ask a good question which has not yet been investigated by specialists in the field.

For example, volcano CO2 emissions are many times less than emissions from fossil fuels. The current unpronounceable volcano emitted about 2 times less CO2 than the grounded planes would have done.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it interesting? I honestly believe he doesn't fully comprehend evolution, but he has pre-dismissed any argument to this effect as equivalent to a bare assertion. He also poisons the well against anyone defending evolution, saying that they will discard logic ("warp reality") to preserve the theory. I interpreted these as attempts on his part to avoid debate, and was willing to oblige.

Tangentially, an ad-hominem attacks the person making the statements, not the statement itself. If that movie quote is any fallacy it's a non-sequitur.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Attila Dimedici]

If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.

Yeah, like the oil business.

Which gave large amounts of money to the CRU.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[SpeZek]

You've missed the point entirely. There weren't any modern species of the superorder Selachimorpha (AKA Sharks)100 million years ago. Ancestors that were similar, sure. Not actual sharks that you'd find in your backyard though (assuming you live on the ocean). I asked for bunny rabbits, not the precursers of bunny rabbits that looked similar by virtue of being the percursers of bunny rabbits.

Nobody debates that there exist some species that have remained relatively constant (in a superficial sense) for long periods of time (relative to other species). They still continued to evolve. Maybe their outer form didn't change much, but their genome did. They're separate species. A 486 and an i7 are both of the order x86 CPU, but their genome is way different, though they look similar. Just because an evolution isn't quite as dramatic in one species as opposed to another doesn't disprove that it exists, it just proves that it's affected by variables.

Nowhere does the theory of evolution state that species must evolve morphologically. In a stable environment, in fact, natural selection would require an organism to remain largely unchanged. Many environments, such as the ocean, haven't changed much in the last few hundred million years.
And, besides that, fossils can only tell us about morphological changes in the first place. What about immune systems or soft tissue? Remember that we can only see a small piece of the puzzle, and even that tiny piece is more than compelling in favour of evolution.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was practically tarred and feathered for saying Tyrannosaurus Rexes more likely died than became turkeys during some "feather fossils discovered!" article only a few months ago."

Straw men are not soldiers in a debate.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[SpeZek]

Not only that, but evolution is often the gold standard to which other theories are compared. It's The theory. We have no clue what the hell gravity is, or what matter at it's most fundamental levels is made of, or why light goes only so fast, but we know that life evolves.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[WeatherGod]

And who is calling you a 'denier'? I can safely say that if you were to talk to most experts in the field with your positions, you would not be considered a denier. However, if other people who are not responsible for doing climate science (or planetary science in general) are calling you a denier, then they haven't met a *real* denier like I have.

Deniers, to me, are the ones who refute that CO2 is even a greenhouse gas, and claim that the whole greenhouse effect is thermodynamically impossible. Rational discussion with these people is impossible and a waste of time. I would much rather debate the finer points of mitigation/adaptation policy and the "winners/losers" policy with you than with those people any day.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget that the biggest spokesman for AGW, old Al Gore himself, has set himself up to be a carbon billionaire and while he tell everyone else to use public transport he flies around in his own private LEAR JET which he has the 500 pound brass balls to say is "carbon neutral" because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits!

The point is we need to have some serious skepticism about BOTH sides, as we are talking about not only trillions of dollars here, but also destroying many lives here and creating an even bigger gap between rich and poor, and by slinging the word "deniers" around whenever anyone dares to not follow dogma is NO different than the supposed mistreatment the AGW believers get from the other side.

The second you start throwing names like deniers at anyone who doesn't fall into line most folks are gonna think "douchebags" and it frankly won't matter whether you have science on your side or not, nobody is gonna listen to you, just as I would listen to arguments made by Ed Begly Jr , who walks the walk and has sat down and been willing to discuss his beliefs pretty much anywhere with courtesy, whereas I wouldn't trust that limo riding, McMansion living Al Gore any farther than I can throw his overfed hypocrite ass.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Foobar of Borg]

Don't forget that the biggest spokesman for AGW, old Al Gore himself, has set himself up to be a carbon billionaire [telegraph.co.uk] and while he tell everyone else to use public transport he flies around in his own private LEAR JET which he has the 500 pound brass balls to say is "carbon neutral" because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits!

So what? All that means is that Al Gore is a pile of shit. That does not have one thing to do with whether man-made global warming is true.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[MadUndergrad]

Next they'll be using conservation of mass as the foundational theory of chemistry! Oh noes!

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[jwiegley]

fundamentalist wackos

Need I say more? We reasonably reject your ideas but your counter-argument is we're "wackos". I also like that you stacked a heavily flawed recent theory in the same category as a much more solidly proven theory. I can't believe in the one without believing in the other? Otherwise, I'm a wacko. Nice.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[NeutronCowboy]

Exactly. In the context that the word was used, it meant something like the horse, which has a very distinct and well-known evolutionary pattern. If you find a modern horse buried with T-Rex, it's either a hoax,or proof that evolution isn't the only thing around.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

"If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands."
 

Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

I call strawman.
"..least some good science that suggests we will not be dead in 10 years". No 'good' science claims this. Although I agreed with your main premise and feel you exaggerate the responses to the 5% not-buy-in, the quote is counterproductive.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[NeutronCowboy]

So I point out a few animals that are still around and suddenly it's not good enough?

No, what everyone is saying is that your examples are completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether the theory of evolution explains the facts of evolution.

It's true, you really don't understand evolution. And the reason that everyone stops there is because it's clear that you have no interest in learning what evolution is.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

It is tested, just not in the sense that you seem to think it is. Every time some new piece of data is uncovered that further validates evolutionary principles, we are testing the veracity of the theory.

It's not tested. It's NEVER tested. IT CANNOT BE TESTED. If you can test it, it's not true evolution! If you see it, it wasn't evolution, because evolution cannot happen rapidly enough for people to even record! Or so they'd tell you if you went out and successfully tested it and proved it wrong.

This is my situation, right? You find a time machine, go back in time to ancient Greece and want to explain to the priests how STUPID their pantheon is. They make up what the gods are doing on the spot, for crying out loud! There's no test, no solvent, no method to it -- they worship the conjurations of their minds as if it were truth. What could you possibly tell them that would show them the error of their ways? What could you say or show them that they wouldn't weasel around?

You: You don't need Prometheus to make fire, I can make some with flint and tinder.
Priest: That's because the Prometheus gave also the knowledge to make it to HUMANS! Learn something about the gods before talking!
You: Zeus doesn't choose where lightning goes, I can direct it with a lightning rod... see?
Priest: You just erected an alter to Zeus, so of course he'll throw lightning at it!
You: If the gods are real, why don't they strike me down for blaspheming them right now? I just wrote "Zeus sucks Mars's dick" on the lightning rod.
Priest: You obviously don't understand the gods! Huhr huhr!

It's no different than what I have to put up with. You see, these arguments? They're the same thing the Flat Earthers say. "If you point out a species that was the same time as dinosaurs, evolution is wrong!" "What about this one?" "That might be how it looks at first... You don't understand cuz you're stupid!" Same exact argument as the flat earthers. The difference is? The flat earthers know they're a joke.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Teancum]

Who do you think is going to get the bulk of this "green money"?

As a matter of fact, the largest benefactor of carbon tax credits is going to be Warren Buffet. I guess that charity case is somebody who needs to double or triple his wealth at the expense of poor working class schmucks like myself that will find a near doubling of my tax burden as a result of this political change. Oh, the senators who are promoting this carbon tax credit system and carbon sequestration programs are also going to become independently wealthy in their own right too. Call it a bribe, a "speaking fee", or "campaign contribution", but these guys are certainly raking in the dough from their support for the AGW hypothesis.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[quokkaZ]

But if I point out that maybe some of the proposed regulations in response to AGW are a bit silly and ineffectual and certainly costly, I'm a 'denier'.

Tosh.

There are a wide range of opinions on what measures would be effective to mitigate global warming. For example there is heated debate on the necessity and/or desirability of nuclear power. Nobody is labeling nuclear proponents as "deniers".

James Hansen, one of the best known climate scientists in the world, condemns cap and trade and likens it to indulgences granted by the medieval Catholic Church. He advocates "fee and dividend". Nobody is calling him a denier.

It you want to be part of the debate about mitigation measures then please do so - everybody is welcome - but could we dispense with the false accusations of victimization.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[TubeSteak]

Don't forget that the biggest spokesman for AGW, old Al Gore himself, has set himself up to be a carbon billionaire and while he tell everyone else to use public transport he flies around in his own private LEAR JET which he has the 500 pound brass balls to say is "carbon neutral" because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits!

And the problem is?
Are you saying that his company isn't actually offsetting his carbon emissions?

Does anyone complain when the President of Ford buys a Ford?
Or when the owner of construction firm pays his own company to build his home?

If Gore's company is doing its job, what's the problem with him paying them?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[daem0n1x]

Don't complain about carbon credits and carbon sequestration. It's the "marketish" way to solve things. Those were the ways the corporations and their pet politicians found to make everything stay the same while squeezing some more money from the working people.

It's fun that protecting the environment through regulation is OMG COMMIE!!!, but then the carbon credits make it all wonderful, because "Though Shall Love The Markets Above All Things!", "Though Shall Not Doubt The Markets!", etc.

Carbon credits are just free-market snake oil. Will serve only market speculation and do shit to fight global warming.

Expect the next crash to be because of carbon credits. Then the governments will be buying back toxic credits for 10 times their original value to save the speculators from drowning in their own shit. Guess who will be paying.

I don't have any hope that this will be solved. Humanity is just too stupid to get together and do anything right. Too bad I have children, they will suffer the consequences.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

We have essentially the same thing today. No matter how much evidence is shown for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and so on, the fundamentalist wackos will rail against it and find some rationale for continuing in their thoroughly disproved ideas.

Umm, I'm not sure "fundamentalist" is the best word. Just look around here, most of your global warming deniers are atheistic, libertarian, computer programmer geek types who scorn all religion because of its irrational adherence to belief regardless of any accumulated evidence. Unfortunately, where climate change is concerned, they are as irrational as the religious fundamentalists they love to mock. Arguments are pointless, facts are irrelevant. They'll give you ten different arguments why terraforming Mars makes sense, but will deny to their dying breath that those same mechanisms could be operative here and now on Earth.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

All these ridiculous denials of basic scientific principles reminds me of the Flat Earth Society.

Your post is a case in point. Someone who disagrees with you is a "fundamentalist wacko" and equivalent to "flatearthers". The problem you fail to recognize is that AGW is not solidly established, hence it is not comparable to theories of gravitation. The roundness of Earth is beyond theory, it is a fact (we have observed the roundness of Earth). Global warming hasn't reached that point, though there is strong evidence indicating that global warming is occurring and some part of it is likely to be caused by humans. Even granting that, reasonable people can disagree on whether humans are a significant contributor to global warming. There's no similar room for disagreement with the roundness of Earth.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

Evolution, for example, was crafted with a complete lack of data in its time

This claim has always been wrong. Read Darwin's original works and that of pro-evolutionary contemporaries like Thomas Henry Huxley or Alfred Russel Wallace. They back their claims with copious evidence. Much of it is obsolete with better supporting evidence nowadays or wrong due to mistakes of the time, but this old work doesn't deserve the libel you heap upon it.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

James Hansen, one of the best known climate politicians in the world, condemns cap and trade and likens it to indulgences granted by the medieval Catholic Church. He advocates "fee and dividend". Nobody is calling him a denier.

Fixed it for you. Dr. Hansen has a twenty five plus history of biased political activism and sinecures that thoroughly taints his research. Also, he's disagreeing on the form of implementation (I guess it's not ideologically pure enough for him) for carbon controls, not whether these controls should exist in the first place.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[jwhitener]

Exactly! The thing I take equal issue with is that *any* criticism of AGW activism is immediately dismissed as AGW denial, and it's not true.

As I see it, 99% of that criticism is tantamount to someone saying "the sky is red". Why the "F" (pardon abbreviated language) should any credible scientist waste their time refuting absurd claims?

If people want to criticize AGW, do it with research that is accepted into peer reviewed journals. Put up or shut the (pardon again) "F" up.

The first scientist to put forth a credible theory and evidence of said theory refuting AGW will be extremely famous. I wonder why no one has stepped up?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[tbannist]

Did you read the article you linked to, or just the headline?

Last year Mr Gore's venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

So, Al Gore decides that efficient electricity grids are a good thing and you want to tar and feather him for investing in that? Really? You're really going to take the position that inefficiency is inherently good?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Teancum]

I don't have any hope that this will be solved. Humanity is just too stupid to get together and do anything right. Too bad I have children, they will suffer the consequences.

I have a bit more faith in humanity for a number of reasons, and I think that most of these problems will eventually be solved.... in part because they are being solved. When I hear people complain about how awful pollution is right now, they don't have a clue how bad it has been in the past or what steps have been done in the past century to clean things up.

More significantly, those who look at the Earth as a closed system and that the edge of the known universe is only as high as you can reach into the sky with your bare hand is really missing out on how big this universe actually is and how much energy and resources we as a species can tap into. The universe is huge. It is so mind bogglingly huge that even places we can get to with current technology within human timescales is vast with hundreds of worlds that we have yet to have explored to any degree at all. Yes, I'm talking about space exploration, and noting that the resources of even a small asteroid can provide more metals and minerals than all of the mining activity of the entirety of the human species for all of history.

I certainly am not worried about "running out of stuff" as a limiting factor, but I do believe we need to be able to get off this rock that we call "The Earth" and move on as a species. For those of humanity that remain on the Earth after others have gone on to other places in the Solar System and elsewhere, humanity as a whole will be much richer in so many ways as a result of that extra-terrestrial activity that we will also be able to perhaps finally solve some of these critical problems on the Earth as well.

I have hope for the future that is almost without bound. Yes, there may be some temporary "ouches" along the way and some excesses of government and people that need to be corrected, but on the whole I have faith in and trust that our children will figure out how to make a comfortable life for themselves and indeed be able to learn from our mistakes.... perhaps only to make mistakes of their own.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[matfud]

Read the article you referenced. It explains it

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[angelwolf71885]

umm the point was particles in the air carbon by nature in black REFLECTS light not trap it it just shows the earth will cool NOT warm up the earth has mechanisms to scrub the atmosphere we just need to find out how much the earth scrubs per year and then reduce carbon to 2% below what the earth scrubs

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... the sky can look red. Surely you've seen some impressive sunsets before? Or should I bring up the stock meme about Slashdoters and parent's basements?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[cybrthng]

For all intents and purposes AGW is real. The reality of not acting is the collapse of humanity, dollar be damned. Thus justifying inaction on how much it may cost is essentially denying the science of AGW no matter how hard you try and spin it. IE presenting a choice between spending money and not spending money is presenting a false choice. We have to make broad changes to our society while the dollar still has value.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RenderSeven]

...and you prove my point. I did not advocate inaction, and you in turn are advocating all and any action at any cost, and vilifying me for suggesting we collectively think before we act and expend our very limited resources with our oh-so-damned dollars. And before you crucify me, Im all for thinking very very quickly. Hell Im fine with spending vast sums of money and being substantially taxed for it. But banning light bulbs (for instance) is silly, both for being utterly ineffectual and for diverting our attention away from solutions that might make a difference. How can you worship the science that supports AGW and then discard it so completely when considering action?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

Define Evolution: There is a 0.1% chance an animal will change into a different kind of animal within the next 50,000 years. There is a 0.5% chance it will go extinct, if it does not change into a different animal, in any given year.

Oh, yes, that sounds like the FOUNDATION of biology! Sorry, retards, that is a miniscule, unusuable APPENDIX to biology -- it's your zealotry that blows it up to be more than it should be -- and that's driving biology into a dark age. Keep reading up on string theory, or you'll never be able to understand why a brick weighs more than a feather -- because unprovable, UNSUBSTANTIAL fringe science is the foundation of all our knowledge in any given field!

No wonder, in 200 years, no scientist has ever come up with a more accurate, more SCIENTIFIC definition of evolution than I just did in like 20 seconds -- because they're all busy worshipping themselves as priests to their pathetic pseudo-scientific pantheon. Go ahead and worship all you like, your ignorant troglodytes, I just defined your god, and it's hardly more than a squirrel.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[RenderSeven]

I am a lifelong proponent of nuclear power, and I am called a denier. Im a proponent of more and better transmission lines to make wind/solar/tidal more practical, and Im called a denier. And that for the measures Im for; if I mention measures Im against I get called far worse. Green is the new racism, 'denier' is the new 'nigger' and it rolls of the tongue pretty easily to most people, with fervor and joy as if they've completed some kind of deft syllogism. Most certainly these people do not welcome discussion about mitigation; indeed I doubt mitigation is their main interest.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hkmwbz]

Your post is a case in point. Someone who disagrees with you is a "fundamentalist wacko" and equivalent to "flatearthers".

No. Someone who disagrees with the facts is.

The problem you fail to recognize is that AGW is not solidly established, hence it is not comparable to theories of gravitation.

Why, yes it is. It is very solidly established indeed. In fact, there's research going back to the late 1800s pointing out global warming.

The roundness of Earth is beyond theory, it is a fact (we have observed the roundness of Earth).

It is an observed fact that the climate is warming. It is an observed fact that CO2 is a driver of warming. It is an observed fact that there's more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Even granting that, reasonable people can disagree on whether humans are a significant contributor to global warming.

No, they can not.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hkmwbz]

Anyone who wishes to actually "learn" and debate the science with actual climate scientists who published in peer reviewed journals I suggest www.wattsupwiththat.com.

I don't. Watts has been repeatedly been caught spreading blatant lies about climate science. The blog is completely unreliable, and full of misinformation.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hkmwbz]

It was back in the day a irrefutable 'fact' that the earth was flat. You know who came up with that idea? A small fringe 'wacko'. If we allow only what current 'consensus' is then the VERY theories you hold dear would not exist.

Huh? The flat earth thing was a belief held by religious leaders. Actual scientists knew that it wasn't flat, but if they spoke up about it, they were killed. You are comparing religious dogma (flat earth) to scientific consensus (AGW)! That's just retarded.

You may call them wackos and dismiss *ALL* of their ideas just because you *feel* that it is 'right'.

No, their ideas are dismissed because they don't hold water.

Take this as an interesting wacko idea that I recently read here. The canals of mars were not made with water but the very sand that blows around there. Yet you would have asked me last week I would have said water. But now there is another theory on the board.

The comparison is insane. The denialists have no science whatsoever.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hkmwbz]

Nice straw men. Are you right-wing fucktards completely unable to actually understand simple scientific concepts?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

It's not tested. It's NEVER tested. IT CANNOT BE TESTED. If you can test it, it's not true evolution! If you see it, it wasn't evolution, because evolution cannot happen rapidly enough for people to even record! Or so they'd tell you if you went out and successfully tested it and proved it wrong.

Wrong on several levels. First of all, some evolutionary processes do indeed occur on timescales we can directly observe. Second, they don't even NEED to occur on timescales we can observe since we have a fossil record.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

Fortunately for the rest of us, you don't get to define what the foundation of biology is.

Nothing you have said is substantiated or even logically consistent. You keep repeating the same points without even acknowledging the fact that they have been refuted. You seem to think that just by ignoring it, you can avoid having to concede a point. Even better, you have resorted to the same ad hominem attacks you accused others of when your world view is challenged. So yes, who's the ignorant zealot?

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[Coop]

If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.

Exactly. Do you realize how much money changes hands because of materialistic belief systems, ego-stroking purchases, and energy-intensive lifestyles, all backed by the inverted philosophy that selfishness is good and that cooperation is evil? I fully support your scepticism regarding the wisdom of such things.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[riverat1]

Maybe it's Dr. Hansen's research that informs his political activism. Maybe he's concerned about the world we're going to leave his grandchildren and he wants to do something about it.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

Maybe it's Dr. Hansen's research that informs his political activism. Maybe he's concerned about the world we're going to leave his grandchildren and he wants to do something about it.

Well, he has stated things to this effect before. The point I'm getting at is that he decided at some point in the 70s or 80s that global warming was a great threat. He made a firm stand at a time when a firm stand wasn't scientifically justified. We don't always decide things on firm scientific evidence, but I remain troubled by people who profit from making unscientific stands, especially when they do so posing as scientists. And having profited from this long ago posture (for example, he has remained head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981), stirs in me great distrust. It's like oil companies claiming that AGW is fake. One takes those sorts of claims with a grain of salt since they would profit greatly from such a conclusion. Similarly, Hansen's interests clearly lie with his viewpoint. I think being a high profile advocate for AGW has kept him gainfully employed for almost three decades.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[riverat1]

No, being one of the worlds leading physicists is what has kept him employed for almost 3 decades. Do you think he's getting rich as head of GISS? I'm sure he's pretty comfortable but I doubt if his salary is much over $200,000 a year. Pretty good for a scientist but not in the same ballpark as someone who's truly rich. I think it was the late 1980s when he started testifying to Congress about global warming. So far he's been more right than wrong about what he's said.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[hkmwbz]

Anthropogenic global warming is a very, very new theory. Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.

You know by now that this is a blatant lie. Are you going to apologize? Or are you going to keep spewing your right-wing lies?

And as a matter of fact, I have seen research on global warming dating back to the late 1800's! Very, very new? You are indeed a fucking retarded asshole.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

Do you think he's getting rich as head of GISS?

If he has any investment sense, yes. But there's more to being the perpetual head of a government agency than money. It carries a bit of power and prestige.

So far he's been more right than wrong about what he's said.

He made three claims: 1988 was warmest year on record (I gather the 30s are still contenders for warmest year on record through 1988, the estimates for those years is lower than 1988, but the actual temperatures may have been higher), second, that because global warming is large, it is caused by the greenhouse effect (I think it likely that the current global warming is caused in large part by human release of greenhouse gasses, but Hansen's conclusion is simply logically faulty), and third, that GISS models predict bad things will happen. The last point remains correct, I imagine, with current GISS models still predicting bad things will happen. Whether bad things actually will happen (or have happened for that matter) remains conjecture. If you look at his actual projection, his models overstated global warming. Two of the scenarios mentioned there, "A" and "B" overstate effective forcing from greenhouse gasses (GHGs) by something like 80% in the case of scenario A (which was intended to be an extreme scenario) and almost 10% for scenario B. The third scenario was a fixed level of forcing, there might be some AGW effect, but it would be bounded and reached by the year 2000. So we ended up somewhere between the weaker AGW scenario and a scenario of no effective AGW. There is a huge difference in what makes good policy choices in this region.

I can't rule out that scenario B was actually more accurate originally, but got sexed up for the 1988 congressional hearing. After all, even by 1988, Hansen had somehow acquired a reputation as someone who'd deliver reliable AGW testimony. He's also on record as saying some remarkably stupid and biased stuff for a scientist. Given that the CRU (which maintains other important global temperature estimates) has also suffered from biased management, we have to consider the possibility that our best estimates of global temperature are compromised and biased upwards by some unknown amount. While I know there are thousands of climatology papers out there, I have yet to see papers (aside from some critics of dubious provenance) either criticize or independently verify the estimates from these two groups.

In other words, Hansen's predictions are borne out by possibly biased GISS and CRU research. Now maybe there is independent verification of these temperature estimates. I'd be interested in hearing about that. But as it looks to me, Hansen gets to verify his own predictions and yet, he was still off in favor of the political view that he continues to wish to propagate.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[LanMan04]

If you can test it, it's not true evolution! If you see it, it wasn't evolution, because evolution cannot happen rapidly enough for people to even record!

This fine fellow and his E. Coli would like to disagree with you:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

"A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events."

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[CorporateSuit]

Fortunately for the rest of us, you don't get to define what the foundation of biology is

In the absense of a scientific defintion, I created one. Instead of refuting it (as it is 100% valid, matches the numbers, though the percentages alone can immediately lead one to suspect they are incorrect, but they match the statistics) you simply say "You can't do that" Well, yes I can. Offer a better one! One that can be tested, tracked, measured. Your CONCEPT is not even a Hypothesis until it is as quanticized as I've done. Unfortunately, I see evolution for the unquantifiable, bunk science it is, rather than as an ungraspable religion. Yes, I could have spent more time on the numbers to make it more viable, but that's missing the point of the blathering idiocy of stating so authoritatively "animals might observabley change over incalculable periods of time into different animals, and that is the foundation of all biology".

So yes, who's the ignorant zealot?

I've proven evolution to be bunk on every level asked of me, then I presented the closest thing to a scientific "theory" evolution has ever come to (although, mathmatically, the proposed theory showed obvious insustainability past 10,000 years or so). You shut your eyes and ears to it because you disagree with it. You ask questions I've already given answers to, so I am forced repeat myself. You show nothing but blind faith in adherence to an untested principal just like the greeks did to their pantheon. I point out the observable fallacies in your arguments, so you simply conjure new arguments from thin air, and then, like I said in my very first post, the argument against everything I say is a combination of "You don't know what you're talking about" and "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" -- exhibits A,B,C, and D of my very original argument.

The religious fundamentalist claims the title of religious zealot. You don't even realize that you are one, yet do all the same things, say all the same things, and do it with the err (ha ha) of superiority -- just replacing Zeus with Evolution, Gaia with primordial soup, Venus with DNA's inexplicable desire and precognizance required for sustained redeployment, and Mars with natural selection.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[riverat1]

I have a feeling Dr. Hansen cares more about the science he is doing than he does about accumulating wealth. He certainly has the respect of his colleagues and that gives him a certain amount of power in the field.

In 1989 it was an accurate statement to say that 1988 was the warmest year on record globally based on GISS data. The 1930s may have had some warmer years in the CONUS but that covers less than 2% of the surface of the planet.

Can you cite where he said "because global warming is large it is caused by the greenhouse effect"? That statement doesn't make much sense to me.

Regarding the GISS models and scenarios, I hope you realize that climate models don't predict anything. It's impossible to predict the exact levels of greenhouse gases in the future. It's impossible to predict the exact timing and levels of solar cycles ahead of time. It's impossible to predict the exact timing of things like ENSO or the PDO or a major volcanic eruption. Instead the scientists say they project possible outcomes based on plausible scenarios they create based on past and potential future behavior of the phenomena that are inputs to the models. Rather than comparing the output of the models for various scenarios to reality you test the models by seeing how well they do with real data from the past. If a particular scenario happens to closely match the reality that eventuates then maybe you can use that model output for comparison but that's not especially likely to happen.

But in the end the model you are referring to is from 1988. It may have served as a base for the current GISS models but more detailed knowledge about the various interactions in climate and increases in computing power have improved the current versions immensely.

Gavin Schmidt, the author of the RealClimate article you cited concluded at the end of it:

My assessment is that the model results were as consistent with the real world over this period as could possibly be expected and are therefore a useful demonstration of the model’s consistency with the real world. Thus when asked whether any climate model forecasts ahead of time have proven accurate, this comes as close as you get.

I fail to see what is "stupid and biased" about what he said in the Guardian article and I'm not aware of any evidence of bias at the CRU but I guess you figure I'm just drinking a different flavor of koolaid than you are.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

I hope you realize that climate models don't predict anything.

[...]

Instead the scientists say they project possible outcomes based on plausible scenarios they create based on past and potential future behavior of the phenomena that are inputs to the models.

You are being coy here. A projection as you describe it here is a conditional prediction. If accuracy of the model (that is, how close numerical values of the model match reality) no longer matters, then neither does the "projection" of the model. I have a dim view of errors in predictions that are rationalized after the fact (such as happens here). I think it merely an exercise in sophistry to explain why any climate model of the past few centuries (including a few that predict the end of the world from the Bible or astrological phenomena, for example) doesn't fit future observation.

Going to Mr. Schmidt's comment, he avoids noting that this model was used to attempt to influence government policy. If this is the best you can expect (which is what he claims in that quote you give), then climate models would be inadequate justification for carbon controls and other related policy issues. To be blunt, I think instead we have yet another indication that climatology needs discipline and rigor. The issues are too big and the stakes too high to go with the usual academic sloppiness. You can't say, "Oh he's just off by ten percent in twenty years, that's pretty good actually." Especially when that error puts you between the lowest of the "we need to do something scenarios" and the "We don't need to do anything" scenario. In other words, the error is of the sort that heightens unreliability of the model.

And I think it is crazy to attempt policy decisions using "projections" that can have factor of three differences between the low and high estimates. IMHO,a lot of people can die from bad policy put forward on inadequate climate research. It's not good enough in my view to be cautious when someone turns up a potential problem. Those kinds of errors means a lot of problems can't be excluded from estimates.

Finally, I simply can't take this seriously when the most powerful institutions steering the science are controlled by people with blatant bias. The only reason I can see for James Hansen to be head of the GISS is his bias. I don't buy that he can't be replaced by a real, professional scientist/administrator who is of similar scientific quality to Hansen. They're out there and bet there are more than a few at the GISS. You only need that sort of bias in charge, if your intent is some sort of deception.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[riverat1]

I never said the accuracy of a model doesn't matter. I'm basically saying that no scenario they use is going to match the reality that happens 100% so you can't predict what will happen, only project what will happen for a particular scenario. I realize the distinction between predict and project is a pretty fine one but I like to use it that way. Anyway, after the future becomes the past you can then test the models against what actually happened to see how well they do compared to reality.

Why would Dr. Schmidt make any comment about government policy when he's writing about the accuracy of Hansen's 1988 model results 20 years later? Testing it against reality. Gavin Schmidt's opinion is that considering the limitations of technology and knowledge at the time it did alright (at least that's my interpretation of what he said).

But why are we arguing over a 1988 model when we could argue over a 2007 model? ;)

A lot of people could die if the climate scientists turn out to be right too.

The main bias I detect in the climate science community is for good science. I realize you don't see it that way. Guess we'll have to leave it at that.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[khallow]

I realize the distinction between predict and project is a pretty fine one but I like to use it that way.

Ok, this is sort of off topic, but all my predictions are conditional. So they'd be projections in your viewpoint. I think we both agree that predictions, in the sense you mean them, aren't useful.

Why would Dr. Schmidt make any comment about government policy when he's writing about the accuracy of Hansen's 1988 model results 20 years later? Testing it against reality. Gavin Schmidt's opinion is that considering the limitations of technology and knowledge at the time it did alright (at least that's my interpretation of what he said).

He mentioned purpose of these projections, namely to provide support for Hansen's testimony to US Congress. Maybe he is right about it being fairly good given the limitations. But (and this is a big but) he should have noted it was being used inappropriately to influence government policy. It's like an explosives expert commenting on a bunch of explosions in a YouTube video and failing to mention that the people blowing things up were doing so in an unsafe manner. Professionals have certain obligations such as remarking when their craft is being used inappropriately.

While I'm obviously not an expert in climatology, what I know of the subject seems to indicate a lot of shifty practices such as misuse of models, overstating the reliability of projections, using opaque statistical manipulation of data (and a bit of data hoarding) that I'm not convinced anyone really understands, stacking leadership of climate groups with ludicrously outspoken pro-AGW advocates (such as James Hansen and Phil Jones), and a lot of shoddy and/or unprofessional behavior among many of the principle researchers in the field.

My view is that this research is likely correct to a great degree, but I couldn't recommend it for making policy decisions. At the least, the government funded agencies need to be cleaned up a bit to remove the grandstanders from positions of trust.

But why are we arguing over a 1988 model when we could argue over a 2007 model? ;)

Why would a 2007 model be better than a 1988 model? In other words, what improves a climate model? It's worth noting that the error bars really haven't changed in the meantime for a lot of climate projections (of things such as temperature sensitivity for doubling of CO2 concentrations in atmosphere). That seems to me a strong indication that the models aren't actually improving. And for data, we only added 20 years (though 20 apparently very warm years) along with a little better understanding of prehistoric climate. To be honest, I don't think we're going to base policy decisions on climate models for some time to come. Instead, hard evidence of warming (which frankly we already have) is probably going to be the driver.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

In the absense of a scientific defintion, I created one. Instead of refuting it (as it is 100% valid, matches the numbers, though the percentages alone can immediately lead one to suspect they are incorrect, but they match the statistics) you simply say "You can't do that" Well, yes I can. Offer a better one! One that can be tested, tracked, measured. Your CONCEPT is not even a Hypothesis until it is as quanticized as I've done.

I don't even know how I can debate with you if you can't understand the English language. My point was not that your definition was flawed (even though it was, but it's unimportant), but that your statement that evolution is not the foundation of biology is incorrect. Whether you like it or not, the vast majority of biologists out there consider it the fundamental theory of biology. This is not a conjecture, it is not a hypothesis. It is a fact that you do not need to take on faith, you can indeed verify it by sampling the biologists in the scientific establishment. This fact does not make evolution more inherently correct, but that is not my point. My point is that no amount of wishing on your part will make evolution less of a fundamental element of current biological study.

I've proven evolution to be bunk on every level asked of me, then I presented the closest thing to a scientific "theory" evolution has ever come to (although, mathmatically, the proposed theory showed obvious insustainability past 10,000 years or so). You shut your eyes and ears to it because you disagree with it. You ask questions I've already given answers to, so I am forced repeat myself. You show nothing but blind faith in adherence to an untested principal just like the greeks did to their pantheon.

This is just wrong. I have provided relevant counterexamples to every major claim you have made. You have not refuted any of these in a satisfactory manner. At best, you respond with tangential anecdotes and metaphor. I am not just ignoring you, and to prove it I challenge you to point out specific refutations.

As an example, you make two specific complaints about evolution which are easily debunked: (1) Evolution is untestable and (2) Evolution is unfalsifiable. Both of these claims are patently false, and you have not even tried to show otherwise.

For point number (1), I provide the data which supports the theory of evolution. Namely, the multi-billion year old fossil record that is clearly consistent with evolutionary principles. Additionally, for your sub-complaint that we cannot observe evolution on human timescales I provide the example of bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, and the mutation of seasonal strands of influenza. There are other examples which I failed to enumerate, such as the evolution of the dark colored peppered moth during the industrial revolution.

I also provided other data points, such as the presence of common chemistry in all life found on earth, which strongly suggests common ancestry. Common ancestry is not a requirement for evolution to occur, but its presence does imply evolution.

As best as I can tell, your problem is with the word "test," and your usage of the word has no scientific relevance. From a scientific point of view, all we need to test a model is to provide further relevant data which either confirms or contradicts the model.

For point number (2), I provide one specific example of a hypothetical observation that would undeniably prove evolution to be incorrect: the presence of a fossil record which does not change with respect to time. As a matter of definition, evolution requires speciation to occur over large timescales. Absent this property, evolution could not possibly be a valid theory. There are other examples (and probably examples that make even stronger statements about evolution), but others are not required. Logically, I only need to provide one counterexample to prove your assertion incorrect.

I point out th

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[guhknew]

Also, just to add to my previous post: even if we take your definition of evolution as accurate, it does not help your argument. You provide no reason that this definition of evolution could not be the foundation of biology, you merely state that you think it is unreasonable (or that is what I gather by your use of sarcasm). You do not state WHY it is unreasonable, just that it is.

Everything after that point is just ad hominem and non sequitur. So again, you are everything you claim I am, and you still provide no basis for your irrational beliefs.

Re:Like the Flat Earth Society

[riverat1]

Ah, you think they made to projections to provide support for their preconceived notions about global warming, so Hansen could sound all sciency when testifying to Congress.

I fail to see what is inappropriate about a scientist presenting the results of their research to Congress and as an expert in the field opining on the implications and potential responses to it. I doubt Gavin Schmidt would agree with you that the testimony was inappropriate.

You obviously believe the climate science field is populated by charlatans but I just haven't seen any evidence for that point of view. There is the occasional bad actor in science but the idea that so many scientists would conspire to purposely falsify their science is absurd. If nothing else the conspiracy would have to go back 40 or 50 years or more. I can't believe that level of falsification of science could go on for that length of time without it being discovered. Someone among the thousands of scientists from hundreds of countries working for decades would have figured it out by now.

You don't think climate models have been improved since the 1988 model? Wow! Climate models are simulations of the physical processes that affect climate. You don't think in 20 years our understanding of those physical processes has improved? You don't think that refined understanding has been incorporated into the models? Just the orders of magnitude increase in available computing power since then has allowed more detailed calculations and reduced the grid size they use.

I really don't think error bars don't have anything to do with it but I don't have a good counter argument for that and don't have time now to look it up right now.

Interesting

[0xdeadbeef]

They don't call out Ken Cuccinelli by name. I don't see why not, that mofo needs all the bad publicity we can muster.

oh the cheek

[Anonymous Coward]

how dare the plebeians question the science of the people who lost an ice sheet bigger than california.

Re:oh the cheek

[inpher]

It wasn't lost. It was stolen, sold to Gizmodo and dismantled before returned to the ocean.

Main points

[mangu]

TFA says:

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

Exactly.

The problem is political, not scientific. Exxon & Co. have managed to convince the tin-foil-hat gang that all scientists are united in a vast conspiracy against people who own SUVs.

Scientists are scientists, not marketeers, how can they convince people who believe the world is 6000 years old that CO2 does absorb infrared radiation?

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists sure like to doctor their research to get more funding, they are like exxon.

I'm tired of getting attacked and called a christian(6000 yrs bs(it is)) every time I ask simple questions about GW, every time I would like something explained a little better.

If there's that much venom given to people trying to understand, you must be hiding something.

I still want to hear staticians weigh in on the time period of data compared to the history of the earth. And some better assessment of the margins of error for the various sampling methods.

Re:Main points

[etymxris]

Academia can be very insular. It's publish or perish and it's difficult to get published if the editors think you're part of the "tin-foil-hat gang" or being paid by Exxon. There is also a great bias against publishing negative results. Climate science is full of models that are plugged into a computer and out comes a result. These models depend on many variables, some of which are measured, some of which are estimated, and some of which are guessed. In addition the whole algorithmic process by which the "model" works is at best an approximation. Certain methods of modeling future climate result in lots of warming, some less. Right now there are large margins of error and much disagreement about exactly how "much" climate change we will experience.

Now, it certainly seems plausible that there are models out there with variables and assumptions that result in no warming, or a cooling. What is the likelihood these would get published based purely on their results? Not good. Well then what is it about a model that makes it better than others? It's ability to "predict future changes" when plugged in with past data. However, as we go back in time we quickly start losing variables in quantity and precision. 100 years of good solid data (if it's even that much) is not much when it comes to modeling how the Earth's climate changes over it's vast history.

We are at least aware of many radical changes in climate that had nothing to do with humans over the Earth's history. If we can't account for those, then we are woefully unprepared to predict future changes.

The issues are very complicated, but it's not quite correct to say that scientists are solely interested in "truth". Academia has a culture, and this culture can create biases. These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.

Re:Main points

[NeutronCowboy]

I still want to hear staticians weigh in on the time period of data compared to the history of the earth. And some better assessment of the margins of error for the various sampling methods.

Start reading. This is a good start. Once you get through the few thousand pages of actual research, you'll have an idea of where to find the discussions by statisticians and the margins of errors of the various sampling methods.

Oh, wait. That's right. You don't want to hear a statistician talk about this stuff, you want to have someone answer you any and all questions you could have. Sorry, that's not how it works. People who deal with complex topics aren't too keen on spending hours explaining something only to be told "But you doctor your research just like Exxon, why should I believe you?"

Re:Main points

[mangu]

Scientists sure like to doctor their research to get more funding, they are like exxon.

Except that if there are $X available for grants, scientist A is competing against scientist B to get those funds, while Exxon and British Petroleum are united in their quest to deny reality for their own economic interests.

I still want to hear statisticians weigh in on the time period of data compared to the history of the earth. And some better assessment of the margins of error for the various sampling methods.

I suggest you start here

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

STOP USING LOGIC

it hurts everyone on both sides... but not those who want to know the truth.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

God forbid people ask honest questions around here without getting shit on for it. But, of course, you'll be modded up due to groupthink.

Very enlightening!

Re:Main points

[mangu]

Academia has a culture, and this culture can create biases

Maybe. Now go look at the changes in the human condition since the scientific method was created in the 17th century and compare the evolution in these 400 years with the 40000 years that preceded it.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

I DID ask for that specifically didn't I?

Scientists are people, people are fallible and corruptible.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, in part, is that scientists are paid to come up with the "right" answer, no matter which side of this issue you are on. Right answer, more funding. It is also true that scientists come up with the "expected" answer more often than not. The way it works is if he gets something he didn't expect, he checks his data to see where he went wrong. If he gets the expected answer, he doesn't check for mistakes. This happens in every field.
However, note how political global warming is. I went to school with these people and I can say the ones I knew in the field weren't all that bright. Not to tarnish all scientists in this area, but the people I knew carried their agendas (expected answers) with them. When I was in high school, global cooling was the big threat. Now it's warming. This from the same set of people. Interesting, no?
If real science were being done, it would happen like this: first, figure out what is happening. Until you do, you can't move forward. Then figure out why. Until you do, you can't move forward. Then figure out if it's good or bad. Until you do, you shouldn't move forward. Then figure out what can be done about it. Until you do, you can't move forward. Warming and cooling periods have occurred long before man was burning coal, so it's clear we don't understand the "why" yet. Still, there are people rushing to the solution. That's not science, it's politics.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd like to see some analysis done by a group that was not explicitly chartered for the purpose of creating a body of evidence to show that CO2 emissions are destroying the planet.

You know, a group that is out to find the truth, instead of starting with the conclusion and working backwards to make the evidence fit.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

"But you doctor your research just like Exxon, why should I believe you?"

That's a perfectly valid concern.

After all, Exxon employs scientists, who make certain claims. Do you believe Exxon's scientists? Why not?

What makes these other scientists so much more trustworthy than Exxon's scientists? Because they work for government grants and not a big evil oil company? Sorry, but in my view, big oil and governments are both evil, and not to be trusted.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. 100 years of data is pathetically small. According to current theory, the first people got to the British Isles by walking there: the sea levels were lower, the world was in an ice age, and there was no English Channel, it was just a valley.

Of course the climate is changing. It's always been changing. Back in the age of the dinosaurs, the earth was hotter and wetter than now, and had more oxygen in the atmosphere. It's had multiple ice ages, including the one above. Now it seems to be getting warmer. The question is: Is this mostly because of human factors, or is it environmental: volcanoes, solar weather, etc. A single volcano eruption spews out a LOT of emissions; do human vehicles really cause that much more of an effect?

Additionally, is it really that bad if it gets warmer? The dinosaurs seemed to like it warm, after all, and I'm sure their climate wasn't caused by any dino-mobiles. A warmer climate means more arable land in northern areas, better sea shipping, etc. It could also mean more desertification.

Re:Main points

[etymxris]

It would be difficult to get a paper published in a women's studies journal with the thesis that men aren't such bad people after all. Women's studies is clearly part of academia. And while much good comes of academia, various factors can result in programs that are based on pushing an ideology rather than honestly seeking the truth in some area of study.

I'm not saying those in women's studies are wrong. What I'm saying is that certain academic programs which are highly insular against contrarian research. Is "climate research" one of those academic programs? To answer the skeptics, they should show how they are not. It seems unlikely one would take the effort to become proficient in climate studies unless one was enthusiastic about the environment, and protecting it from corporate interests. It's possible, but unlikely. Not quite as unlikely as becoming an expert in women's studies just to argue against its main tenets, but still unlikely.

A bigger problem I think is demonstrating that climate research is a "hard" science. What I see is a program subject to many of the same difficulties facing sociology. There are many variables, and plenty of models, but few good predictions. And there is no way to run a controlled experiment with all the relevant variables. We, and the Earth, are the experiment.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. The problem is that no one wants to pay scientists to just research and learn, without any preconceived notions or biases. Every large organization has an ulterior motive, and this type of research requires money that only large organizations (big companies or governments) have access to.

Re:Main points

[Mike Buddha]

It cracks me up when scientists get all pissy when they come into contact with the real world outside of their ivory towers. They bitch and moan about their own inability to communicate with the populace at large, all the while preaching that their current theories are the only truth to be found. Anyone dissenting or pointing out flaws is labelled as ignorant, and beneath counteracting.

Welcome to reality, eggheads. When you present unpopular ideas, you're going to catch flack, even if you're correct. There's a difference between saying, "You're fat" and saying, "Losing weight is healthy. Want to start working out with me?"

Communicating with the mass of humanity is media & poliitician's forte (hence the popularity of An Inconvenient Truth). Scientists need to pull their heads out of their collective asses, admit their failures to communicate, and team up with people who can communicate with the masses or they'll remain marginal, whining about denialists and their irrationality.

Re:Main points

[mike1210]

The problem is political, not scientific. Exxon & Co. have managed to convince the tin-foil-hat gang that all scientists are united in a vast conspiracy against people who own SUVs.

Simply accusing your opposition of being funded by "Exxon & Co." is intellectually lazy, and quite stupid, considering the very small pittance Exxon has (allegedly) given out.

Scientists are scientists, not marketeers, how can they convince people who believe the world is 6000 years old that CO2 does absorb infrared radiation?

It must be nice and convenient to invent beliefs and positions for those you hate.

In fact, the so-called "scientists" do not even know how they "adjusted" their data.

"So what the hell did Tim do?!!"

When people attempted an honest reconstruction, using what data was available, any "global warming" disappeared.

Re:Main points

[NeutronCowboy]

Except - how do you disprove that kind of concern? Not to mention that this is the epitome of presuming guilt.

The only time that motivation and pay-check comes into play is when you want to figure out how much time YOU want to spend investigating a claim. If a scientist I respect says something I disagree with, I'll take another look at it. If someone from the tobacco industry says that smoking cures throat cancer, I'll wait for someone else to make the same claim before wasting my time on it.

The problem is that at some point you HAVE to trust SOMEBODY. It is impossible to live an effective and efficient life will distrusting everybody.

Do you distrust your doctor when he prescribes you medication? Do you distrust your plumber when he installs piping? Do you distrust Google Finance when it says that IBM has hit a stock price of $100?

The idea that people have to prove their trustworthiness before anyone should listen to them is ludicrous. Note that that is different from asking everyone to listen to them.

Re:Main points

[ShakaUVM]

>>Scientists are scientists, not marketeers, how can they convince people who believe the world is 6000 years old that CO2 does absorb infrared radiation?

My, what a large paintbrush you have there, grandma.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

The only time that motivation and pay-check comes into play is when you want to figure out how much time YOU want to spend investigating a claim. If a scientist I respect says something I disagree with, I'll take another look at it. If someone from the tobacco industry says that smoking cures throat cancer, I'll wait for someone else to make the same claim before wasting my time on it.

Right, but in each case, you need to look at their motivations: follow the money.

Obviously, anyone from the tobacco industry is going to try to convince people that smoking is safe. But why do you respect said scientist? Whose payroll is he on? Scientists don't work for free, and even if they did, their work costs money (materials, equipment, etc.). Someone has to pay for that. What's their motivation?

Do you distrust your doctor when he prescribes you medication? Do you distrust your plumber when he installs piping? Do you distrust Google Finance when it says that IBM has hit a stock price of $100?

Again, in each case, follow the money.

The doctor? No, I don't trust him. In America, they're nothing more than drug pushers for the pharmaceutical companies. They know very little about how the body works, they completely ignore dietary effects, and just look up your symptoms on a chart and see which drug matches it. They're a lot like technical recruiters/headhunters who just match buzzwords on resumes to job requisitions. Maybe the doctors in other countries are better, but here in America, they're terrible. The surgeons are really good in most cases, but the GP doctors mostly suck.

The plumber? Depends on his reputation, just like any other contractor. Good contractors do a good job because they want you to recommend them to your friends, and also come back for any repeat business. Bad contractors do a bad job because they're stupid, don't care, or worse want you to call them when someone else goes wrong (which they've intentionally created through sabotage). Auto mechanics are famous for sabotaging customers' cars, especially womens' cars. The internet is helping a lot here by letting people post reviews of places they've gotten service.

Google Finance? Of course. There's little reason for them to lie, and if they did, the correct information is available elsewhere, and with the power of the internet, word would quickly spread about what they did, ruining their reputation forever.

The idea that people have to prove their trustworthiness before anyone should listen to them is ludicrous.

You don't have to "prove" trustworthiness, unless you are in a position where it is obvious that there is a very good reason not to trust you.

Should the scientist working for the tobacco companies prove his trustworthiness? Absolutely. Because if he doesn't, I won't trust a damn word he says. The scientist writing a paper on the mating habits of Stegosauruses? I'd very unlikely to not trust him, because he has little reason to lie. The only thing he has to gain is the prestige of publication, and perhaps a degree or continued employment at a museum.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is political

Correct. The problem is indeed political.

However, your straw-man "tin-foil-hat" folk and their misguided belief in some"vast conspiracy" is a fiction that exists only inside your head as a significant factor in real politics and as an irrelevant fringe element otherwise. Most people that oppose global warming alarmists do not believe that environmental politics is a product of some conspiracy.

The environmentalists that have caused the ongoing mass exodus of industry from their native lands aren't doing it because they want to wreck the very prosperity that provides the leisure in which they indulge their sleeve-borne morals. They are just staggeringly naive about the sources of the wealth and costs of the liberty they grew up in. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance.

The Sierra Club isn't indifferent to the bat shit insane population curve of Iran or Turkey, for instance, because they planned it that way in a back room. They are indifferent to it because they have far more lucrative targets in the vestigial subject industries easily shaken down in the legislatures of the west. That's just pragmatic politics. No secret handshake required.

We've had two blessings from the UK parliament and now this "open letter" missive from academe appears. Clearly a nerve has been struck. Notice that no actual refutation of the critics claims are offered; only reiterations of the previous alarmist claims and character references for various government funded warmists. You may expect a fresh declaration to appear each week or so from the UK parliament and its various factors. The US will follow suit with all dispatch. Government has a lot of revenue and redistribution plans riding on this "research" and no hearings need be conducted to convey that; it is perfectly clear to all stakeholders. No secret code books need be published.

Re:Main points

[daem0n1x]

Global warming is consensual among the vast majority of the world's scientists. Why on Earth would all these scientists have so much work to invent and defend a bogus theory, only to get money? If money's all they want, they should all take jobs in the oil companies, it would have been so much easier.

Exxon scientists have a very strong motivation to deny global warming, what is the motivation of all the others?

Re:Main points

[Cyberax]

"Academia can be very insular. It's publish or perish and it's difficult to get published if the editors think you're part of the "tin-foil-hat gang" or being paid by Exxon. There is also a great bias against publishing negative results. Climate science is full of models that are plugged into a computer and out comes a result."

And nothing is more satisfying than to show that another model is hopelessly flawed compared to your model. Don't overestimate how hard it is to publish. It's not hard at all.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then go back to the stone ages. I will drive my SUV, until you pry it from my cold dead hands!!!

Re:Main points

[WeatherGod]

A single volcano eruption spews out a LOT of emissions; do human vehicles really cause that much more of an effect?

It has been very well-studied and documented that the cooling effect by particulate emissions of volcanoes overwhelmingly dominates the warming effect of CO2 emissions from a volcano. This is mainly because the CO2 can not "trap" any warmth if the sunlight never gets far into the atmosphere in the first place.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

That's totally irrelevant. He's not disparaging science, he's simply indicating that even the Ivory Tower isn't immune to human nature. How do you conclude (as you implied) that by pointing out that academia is still affected by human elements such as culture and bias, one has just as well as declared that the scientific method and academia are worthless? That's an astonishing (and astonishingly dubious) leap of logic you've made.

Again, I'm puzzled as to why some of the comments here are getting modded up. Lots of reactionaries with mod-points tonight, it seems. (Oh wait, it's always like this!)

Re:Main points

[NeutronCowboy]

You still haven't addressed how someone proves their trustworthiness when the only thing that matters - their research - is being called into question based on their trustworthiness. How do you break that cycle?

As for people writing on the mating habits of stegosauruses - you missed the big dust-up in archaeology in the 70s when the two biggest scientists accused each other of theft, lies and scientific fabrication. Everyone has something to lose - which makes that criterion pretty useless.

Re:Main points

[cbeaudry]

This falsehood that Exxon and other oil companies would loose billions to policies enacted because of AGW is ludicrous.

How the hell is Exxon going to loose money from Cap and Trade or a Carbon tax?

Do you honestly think companies loose money when they are taxed ? That they dont factore ALL expenses in their selling price?

If cap and trade or a carbon tax increases their cost of doing business by 25%, you can bet your life they will increase the cost of their products by 25%.

With no viable alternatives to sustain our current economy and way of life, those who will pay are normal citizens, not Exxon shareholders.

The scare will propel energy prices through the roof and said energy companies will make HUGE profits.

They WANT AGW policy to go through.

How this is not obvious to everyone is beyond me.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

Some good points but bias is a two sided coin. It is easy to claim that there are studies to be done that cannot get funding or publishing. Its the hallmark of a good conspiracy. But at least show something. Show the grants that aren't being accepted. Show the experiments that COULD get done to provide counter evidence. Show SOMETHING. All I ever see are that most IPCC timelines are TOO conservative. The rates of CO2 release are greater than predicted. The rate of acrtic ice sheet retreat is faster than predicted. The rate of methane release from permafrost is underestimated. Sea level rise...yepp you guessed it underestimated. Oceanic acidification. Ditto.
Oh yeah, Himalayan glacial retreat...slower. I'll give you that. But it was clerical error, not misinterpretation or estimation.

Re:Main points

[daem0n1x]

If cap and trade or a carbon tax increases their cost of doing business by 25%, you can bet your life they will increase the cost of their products by 25%.

With no viable alternatives to sustain our current economy and way of life, those who will pay are normal citizens, not Exxon shareholders.

If oil becomes too expensive now, the alternatives that are being developed now will become competitive and have a boom. That is a nightmare scenario for Big Oil. Also, don't forget heavy industry. They don't want to pay carbon taxes, directly or through oil price. And they sure don't want to pay for the development of alternatives, they're very happy destroying the planet and making money, thank you.

The scare will propel energy prices through the roof and said energy companies will make HUGE profits.

They WANT AGW policy to go through.

How this is not obvious to everyone is beyond me.

Exactly the opposite. They don't want oil to be made more expensive because they don't want alternatives to oil to be taken seriously. They want people to doubt global warming, so everybody will still be happily dependent of oil.
What has been inflating the price of oil is not global warming, it's the end of oil approaching. The oil industry has been doing everything to convince us that oil will last forever, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
Their dream scenario is near the end of oil, when everybody is killing each other for a litre of oil, because no alternatives were developed. Then, the prices will be astronomical and the oil executives will be drinking champagne and fucking prostitutes like there's no tomorrow. Mmm, and there isn't, really.

Re:Main points

[Main Gauche]

Now go look at the changes in the human condition since the scientific method was created in the 17th century and compare the evolution in these 400 years with the 40000 years that preceded it.

In fact, if you graph "human condition" vs "prevalence of scientific method" the shape of the graph looks something like this.

Re:Main points

[tbannist]

Basic microeconomics.

If the price goes up, the quantity sold goes down unless demand is very, very inelastic. There is significant evidence to show that if the price of gas rises high enough, people buy less gas. They take the bus or train more often and they walk or ride bikes more often. That means oil companies will almost certainly lose money when someone else raises their prices long term.

The energy companies are already making record profits. Though it is probably true that coal companies are more afraid of AGW than oil companies. However, records do indicate that at least some oil companies are afraid enough of AGW that they've hired lobby and public relations firms to fight political action related to AGW.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

The same companies that are big in oil are also big in the alternative markets too already. I can clearly see you don't know jack shit about the topic at hand. At least any more than any other goosestepping big party goon knows. Shut your mouth until you get your head out of your ass.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

A good point, but I have another one:

Repeatedly in the annals of science, scientists have gotten complacent, and decreed that "They know it", or, one of my personal favorites, "Everything worth inventing has already been invented", etc--- only to be tossed on their arses when something like Eisensteinian relativity, or Radio gets discovered or invented.

Granted, these events are extreme cases, and stick out like inflamed boils; but the underlying infection that causes them is RIFE in academia-- and has been since before the renaissance. That infection, is tied inseparably to the marriage of Dogma with 'Conventional Wisdom'.

'Conventional Wisdom' made us stay with the Ptolemaic model of the universe for centuries, despite observational evidence to the contrary.

'Conventional Wisdom' claimed that dinosaurs were cold blooded for more than a century as well.

Don't take this the wrong way; Conventional Wisdom can be a very good thing, if you treat it PROPERLY-- that is, treat it with a healthy grain of salt, and chant this as the mantra:

"Current conventional wisdom offers the most accurate understanding that is currently available, and is supported by the preponderance of evidence. It is not to be treated as if handed down by God."

When you do that, you neuter the dangerous and seductive power it holds for maintaining ignorance: Believing that "Conventional Wisdom is RIGHT."

The prevalence of this latter aspect of CW in academia, is precisely why there is such a strong bias toward not publishing negative results, even when they can be more illuminating about truth than "Successful" experiments. (Take for instance, the Michelson–Morley experiment, which consistently failed to detect the "Aether".) It is also why "Science advances on a generational basis"-- The old honor guard that protects CW dies off, and the new generation of scientists challenge that wisdom, and truth is shaken from ignorance.

This relates to your argument, in that Science and Academia suffer the same intrinsic "Faith" biases that their predecessors suffered, it just has a more efficient mechanism to accommodate it.

You don't have to go far to find rancorous examples of this in the annals of scientific history either; Take for instance, Amedeo Avogadro:

This man is (now) credited for starting off "molecular Theory", and with establishing the foundations for the "ideal gas law". However, it took several DECADES for his contributions to science to be recognized. [Wikipedia claims "indifference" from the scientific community, but "Ridicule" is the appropriate word. Many of the leading chemists of the time period had some very nasty things to say about his theories and experiments.]

The saddest thing is-- this is NOT an isolated incident. It recurs continually in academia and science.

This is why I personally do NOT look kindly on **ANY** academic or scientist who immediately dishes out the "Fraud/Quack/Nutter" card to somebody who is actually TRYING to do research, simply because the basis of that research goes against the conventional wisdom. Doing that only locks the keys of knowledge up for another generation, until that generation of minds dies of old age, and can no longer hold back tide.

"Challenging the conventional wisdom" is precisely what REAL Science is all about. Yet, because that challenging process destroys government grants, and the illusion of being an authority, Academic institutions encourage a culture that seeks to REINFORCE the conventional wisdom; and that is how the Bias gets started, and the fallacy of the conventional wisdom being "True" rears its ugly head time and again.

So-- To finalize--

I accept science, the same way I accept conventional wisdom; It is the best we currently have to offer, but it should not be treated as if it were "True." Both *NEED* to be challenged, and challenged rigorously, thoroughly, and OFTEN.

Our "Post Enlightenment" world certainly does progress faster than the pre-enlightenment era; of

Re:Main points

[urusan]

Yes, science has made huge improvements to the human condition in a very short period...but this does not mean that science is unbiased or infallible. So why are you bringing it up in that context?

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, it certainly seems plausible that there are models out there with variables and assumptions that result in no warming, or a cooling. What is the likelihood these would get published based purely on their results? Not good.

In case you hadn't noticed, the planet has warmed.

It probably is unlikely that a model would get published if it's inherently unable to reproduce observations.

Or were you referring to models which project future cooling? Despite claims that models are full of fudge factors that can cause them to produce any conceivable output, their subcomponents are pretty highly constrained by physics and observations. You're not going to get a model which predicts cooling in response to increased greenhouse radiative forcing without turning off the greenhouse effect. (In some extreme nonlinear cases, you can get regions of cooling amidst regions of warming, after some centuries, e.g. a thermohaline circulation shutdown in the north Atlantic, but I presume you're talking about the overall global response over, e.g., the next century.)

Academia has a culture, and this culture can create biases. These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.

Show me a GCM with realistic physics, or even a plausible way of constructing such a GCM, that results in cooling in response to increased greenhouse gases, and we'll talk. Otherwise, you still have a simple conspiracy, merely clothed in pseudo-skepticism.

Re:Main points

[cbeaudry]

There is a base amount of oil consumption that just cannot go away.

I agree, oil consumption would go down slightly at a price raise. But you are living in a dream world if you think it'll go down enough to destroy oil companies.

Just compare the price of oil in Europe to America.
Its mostly taxes, but still, there is a VERY long way to go before people decide oil isnt viable anymore.

About the energy company lobbies... it is peanuts compared to the billions being injected by all governments, the UN, IMF and other special interests. Besides almost every energy company out there has ALSO aligned itself with interest for carbon trading.

It suprising that people dont realise oil companies are oil companies no more. They are energy companies and they have their hands in fossil and green energies.

They want the prices to go through the roof, they'll make a killing and once it runs out or technology catches up and finds alternatives... they'll be right there to exploit that too.

Re:Main points

[cbeaudry]

And who is investing in the alternatives? The energy companies (aka oil companies).

You think they arent ready for the shift if it every happens? They just want to make a killing in that in-between phase where prices are high and alternatives arent viable.

THEY ARE RESEARCHING ALTERNATIVES. The fact that you dont know about it, doesnt make it untrue.

Your whole last paragraph is your own view of how you think the energy business players think.

What you think up in your head or between you and your friends does not reflect reality. Stop watching Mad Max and pay attention to the real world.

Energy companies arent stoopid, they are thinking ahead, while wanting to make a killing in the interim.

Re:Main points

[fritsd]

With no viable alternatives to sustain our current economy and way of life, those who will pay are normal citizens, not Exxon shareholders.

I think you have your answer there--if there exist viable alternatives, but Exxon is not in a position to profit from them as much as their competitors are, then Exxon's shareholders would pay (suffer). Maybe Shell or BP are better situated to benefit from the transition to alternative energy sources, and the companies who can't compete on this new market use their money to buy PR and politicians instead, so as to delay the inevitable transition from oil company to diversified-energy-production company.
There's a very positive conclusion from your words: there *ARE* viable alternatives to sustain our current economy, otherwise Exxon wouldn't bother trying to suppress them :-)

Re:Main points

[Xyrus]

No one, not a single scientist has put forward a single model that, when using known data and accepted quantities produces a flat or cooler planet with increasing CO2 levels. It has nothing to do with culture. It simply does not exist.

However, as we go back in time we quickly start losing variables in quantity and precision.

Do not confuse climatology and paleoclimatology. They are related but they use different methods to achieve results. The error on paleo modles is larger than the climate models used for present day.In addition, given what the climate models are attempting to do the errors are not that large.

We are at least aware of many radical changes in climate that had nothing to do with humans over the Earth's history.

Indeed. But a number of those climate changes happened in response to global level events. We ARE a global level event. Discounting a near doubling of of a gas known for it's trapping effects in the atmosphere as anything less is naive.

The issues are very complicated, but it's not quite correct to say that scientists are solely interested in "truth".

Scientists aren't interested in truth. That is subjective. They are interested in facts. Of course, nobody is perfect. There will be bad apples.

These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.

Of course. And if it were just a handful of scientists or a particular program then most certainly this is a likely possibility. However, we're talking about the aggregate community of scientists. Hundreds of organizations with thousands of researchers. Are you implying that the entire scientific community is biased towards anything contrary to the current body of work?

That IS a conspiracy.

~X~

Re:Main points

[etymxris]

No one, not a single scientist has put forward a single model that, when using known data and accepted quantities produces a flat or cooler planet with increasing CO2 levels. It has nothing to do with culture. It simply does not exist.

I'm not an expert, but that doesn't mean I or other laypersons will feel obliged to believe whatever a so called expert says. There is too much data out there for anyone to be an expert on everything, yet we must still evaluate what experts say. And that doesn't mean always deferring to experts, even when someone knows much more than you about a subject matter there are ways to evaluate his results without becoming an expert yourself.

When you start making absolute statements, my bullshit detector goes off. Science does not deal with absolutes. Now you couch it with caveats like, "accepted quantities" but that could mean many things, allowing you a no true Scotsman retreat. If there's a model that would contradict your universal statement, then it must not be using "accepted quantities".

In fact, I'm much more skeptical of these models if none exist that can show a cooling effect. Perhaps none show a cooling effect "all things being equal". But as we know from paleoclimatology, there is much more affecting the climate than just us. We can never assume "all things will be equal". It could very well be that AGW is merely delaying an ice age that would have occurred sooner rather than later without us. To say this is not even a possibility with the limited data climate data we have measured, relative to the known age of the Earth, sounds like nothing but hubris.

Now, I'm a skeptic but I'm inclined to believe that AGW is more or less true. I don't believe it will be cataclysmic, however. All that CO2 we're barfing into the atmosphere was once in the atmosphere before it was sequestered by organisms and geological processes.

Climatologists, if they want to be taken seriously, need to stop at the science. Tell us what the temperature levels and sea levels will look like in a X decades. Sure, but don't speculate on the social or economic implications. The worst predictions I've heard so far aren't particularly dramatic, and don't seem like they'll affect me during my entire life. This is a far cry from the alarmist Ranger Rick articles I read as a kid in the 80's. I was convinced that by now none of the populous coastal cities would be above water anymore.

When the alarm keeps getting sounded without an ensuing alarm-worthy event, people get inured. They stop believing. Against such a background it's difficult to believe the hockey stick type alarmism that's current. Rather, for the layperson, it seems reasonable to expect a moderated temperature increase over many decades. This expectation drives no immediate call to action. It motivates a measured rather than dramatic response. Sure, we should cut back on CO2 emissions where reasonable. But the tradeoff isn't worth it to make any dramatic, socially disruptive changes at this moment. The amount of environmental harm we prevent is not balanced against the social and economic chaos that would ensure.

Re:Main points

[cbeaudry]

:) No there are not.

Point to one alternative, that is ready to be deployed right now, which could replace oil immediately and a timely fashion without requiring we replace every single gasoline or diesel using engine on the planet NOW.

There isnt.

The fact is, even if money wasnt an option, there is no current quick replacement for oil.

And even if there is a quick way of doing it, there is no replacement for fossil fuels that could sustain or energy uses.

Furthermore, if BP and Shell are smart enough to have their hands in alternative energies, Exxon is as well.

To think Exxon would sit on the sidelines, throw a couple of millions to its lobby machine and hope they come out ahead is down right, im sorry to say, ignorant.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

You still haven't addressed how someone proves their trustworthiness when the only thing that matters - their research - is being called into question based on their trustworthiness. How do you break that cycle?

I don't think there's any perfect answer for this. I'd say the two best factors are peer review (and that includes putting all the evidence and research on the internet for public review; you'll never convince people of something if you keep it secret), and time. It's like my example with evolution: while it was still a new theory 50 years after Darwin proposed it, now only moronic fundamentalists still deny evolution (or worse, try to deny it by confusing it with the origins of life, saying it doesn't address how life originated: no shit, sherlock! The theory never sought to address that.). Evolution has had ~150 years to become widely accepted. GW has had less than a generation, which just isn't very much time.

As for people writing on the mating habits of stegosauruses - you missed the big dust-up in archaeology in the 70s when the two biggest scientists accused each other of theft, lies and scientific fabrication. Everyone has something to lose - which makes that criterion pretty useless.

And is there still any controversy there? I doubt it. By now, the dust has settled, the evidence examined by others, and a consensus reached. I'm guessing in this incident you cite, the only real motivation was fame, as scientists (sorta like open-source developers) are very motivated by attribution and fame within their narrow peer group.

And no, the criterion is not "useless". Again, I point to the tobacco-company researchers who will happily produce plenty of "scientific" evidence that smoking is perfectly safe, cures cancer, makes you live longer, gives you a better erection, or whatever. Do you doubt these claims? If so, why? Just because they come from a scientist employed by the tobacco company? Any reasonably-intelligent person would dismiss such claims without a second thought when they find out they come from an organization with such a reputation for lies and fabrication; they certainly aren't going to bother examining them seriously.

Re:Main points

[Grishnakh]

Energy companies arent stoopid, they are thinking ahead, while wanting to make a killing in the interim.

Exactly, but they're perfectly happy to propagate lies in order to keep people dependent on oil for as long as possible, in order to milk it as long as possible, for as much profit as possible.

Just because they have a fallback plan (like any intelligent sociopathic person would) doesn't mean they're trustworthy. They're not; they're a bunch of liars. They're milking the bird in the hand for as much as it's worth while they're simultaneously working on getting the two birds in the bush.

Re:Main points

[Anonymous Coward]

"Point to one alternative, that is ready to be deployed right now, which could replace oil immediately and a timely fashion without requiring we replace every single gasoline or diesel using engine on the planet NOW."

False dichotomy. We don't have to do it now. There were never any plans to eliminate CO2 production. Only reductions over time.

Electric cars could replace most of our car needs. Considering that the life of a car is about 12 years, you could replace much of the current gas and diesel fleet with electric cars at the same time as you would be building nuclear plants to power them.

The problem is a lack of will.

Re:Main points

[cbeaudry]

I think we both agree they are liars.

However, I think they are playing both sides of the fence equally hard.

Perpetuating the alarmist lies about global warming plays into their plans as well.

Re:Main points

[Lars T.]

Scientists sure like to doctor their research to get more funding, they are like exxon.

So? How does that prove that the vast majority of scientists, who are pretty certain that AGW is happening, are in a huge conspiracy and lying? If I would lead a vast conspiracy of scientists to get more funding, I would make sure that they are split about 50-50, to keep the money rolling in an ongoing debate. I certainly wouldn't make it all dependent on a small group of outsiders fighting the results - come to think of it, I would sell the souls of my merry bunch of scientists to an invested party having lost most ground in an scientific debate, to become that group of outsiders, because that's where the real money is. Purely hypothetical speaking of course.

Re:Main points

[hkmwbz]

Now, it certainly seems plausible that there are models out there with variables and assumptions that result in no warming, or a cooling. What is the likelihood these would get published based purely on their results? Not good.

You are wrong.

1. There are no such models

2. Research that seemingly contradicts the consensus has indeed been published. It happens all the time. It just so happens that all of these published papers have contained serious errors, so they didn't contradict the consensus after all. But they were published when one though they did.

So your anti-science FUD fails.

Re:Main points

[An Onerous Coward]

>> Right now there are large margins of error and much disagreement about exactly how "much" climate change we will experience.

While there is a lot of uncertainty over how the climate will react to a given input of CO2, there is much, much more uncertainty over how much CO2 we'll pump out in the first place. If we don't have the political will to cut emissions, we get a lot of warming. If we cut quickly and dramatically, we get only "a little" warming. So the uncertainty lies not in the models, but in ourselves.

Negative results are often inherently interesting and highly publishable. If someone built a decent model that performs well against past data, but then predicts a slow cool in the future, scientists would be trampling each other to figure out what was wrong with it. The harder it resisted being "fixed", the more interesting it would be. You seem to be insinuating that there are actually dozens of reliable models that have been buried by the establishment. Sorry, they just don't have that big of shovels.

Sure, science has a culture, but it's not a culture of blind acceptance of received wisdom. Every year, tens of thousands of new grad students pop up, with nothing to lose and everything to gain from overturning the consensus. If the science was as blatantly wrong as the deniers claim, it wouldn't stand long before that sort of assault.

Re:Main points

[tbannist]

Well, in the U.S., if you group Electric Utilities and Oil and Gas companies together, they are the single largest lobby group. Independently they are 3rd and 6th respectively.

Yes, oil and gas companies do want prices to go through the roof, as long as they're the people who get that excess money. Like I said, they're not so fond of taxes that raise the price of oil and gas because they do sell less gas and they do lose some money. The way businesses are currently run not increasing profits every year is tantamount to failure.

And finally, yes, many companies tend to love the idea of carbon credits because it represents an alternative to a tax. A carbon tax would benefit governments and social programs, a carbon trading scheme benefits financial organizations and energy companies.

Re:Main points

[NeutronCowboy]

Not sure if you'll still see this, but... I consider this a pretty important point.

Again, I point to the tobacco-company researchers who will happily produce plenty of "scientific" evidence that smoking is perfectly safe, cures cancer, makes you live longer, gives you a better erection, or whatever. Do you doubt these claims?

I don't doubt them, I ignore them. Why? For two reasons:
* I'm not a professional, and it'll be difficult for me to make a serious critique of the study. Specifically, I won't be able to replicate it. I assume that if there are issues with it, it'll be in subtle areas like selective use of data, etc.
* A single contrarian study never means anything. If there are multiple studies coming from different groups I'll start to pay attention. Not before.

But notice the difference - I don't say that they're wrong because of who they are, I merely do not devote time to studying their claims. I leave that to the peer process - which, as you pointed out, is the only way that we have in science of building trust in scientists.

You could argue that the peer review system has conclusively shown that studies funded by Tobacco companies regularly have significant flaws in their data collection or analysis, and that those flaws regularly exculpate Tobacco companies from any blame. However, that is an event that comes after the peer review process has taken place, and should not ever happen before. Because, again, the only consequence of that type of analysis is that every study is flawed: everyone gets their money from somewhere, and everyone has personal biases.

Almost Godwin...

[vfs]

climate deniers

Wow, is that what they're called?

Re:Almost Godwin...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

climate deniers

Wow, is that what they're called?

A skeptic is someone who is dubious of a claim, but is willing to be persuaded by sufficient evidence. A denier is someone who will never be persuaded by any amount of evidence. There's precious little skepticism with regards to climate change these days, because the evidence is sufficient to convince those who were initially skeptical, but there's a hell of a lot of denial. If people who still refuse to accept the evidence don't want to be called "deniers," then you're welcome to come up with a different word -- but you can't have "skeptic," because that word already means something different.

And you can take your Godwin and stuff it. Godwin's Law is invoked when someone brings Hitler or the Holocaust into the conversation where they don't belong. So far, the only people doing that in this conversation are the climate change deniers. You don't get to, er, deny other people the use of the word "denier" just because it's often used with the word "Holocaust" in front of it. The verb "to deny" is a perfectly good English word going back to the 1300s, and it can be used in reference to many, many things that have nothing to do with the period from 1933 to 1945. In this particular case, the label fits: deal with it.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[h4rr4r]

What else should we call them?
Seems this name fits.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[timmarhy]

face it, the denier tag is a blatant attempt at tarring anyone not convinced of AGW with the same brush as holocaust deniers. holocaust deniers are definately in denial - there's 1000's of witnesses and video evidence.

AGW on the other hand is nothing more then a hypothesis which has somehow jumped skipped the whole science part and gone straight to being declared a fact. it took darwin decades to come up with the theory of evolution, and decades more to defend it to the point of being accepted. Yet somehow AGW is expected to be accepted as fact in the space of 10 - 15 years? serious research alone takes longer then that for less complex issues.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[blueg3]

I find the noun "idiot" to be adaptable and appropriate.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[rrohbeck]

Well it should be "climate change deniers" or "AGW deniers."
I even like "denialists", it sounds like "creationists" who are often in the same camp.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[zz5555]

Mostly because the medieval warming period seems to have only occurred in the northern hemisphere. There are indications that it did not occur in the southern hemisphere. I haven't seen any good studies that show that it was a global phenomenon. As such it's not as important to the global climate.

However, let's say that it did exist globally. Even studies that favor the idea of a global medieval warming period show that current temperatures are warmer than those during the medieval warming period. Additionally, it took over 100 years (~200 years according to Watts) for the medieval warm up while the current warming trend surpassed that in less than 50 years (with a huge jump in the 90s).

Re:Almost Godwin...

[intheshelter]

I thought the same thing when I read the summary. It wasn't hard to see which side of the debate that goon was on, was it?

Re:Almost Godwin...

[Art_Vandelai]

Then again, if you're a true skeptic, you'd recognize that the probability that scientists have underestimated the problem of global warming is just as likely an outcome as the probability that they have overestimated it.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[MikeBabcock]

Its the same behaviour on the part of the climate change proponents as they're upset about by the AGW crowd.

Its quite ironic how despite their models not actually working and their predictions not coming true and our temperatures not matching predicted increases, not to mention their inability to explain why chaos theory suddenly doesn't exist, they're willing to tar sceptical thinkers the same way they feel they're being tarred by the media.

The media's job in my little world is to present both sides. If they didn't, I wouldn't be consuming it. News agencies who do nothing but print press releases in the computer industry are called names. But when it comes to scientists, that's exactly what they're expected to do? I think not.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[Torodung]

Other scientists that we think are wrong seems to fit just fine, unqualified lay-people works for almost every other case, and we don't need to impose a politically charged, pejorative label to prove our case and/or make our egos feel better.

--
Toro

Re:Almost Godwin...

[izomiac]

So... what do we call the irrationals on the other side? The people that will "refute" point-by-point every claim a skeptic or denier makes, regardless of what the science says. They're fond of sensationalist hypotheticals, such as how high sea levels would rise if a large ice sheet melted, when the science says it's getting colder. They also love to attribute every last undesirable weather phenomenon to human CO2 production. Cold winter? AGW! Warm winter? AGW! Lightning caused a wildfire? AGW!

I've heard the term "alarmist" used before, but that implies they're just overstating the danger of things that are really happening. IMHO, the anti-industry radical environmentalists are one of the most counterproductive groups of which I am aware. Many of the crazy things they say get attributed to AGW as a whole and turn a lot of armchair skeptics into deniers. Deniers conflate the irrationals with all AGW proponents. Because they know that the crazy things they heard cannot be true, they are convinced that AGW is untrue as well. Giving such individuals a derogatory name would likely help to undo a bit of their counterproductive efforts.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[tbannist]

Actually, so far all temperatures have fallen withing the predicted range of temperatures in the IPCC models from 10 years ago. So, the predictions have all come true so far, the models work, and chaos theory is as aspect of weather, not climate. It's possible to average out chaos. So while, for example, it's difficult to predict the result of a single coin toss, we can predict that you'll get about 50 heads if you do 100. The same thing occurs for climate, the average temperature is easier to predict than the specific temperature on any given day.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[GPLHost-Thomas]

There's precious little skepticism with regards to climate change these days, because the evidence is sufficient to convince those who were initially skeptical, but there's a hell of a lot of denial. If people who still refuse to accept the evidence don't want to be called "deniers," then you're welcome to come up with a different word -- but you can't have "skeptic," because that word already means something different.

Here, you are expressing your point of view, saying that all the evidences are enough, and that everyone that is skeptic should be called a denier. This is the same kind of argumentation that the people from IPCC had, which is that there's a consensus. Truth is: there's no consensus, and not enough real evidences.

You are basically saying that your opponent is denying all evidences that you believe in, when such evidences are contested. It's a too easy caricature to make to decide abitrarily who's the deniers instead skeptics.

We do have brains to think with, and we can make our own opinions by ourself, without needing somebody like you telling what is right or wrong, who is a stupid denier and who's a smart skeptic. For this, you do deserve a Godwin point, because there are 100s of ways to say that someone is a no brain that we should not believe, and you only choose the words related to the 2nd world war.

Re:Almost Godwin...

[fishexe]

And you can take your Godwin and stuff it. Godwin's Law is invoked when someone brings Hitler or the Holocaust into the conversation where they don't belong.

I invoke Godwin's law!

Re:Almost Godwin...

[hkmwbz]

face it, the denier tag is a blatant attempt at tarring anyone not convinced of AGW with the same brush as holocaust deniers.

No, the denier tag is a description of someone who outright denies facts.

AGW on the other hand is nothing more then a hypothesis

No, it is a full-fledged scientific theory.

Cue Flame War in...

[NeutronCowboy]

oh, too late for that. I don't think that there is much to discuss about Climate Change right now. Most skeptics are skeptics out of principle, and there won't be much that'll make them change their minds. And same for the supporters of Climate Change.

I'm pretty sure that the only time that it'll get interesting again is when we'll again hit some record highs summer after summer. Should be coming up pretty soon - the sun is powering up again, and the next El Nino is around the corner as well.

Re:Cue Flame War in...

[geekoid]

"Most skeptics are skeptics out of principle,
those would be deniers, not skeptics.

It's like calling Young Earthers geology skeptics.

Re:Cue Flame War in...

[blueg3]

No, it's tautologically true -- most skeptics are skeptics out of principle.

However, nearly all people who say that the conclusions of climatologists are wrong (or even probably wrong) aren't skeptics.

Re:Cue Flame War in...

[medcalf]

citation needed

I don't want to be alarmist...

[Itninja]

...but does anyone remember the V mini-series (the original 1983 version, not the new sucktastic version)? In that story/prophecy the aliens systematically persecuted, and eventually 'disappeared', all the scientists on Earth (accept for those who went into hiding). Now I'm not saying the science haters are secretly lizard aliens trying to steal our water and eat our children. But why haven't they denied it? Makes one wonder...

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[calmofthestorm]

Did you by chance rape and murder a young girl in 1990? If not, why haven't you denied it?

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[chill]

Did you by chance rape and murder a young girl in 1990? If not, why haven't you denied it?

Lawrence Taylor, is that you?

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[blueg3]

Ah, Slashdot. Where else can most speculation be based on popular fictional plots?

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[Foobar of Borg]

Now I'm not saying the science haters are secretly lizard aliens trying to steal our water and eat our children. But why haven't they denied it? Makes one wonder...

Okay, then I'll say it. The heads of creationist organizations and anti-AGW organizations are secretly lizard aliens trying to steal our water and eat our children. I mean, look at people like Pat Robertson, Laura Bush, and Rush Limbaugh. Don't you think they would devour your children? Hell, how do you think Rush Limbaugh got so fat in the first place? He only slimmed down later because child sacrifice and cannibalism interfered with his Oxycotin habit.

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[19061969]

Even worse, they're hushing up all the damage that dihydrogen monoxide is causing to the economy!

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[Foobar of Borg]

Even worse, they're hushing up all the damage that dihydrogen monoxide is causing to the economy!

Not to mention the damage it is doing to our precious bodily fluids!

bang goes my karma... again...

Hmmm... Mine too, it would seem ^_^

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[Anonymous Coward]

On a more serious note, it's interesting that this element was missing from the remake of V. Might this reflect a change in public attitudes towards scientists?

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[Mindcontrolled]

Actually, you got an interesting point here... Let us, for a moment, assume, that the deniers are in fact the Lizard People, or at least their agents. What do we know about lizards? Right - they are poikilothermic, not able to generate their own body heat. They need a warm environment to get their bodies to working temperature. Now, who would have to gain from a warmer climate? Us homoiothermic mammals, who actually can operate very well in cold environments? Or the Lizard People, who need the external heat? It all becomes clear now. There is no "anthropogenic" global warming - it is, in fact, reptilogenic global warming! What we are looking at is a huge geoengineering project run by the Lizard People in preparation for their takeover!

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[B4D BE4T]

*slow clap*

Bravo, Mr. Beck. Bravo...

Re:I don't want to be alarmist...

[Anonymous Coward]

The advanced landing parties have already replaced a large number of scientists with lizards who now advocate the destruction of our economy and industries so we can't fight them once the rest of the fleet gets here.

See how easy it is to turn a joke around?

Funny? No. People asking to destroy society based on their political agenda with 'funny' data is never funny. It's a crime.

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like your plea worked.

Here's a quote

[phantomfive]

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence

I agree with this quote. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: climate change promoters are doing the same thing. Here's one example, and it was against a guy (Lomborg) who actually accepted the climate change thesis: he was only disagreeing on what should be done about it.

Unfortunately asking a politicized field to not act political is like asking a river to run in reverse up the Himalayas. Nice try, but won't accomplish much: especially if you are demanding it from only one side.

Re:Here's a quote

[professionalfurryele]

In the academic arena ripping each others ideas to shreds is standard fare. No one is suggesting Lomborg committed fraud or going after him personally. People are suggesting he is wrong. Given that many of his more outlandish claims appear in paperback rather than in peer reviewed literature this is better than he deserves.

Re:Here's a quote

[blueg3]

Regrettably, that's true. It gets complicated because the side with all the scientists is almost certainly right. However, a lot of the "everyone elses" on either side are driven by special interest, money, dogma, what have you. It's embarrassing to me (as a non-climatologist scientist) that a lot of environmentalists (for lack of a better term) are approaching the situation no better than the global warming denialists.

Re:Here's a quote

[sl149q]

The IPCC and various scientists involved started an intensely political process and now they are surprised, simply surprised, that politicians will use political processes to fight for their constituencies. I'm not defending either side, but possibly they deserve each other.

 

Re:Here's a quote

[phantomfive]

No one is suggesting Lomborg committed fraud or going after him personally. People are suggesting he is wrong.

When you call the title of your book The Lomborg Deception, it's pretty hard to say you are not going after him personally. Deception by definition implies fraud.

Re:Here's a quote

[Foobar of Borg]

It's embarrassing to me (as a non-climatologist scientist) that a lot of environmentalists (for lack of a better term) are approaching the situation no better than the global warming denialists.

Well, in terms of the public debate, this is really the problem. People are arguing about what Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore are arguing about global warming. It does not matter one whit what either of these idiots think about global warming. What matters are the actual facts and the actual science. Everything else is just mouth-breathers vibrating the wind.

Re:Here's a quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"No one is suggesting Lomborg committed fraud or going after him personally."

On the contrary, he's been accused of fraud multiple times, fruitlessly so. The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty went after him starting in 2003. The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation reviewed their complaints and found the DCSD had plenty of problems of its own, and that their complaints were largely baseless. The DCSD dropped it afterward, apparently less than confident in their own ability to expose the alleged fraud.

Kåre Fog, one of the original accusers and plaintiffs in the DCSD complaint, has a clear personal vendetta against the man. Howard Friel wrote an entire book dedicated to attacking claims that Lomborg made and his character. He's been more than happy to refute their claims, but sadly his site (where a detailed refutation of the claims made in Friel's book was kept) seems to be unavailable for the time being.

In each case, someone has made an ass of himself, and it's not Lomborg. These aren't the vulgar masses either. This is within the scientific community, supposedly respectable society.

Re:Here's a quote

[professionalfurryele]

In the case you are referring to Lomborg was suspected of fraud because of his repeated misuse of data and mis-characterisation of others research. If his work had been published in a physics or economics journal of any quality it is almost certain he would have had his paper rejected. To actually get his work published in the same form as it appeared in his books he would have to commit fraud.
He did not however submit his work to the journals. This wasn't a witch hunt. He was investigated and it was found that the mistakes in his work could reasonably be put down to poor practices than to outright fraud. My point again, in the academic arena he was accused of incompetence, not fraud. This situation he could have entirely avoided if instead of publishing his work in a book he had published it in the journals first.
His 'exoneration' essentially amounted to the MSTI pretending that his work wasn't science (or at least didn't have to meet the exacting standard of the natural sciences and could instead be viewed as a work in the 'social sciences'), and that since the publication was not in the literature it was unclear the DCSD had remit to review the work. Hardly a ringing endorsement.
I read Lomborg's site before it was down so I'm familiar with his refutation. Again he chooses to conduct an academic discussion not in the literature but on his own website.
We have peer review for a reason, it keeps the standard of debate high by ensuring only research of a certain minimum quality is submitted for consideration. Both Friel and Lomborg's work in this regard is frankly a dash sloppy at times because neither has been properly reviewed, this is what happens when you don't use the peer review process for academic work.

Re:Here's a quote

[professionalfurryele]

Not peer reviewed literature. Not a comittee with oversight of the scientific process. That was a book in response to a book Lomborg published, one that wasn't subject to peer review. In said book Lomborg borders on accusing an entire academic community of committing fraud himself.
When Alistair McGrath published "The Dawkin's Delusion" no one cared. Clearly this was intended as a personal refutation to the "The God Delusion" but if Dawkins had wanted the discussion conducted with the usual regards for measure and decorum found in the peer reviewed literature he would have published his theological work there. McGrath comes very close to suggesting that Dawkin's is deliberately misrepresenting the issue (although again there the conclusion of the refutation is that Dawkins is incompetent rather than fraudulent) and Dawkins didn't give a rats backside. Why? Not peer reviewed, not a real accusation of scientific fraud.
The book is titled "The Lomborg Deception" because just as in the above case the person writing the refutation believes (correctly in my opinion, although Lomborg hasn't successfully submitted his more outlandish claims for peer review in any respected journals that I know of so perhaps I'm wrong and his ideas just need tidying up) that Lomborg is either committing fraud or incompetent. Again the writer errs on the side of suggesting incompetence and again this is not an accusation dealt with by an body with oversight.
There is such a case if you look at the poster below you, and I point out why the DCSD investigation into Lomborg also doesn't represent an accusation of fraud either. There the committee again concluded that Lomborg is simply incompetent rather than fraudulent.
The entire Lomborg case is an excellent illustration of why new and original ideas in the sciences generally have to go through peer review first.

Re:Here's a quote

[Anonymous Coward]

If scientists really wanted to disprove an increasingly influential critic of their work, they would succeed where you claim that he has failed - by systematically disassembling his body of work. Saying that 'it is not in a journal and is therefore invalid' means nothing.

Re:Here's a quote

[Anonymous Coward]

But Lomborg was peer reviewed, in spite of not being published in a journal. Prior to publishing 'The Skeptical Environmentalist', the Cambridge University Press subjected the book to a review prior to publishing. You can look up who was on the panel yourself. One of them reviews publications for the IPCC.

Re:Here's a quote

[professionalfurryele]

Calling the hack job the social sciences division of CUP did with "The Skeptical Enviromentalist" peer review is incredibly misleading. The work was simply too big and too original and too natural sciences oriented for that review process to have any hope of having a reasonable outcome, regardless of the credentials of those selected as reviewers. Given the nature of Lomborg's claims there should have been a statistician on the review panel. It was a publication concerned with the natural sciences and it should never have been reviewed by the social science division, they simply were not qualified.
His work is full of non-peer reviewed references, contains numerous statistical mistakes and was not peer reviewed in any meaningful sense of the word. Large tracts of it would certainly not have been published had it been put up for review by a high quality nat. sci. journal.
He should have submitted his climatology work to climatology journals, his ecology work to ecology journals and his economics work to economics journal, not burdened the social sciences division of the CUP with reviewing a book they clearly did not have the expertise to review.
What's sad is that much of Lomborg's work is actually extensions of some criticisms which do exist in the literature and had he submitted his work to apropriate journals I've little doubt some of his work is of publishable quality. He did not.
If you are looking to 'win' the argument then yes, technically this book went through peer review, but comparing the process this book went through to the exacting standard most papers in the natural sciences go through is absurd.

Re:Bad analogy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We either accept the methods by which the big bang, evolution, and climate change (along with pretty much everything else we think we know about how the world works) are understood, or we don't. If we do, then the economics are irrelevant: the universe doesn't care about our economy. If we don't, then we should have a better reason for this decision than saying "the motivations are different," because the universe also doesn't care about motivation, at least as far as we can tell.

In other words, you're letting your politics interfere with your understanding of science. Thanks for providing such a useful demonstration of how this works.

Science always predicts the future

[mangu]

all those theories that are trying to explain the past. Climate change is trying to predict the future

*ALL* science is about predicting the future. If you have a theory that cannot make predictions, then it's not a scientific theory, it's not right, it's not even wrong .

Re:Science always predicts the future

[Wyatt Earp]

All science is about predicting the future?

Humm. So a paleontologist studying the Mosasaurs of the Western Interior Seaway is studying the future?

Or theories about the evolution of dinosaurs into birds is studying the future?

Re:Science always predicts the future

[mangu]

theories about the evolution of dinosaurs into birds is studying the future

Past events, future discoveries. Many paleontologists have created theories that were proved false after more fossils were discovered.

Re:Science always predicts the future

[Wyatt Earp]

My fiancee is a biologist. The study of Odonata has nothing to do with the future.

Re:Science always predicts the future

[Torodung]

Unless it's string theory. Then it's just a theory that we're waiting to test.

--
Toro

Re:Science always predicts the future

[Opyros]

As others have pointed out, some fields of science do involve "predicting" the past. In such cases, retrodiction or postdiction may be better terms to use.

Re:Science always predicts the future

[MightyMartian]

Nice way to roll two fallacies together. Prediction doesn't mean future events, in means future observations. Those may be future events, or they may be past events observed for the first time. I mean, researchers long predicted black holes to exist, and the first solid evidence we had for black holes came from distant objects whose radiation was produced in the past, sometimes millions or billions of years in the past.

Re:Science always predicts the future

[Paltin]

I think the OP overplayed his hand, but since dragonflies are a pest species, then primary research into their diversity and behavior can let us make useful predictions about their behavior, potential risks to human endeavors, and evolutionary trajectory.

So, while the OP is wrong, you're just as wrong.

It's like Upton Sinclair said...

[unitron]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Re:It's like Upton Sinclair said...

[ProfM]

Of course, the corollary to that is:

"It is easy to get a man to prove something, when his salary depends upon him proving it."

Re:It's like Upton Sinclair said...

[unitron]

Or, if not prove, at least believe.

As always

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to avoid prosecution for fraud, stop committing fraud. Global warming is a hoax and everyone pushing it is rationalizing. As the evidence becomes more and more obvious that global warming is untrue, they are moving from stretching the truth to outright lying. So far, they've gotten away with pretending they're just incompetent, but as this continues, there will be convictions.

Re:First post

[somersault]

Cool. Now, someone send me some cute strippers and/or a big pile of money!

Those dummies

[CODiNE]

an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences

Shouldn't have used an 8-bit int for their member count. Oh well, at least it's unsigned.

Re:Those dummies

[Krahar]

Ouch, so the 255 may in fact be just a single person opposing this open letter!

Analogy please!

[sourcerror]

I don't get this whole global-warming thing. Could someone explain it with a car analogy?

Re:Analogy please!

[mangu]

I don't get this whole global-warming thing. Could someone explain it with a car analogy?

OK. Imagine a planet with big gas-guzzling SUVs that emit a lot of CO2. What would be the result? The atmosphere in that planet would absorb more infrared radiation and the climate would get warmer.

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I'll give it a try...

When you leave your car outside on a sunny day with the windows up, the inside gets hot. If you were to do the same but also leave it running with the heater turned on (set to recirculate), it will get hotter faster. Scientists claim we've not only left the heater on, but are constantly raising the temperature settings as well. They've been imploring us for years to switch it to fan (A/C wastes too much gas), or at least leave the gauges alone, but instead we've continually rebuffed them and increased the settings a little further. The primary concern is that we may inadvertently turn the heater to eleven and get it stuck there like the Venusians did with their car. As a result of our collective dickery, some people who agree with the scientists are getting fed up with us for being so bullheaded and kinda want to kick our asses now. Unfortunately for them, they're all kinda wusses.

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that:

1. Co2 is not the most prevelant greenhouse gas, it's not even close.
2. Man's contribution to CO2 is so small as to be neglegable
3. There are things on the planet that remove CO2 from the system, they're called plants.

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Car analogy:

My car won't start and I believe it is because the tension on the front-right wheel is incorrect.
I am of course ignoring the engine, starter-motor, battery, etc because I don't know how they work, and don't have the ability to control them, whereas I can tighten a nut on my wheel

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. Since most car owners understand thermodynamics, we can go a bit further. The atmosphere is cooler than the ground, so it emits heat much slower, since radiation scales with the fourth power of temperature.

Re:Analogy please!

[sznupi]

Don't forget that we manage to continually apply on the windows new layers of stuff that makes them retain more IR inside. Also, the exhaust is redirected inside the cabin.

Re:Analogy please!

[hkmwbz]

A car is observed driving down the road. The denialist will deny that the car ever drove down the road even though there is all sorts of evidence, including eye witnesses, photographs, video, audio, and so on. The denialists will claim it's all a conspiracy to trick people into thinking a car drove down the road.

Re:Analogy please!

[hkmwbz]

Why don't you pick up a book instead of spouting ignorant nonsense like that? Do you denialists thrive on being willfully ignorant and consciously spreading misinformation?

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

and the "hardware engineer*" hkmwbz will continue to troll

* building computers in your mom's basement does not make you a hardware engineer

Re:Analogy please!

[hkmwbz]

Aww, did facts hurt your feelings, denialist?

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

still haven't seen any "facts" just you constantly stating "no it isn't." typical troll behavior.

Re:Analogy please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon reviewing the evidence of the car driving down the road, an independent group discover that all of the photographs, videos and audio had been doctored. This may have been to clarify the images or it may have been for more nefarious purposes, however, when they ask for the original photos, videos and audio they are told that "we don't have them anymore."

Of the eye witnesses we discover that many of them weren't even in the area on the day that the alleged car drove down the road. Of those that actually were present, most of these were family pets ("bark once if a car came down the street and twice if it didn't, Fido") the remaining witnesses are all on the local committee to get more funding to resurface the road. Since unused roads are unimportant and can go without resurfacing, especially in times of budget deficit, we can see that their testimony is suspect.

Re:Analogy please!

[hkmwbz]

Wow, I have my own stalker :D

Re:Analogy please!

[hkmwbz]

You keep obsessing over me. Hilarious!

Upon reviewing the evidence of the car driving down the road, an independent group discover that all of the photographs, videos and audio had been doctored.

Except it turns out they hadn't. Only right-wing religious groups claimed that they were.

This may have been to clarify the images or it may have been for more nefarious purposes, however, when they ask for the original photos, videos and audio they are told that "we don't have them anymore."

But they do. Not all of it locally, but the original people who recorded it still have them.

Of the eye witnesses we discover that many of them weren't even in the area on the day that the alleged car drove down the road.

Yes they were.

Of those that actually were present, most of these were family pets ("bark once if a car came down the street and twice if it didn't, Fido")

Are you drunk?

the remaining witnesses are all on the local committee to get more funding to resurface the road.

Nope. See, this is your problem. Your right-wing and diseased mind cannot accept the facts, so you invent lies.

Since unused roads are unimportant and can go without resurfacing, especially in times of budget deficit, we can see that their testimony is suspect.

Except this isn't about witness testimony, but a huge body of clear evidence. But of course a disgusting denialist will keep denying the facts.

Good analogy

[wsanders]

In some states in the US, denial of the theory of evolution is used as the basis for educational policy. I suppose it is a policy that attempts to keep evangelical Christians in power by stunting the education of their children.

You are also fundamentally wrong that climate science is attempting to predict the future. It is also an attempt to understand the past history of climate changes.

Also, the argument that scientists are trying to formulate policy is the same red herring used by conservatard politicians to harass researchers. If the scientists somehow were convinced that burning *more* fossil fuels would prevent ocean levels from rising, polar ice from melting, etc, they would say so. But the preponderance of evidence, so far, points in the other direction.

I call bs...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't have their cake and eat it too - if they're going to selectively employ the 'scientific method' then they need to suck it up when it goes against their personal views. re: NAS member Peter Duesberg.

Re:Bad analogy

[etymxris]

When predicting the future, there is more of value at stake than when explaining the past. The more there is at stake, the more likely people are to be swayed by various desires than by the truth. This goes on both sides. There's no real money at stake whether evolution is correct or not. But if AGW is correct, then Exxon and others stand to lose billions. It wouldn't be fair to say that deniers of AGW are all biased and those believing it are all justified. But the whole debate is necessarily political from the start.

In any case, predicting the future rather than explaining the past gives AGW the potential to be much stronger than evolution or cosmological theories. Since it has not yet happened, it can be tested. We'll have to see if it passes the "test". I have a feeling that no one will be satisfied with the results of AGW's predictions within my lifetime.

The Software shows the Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

  Here is a breakdown of the leaked code.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/revenge_of_the_computer_nerds_1.html

Signatories are very biased

[crepe-boy]

I don't trust the reasoning behind this group of people. Note that they are largely from the east and west coast of the USA, or from e.g. Australia. It sounds as if they have a vested interest in keeping sea levels low.

Re:Science is not 100% correct

[techno-vampire]

Some of these are fallible;

Correction: all of them are fallible. It's just that some of them aren't honest enough to admit it.

There's a LOT of Political Power

[Phrogman]

to be harvested amongst the people who don't understand Science, specifically Climate Changes. Its much easier to convince people its all conspiracy to waste their money and that they should oppose it, than it is to educate them in something extremely complex and involved - and which we are still figuring out.
The Climate Change deniers can muster a lot of political capital by marshalling all the ignorant masses against making changes that might cost them money but are intended to be for the good of us all.
Personally, I expect humanity will do precisely *nothing* that is effective to deal with climate change and that millions of people will have to die first before the rest of us accept the fact that our lifestyle and population growth has been writing checks we couldn't afford, and now the collection agency is here for their money. Lots of corporations owned by rich individuals have made trillions of dollars off of the world's resources without worrying about environmental impact - now we deal with it. Tons of damage has been done to the environment by those same companies and we are left to pay the bill. Our great grandchildren will *still* be paying that bill I expect, those that aren't dead that is.
Do I want to see responsible research, yes of course. Will it happen? I am sure its happening now. Will the media report on it and the average human learn to understand it? No way. The Media has no interest in dispensing the truth, the average person is too stupid to understand, and doesn't want to hear anything that implies *they* have to make sacrifices and can't get the latest shiney.
When enough humans have died that we no longer can cause global warming, thats when things will settle down again. Humanity is too stupid and shortsighted. Its much more important to figure out whats happening on America's Got Talent...
Yes, I am a bit cynical and bitter today, what clued you in? :P

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[timmarhy]

The problem is that most of what is being fed to the population about climate change is just rubbish.

your flat out finding anyone who understands how our climate even works on a basic level. case in point if you ask people what causes warming of the planet, 90% will parrot "omgz CO2", and miss the fact it's actually the sun and water vapour, with CO2 only providing a tiny amount.

stupid stunts like open letters only lose AGW credibility, look at all the emotive language in the post as an example "climate deniers"?? just call anyone who's not convinced a fucking heretic already. open letters only serve to futher politicise the issue instead of focusing on solid science and making your case in terms of facts not emotion.

bottom line is if you want to insist on childish crap like name calling and stamping your feet via "open letters", your only going to create more and more of your "deniers"

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[night_flyer]

as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[IICV]

What money? Do you know how much funding your average climatology research unit gets? I bet you it's nowhere near BP or Exxon Mobile's profit margin this year. Hell, even Al Gore's much reviled investments into carbon offset companies don't amount to much more than a minuscule portion of that, and we're not talking about Al Gore here - we're talking about academics doing research.

Seriously, this is saying "Hey look, those guys get a drop of water! Don't pay any attention to our swimming pool!"

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Barrinmw]

Comparing the money received by small groups to that of an entire multi-national corporation? Maybe if we looked at ALL the money on one side to ALL the money on the other side and also at the amount that the Climate Scientists stand to gain along with people who push green technology, that would be a more accurate comparison?

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[tmosley]

BP and Exxon don't put 100% of their profits into climate research. I doubt if they even put .001% into it.

The fact is that if Global warming were disproven, 99+% of climate scientists would lose ALL of their funding. This is a hell of an incentive for them to do the wrong thing.I'm not saying that they do or have done the wrong thing, but to claim that there isn't a conflict of interest is asinine.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[timmarhy]

you do realise BP is the biggest producer of solar panels in the world, the prize fighter of the we don't need oil or coal crowd, right?

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[jwhitener]

as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something

I keep seeing this, and honestly, it confuses me. Sure, follow the money. But....here is the kicker: add it up!

Can you actually make the argument that someone like Gore stands to make evenly remotely close to the profits that "big oil, etc.." stand to make?

If someone like all Gore was just interested in making money, it sure would be a thousand times easier to make said money by supporting the status quo.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Barrinmw]

But why would the oil companies higher Al Gore to maintain the status quo? You don't make money by just doing what everyone else does. You do it by making yourself "indispensable" as you will.

And stop comparing what one person or a group of people would make to that of a Multi-Billion dollar Multi-national company. To the likes of Exxon-Mobile, 10 million dollars isn't a lot of money, but to one person it sure as hell is.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

For the thirty years before global warming, the watchword was overpopulation. After capitalism was overthrown, the governments realized that their economies were going in the tank. So the economies have been supported since then by selling the western countries to immigrants, and most economic activity revolved around building them housing and infrastructure and the required financing. The real problem is still overpopulation, but there are no solutions to that that involve trillions in new taxes and armies of bureaucrats.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[dbIII]

The fact is that if Global warming were disproven, 99+% of climate scientists would lose ALL of their funding.

You wrote it - read it again and you'll see how utterly ridiculous such a statement is. Do you really think nobody on earth will have any sort of desire to know when it's a good time to plant crops? What do you think climate scientists actually do?
Writing "the fact is" in front of such a thing? Some sleazy slimeball in politics has set you an incredibly bad example that you will need to grow out of if you can.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

"follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something"

I've learned there's a shitload more money on the side of oil.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[night_flyer]

Ever hear of a small company called GE? how about George Soros? both pushing Global Warming, both for financial gain

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[urusan]

You're comparing apples and oranges. Of course a CRU is small compared to an oil corporation. What would the researchers even do with that much money? It's not like they have expensive physical capital such as oil wells, pipelines, refineries, etc. to build and operate.

If you want to make a fair comparison money-wise, you should do one of the following:
compare fossil fuel energy industry funded CRUs to government & green industry funded CRUs
compare fossil fuel corporations to governments & green industries
compare overall fossil fuel industry climate research funding to overall government & green industry climate research funding

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes zero sense.

Basically you're asserting that every climatologist and scientist in a closely related field are either:
1) To stupid to notice a massive fraud in their field, on the field's most important and debated topic.
2) Such a partisan communist that they knowingly participate in a fraud which may slightly increase the power of governments over industry.
3) Think that participating in a massive fraud which will increase the overall funding of climate science research is a better way to improve their
      personal job prospects than doing honest research. And so venal that they're willing to abandon all ethical scientific principles for that improvement.

I'm sorry, but that's stupid. There's no reason for potential climate scientists to be dramatically less ethical than your average person or to be so strongly ideologically motivated that in the 50 years the greenhouse effect has been discussed not a single climate scientist has come clean about the fraud. (Despite the financial rewards that scientist would receive.)

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stick with the position that tries to save the lives millions of people. Money is cheap next to a single human life. Of course I have a good scientific backing to support my compassion. What's your rational backing to support the do-nothings?

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Paltin]

Sure, what you'd learn is that a scientist's best bet to get a lot of money is to come up with revolutionary evidence that the AGW theory is incorrect; and the denier's best bet to get a lot of money is to start a consulting company and get giant grants from oil companies to sling dirt at the scientists.

If the scientists did have evidence to show that AGW is wrong, they'd publish it and get famous. Think Nobel. Think front page of every news magazine and giant speaking appointments. The reason this hasn't happened yet is that the evidence isn't there. I'm not saying that the theory is correct, but the evidence that has been collected is pretty one sided.

Currently, the material in scientific journals is dominated by scientists who support AGW, because their money is spent on doing science. The sphere of public opinion is dominated by deniers, because that's where they spend their money.

Just take a moment, and actually consider that the scientists might be more right than wrong. You might learn something.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[tmosley]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

How could anyone confuse climatology with meteorology? That's like confusing oceanography with marine biology.

The science of climatology was founded on global climate change fears. It did not exist prior to that. Crops were planted just fine. Climatologists can't make any predictions beyond vague "there will be more hurricanes this year" drivel that is wrong half of the time.

But yeah, thanks for calling me sleazy and thus proving the thesis of AGW people using insults rather than facts to "prove" their point.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[cybrthng]

He's one of those righties that seems to be fighting to sustain the oil economy vs the green economy, thus its us vs them.. you know.. oil will last forever, lets keep pumping it vs lets make some changes and move to a more energy independent/green economy.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Xyrus]

as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something

What fucking money? Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?

I am so tired of seeing this bullshit line. Here in the grand old US, go look at the budget and see how much is allocated for climate science. Go ahead. And do you know how many groups/individuals that's spread over?

YOU DO NOT GET RICH BEING A CLIMATE SCIENTIST. The average established climate scientist in the US makes $75K. That's right, being a decent software engineer makes more than a seasoned climate scientist.

So where is this fucking money your talking about? Almost all research is done by government or universities. There's jack shit worth of funding given by private interests. We're talking grad students, civil servants, and university professors. How many of those do you know making millions a year?

So where's the fucking money?

In fact, every year recisions take a chunk of the money allocated for climate research back for other projects. The amount spent world wide on climate science is a sad joke considering its importance.Fo fucks sake, the amount spent on national parks is 10 times more than climate research. You could remove climate research from the budget entirely and your taxes wouldn't even change.

So where's the fucking money?

It ain't there, and it never was there. If you want money you go become a member of Big Fossil Fuel Co. and become their cheerleader. If you want money you sell your soul and scientific credibility and go play in McIntyre's sandbox. Just like the "scientists" who worked for big tobacco showing smoking wasn't dangerous, the real money is in switching camps, because it certainly isn't in climate research.

~X~

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[fishexe]

as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something

Yes, because the climate science industry is way bigger than the oil and coal industries combined.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[ukyoCE]

It would be an accurate comparison, please proceed. Of course it's several small companies (making solar panels, hybrids, etc.) and scientists versus numerous multi-national corporations, politicians, and small businesses who would be impacted by any attempts to reduce AGW. Can you post here once you add up the money on each side?

We'll also need to sum up the risk on each side. Scientists who lie take a huge risk to their individual career by being dishonest.

Oil company executives and marketing take little to no risk by spreading lies. They will easily find new jobs and move on, just like the bankers, realtors, and others responsible for the current economic crisis.

The worst risk for the company itself is it might take a reputation hit. That would require them to change their name to something random and confusing like, I don't know, how about "Altrea".

There is clearly more money on the anti-AGW side. They have a lot to gain by continuing the status quo, and they have very little risk to lying. The pro-AGW side has very little to gain by lying, and a whole lot of risk.

Those facts alone should make it quite clear which side is more likely to be honest. But please, go ahead and sum up the pro and anti AGW money and risk. It should be very enlightening.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

The climate scientists aren't the ones making money off of it. It's politicians gaining political capitol, people creating sham businesses such as selling "carbon offsets", and shit like that. Whether you like it or not, yes, people are exploiting belief in AGW to make money just as much as people are exploiting non-belief. And they don't give a shit about science or the environment, either.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

So how many climate scientists do you think the oil industry fund? I don't believe more than a couple of dozens. The government and the hysteria of the press funds a couple of thousands.

Just guesses from me but I would belive I would have noticed otherwise.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

What money? Do you know how much funding your average climatology research unit gets?

Yes: all the money that they have, with no other source of money to be imagined. Academics will fight very hard to preserve their funding. If the AGW school of thought and scien-politic movement is shown to be fraudulent or false, it will seriously impact the livelihood of all those people. Labs defunded, researchers losing jobs, and quite probably not able to ever find work again. Because they personally, and institutionally, and even all of "scientific research" generally, will be tainted and marked as crooks. The absolute value of the money is not what's at stake. It represents "all the money in the world" that they will ever see. That's why they fight so hard to silence critics.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[dbIII]

Climatology has been studied for well over a century - google southern oscillation index for an example.
You really have been badly conned here but please desist in spreading the confidence trick.

Re:There's a LOT of Political Power

[Anonymous Coward]

As a PhD in climatology, you can expect around $50K per year and working 80 hour work weeks. The modest ones take less and work more. Oh yeah, those guys are living the high life of excess and greed. Especially for all the student loans they have accumulated getting that PhD.

Re:Bad analogy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

As another poster pointed out, all science attempts to predict the future; if a theory doesn't make predictions, it's worthless. Now, in some cases, these predictions are perforce rather limited -- e.g. cosmological theory makes predictions mainly about what past events we may observe in the future via telescopic studies of things that happened billions of years ago, and about events billions of years from now that we won't be around to see. But to use your example of evolution, I can tell you, working in biomedical research, that evolutionary theory does in fact make predictions about events that are happening right now, on human timescales. And you can take a look at the NIH budget, or Merck's or Pfizer's annual earnings reports, to get an idea of just how much money is involved.

Uh.... yeah.... right...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those naive enough around here to think there is some great divide between politics and science have obviously never been through a peer review process nor have they ever tried to write up a grant proposal.

Everything has a political side. Everything. And scientists have to put food on the table too.

Re:Science is not 100% correct

[medcalf]

Science is a human activity. Biases and prejudices and agendas are a part of that, and always have been. The beauty of science is that the method is eventually self-correcting.

Won't Matter

[quantaman]

Unfortunately I don't think this will make a difference.

Is anyone here willing to stand up and say they were a denialist but became convinced of the validity of AGW when the CRU was vindicated? What about anyone who's still a denialist, but decided that the emails weren't the smoking gun after all?

I fear that no evidence can ever be enough. Imagine we had a time machine and could look 100 years in the future and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer. I suspect a substantial portion of denialists would simply claim it was part of a natural cycle, or a scientific conspiracy was using a doomsday device to warm the planet, anything but the greenhouse effect.

Re:Won't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, you're saying that a single sample without any other information would prove everything...

It sure wouldn't disprove a natural cycle.

Re:Won't Matter

[timmarhy]

"and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer"

you see bullshit like claiming it'll be 10c warmer in 100 years is WHY we don't believe you! I'm not sorry or going to apologise for holding climate change claims to fucking high standard of proof when your asking the world to spend TRILLIONS on solving the supposed problem.

I want you to sit down and just play devils advocate for a minute and run through the consequences of you being wrong about global warming.

Re:Won't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you start by listing something we're planning to do to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and what the negative consequences would be if we're wrong about global warming.

Re:Won't Matter

[timmarhy]

ok you want me to start?

currently the most popular reduction scheme out there is to tax carbon. if this goes ahead it'll mean a rather large slice out of industry, if we go with the demands of environmental lobbies and aim for a reduction of 40% in 10 years, you'll basicly wipe out the coal and oil industries. you simply can't acheive a reduction of that size and keep coal and oil online inside 10 years. there's certainly nothing we could do to replace coal and oil in that kind of time frame.

without these sources of energy societies technology won't advance at it's current rate, meaning other polluting industries won't get cleaner, or they might even go backwards. the net result of this is you'll actually pollute more, if we go through all this turmoil to find AGW isn't real, you've just set back the advancement of human civilisation and polluted the earth more then if you just did nothing.

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

"and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer"

you see bullshit like claiming it'll be 10c warmer in 100 years is WHY we don't believe you! I'm not sorry or going to apologise for holding climate change claims to fucking high standard of proof when your asking the world to spend TRILLIONS on solving the supposed problem.

I'm not saying that the projections are for it to be 10C warmer, I'm saying the evidence could be as blatant as a climate 10C warmer.

I want you to sit down and just play devils advocate for a minute and run through the consequences of you being wrong about global warming.

I do that every time I consider the issue.

I don't claim that the science is infallible, but at the end of the day it's a simple calculation.

What's the cost of doing something vs the cost of doing nothing.

And what's the cost of climate change if it's real and we do nothing.

It's not hard to justify an expenditure of trillions when you consider the odds.

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

I like the fact that much of your justification for doing nothing comes from the fact that we've done nothing so far, so to act now would be that much more expensive.

And 40% in 10 years would clearly be very disruptive, but what about 10%? Or at least trying to stop the increase?

And considering being wrong, what if you're wrong? What are the costs of mass famine? Large migrations from coastal regions? (even ignoring political instability the real estate is big money).

Oh, and if we are completely wrong about AGW and the climate won't warm.

What do you plan to do about ocean acidification?

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

LOL, you're saying that a single sample without any other information would prove everything...

It sure wouldn't disprove a natural cycle.

Ok then, here's an open question to all the climate skeptics.

What would convince you that global warming is real?

I know there are things that would convince me it's not real.

The first would be to show me that most climatologists and scientists in general no longer believe in AGW. (note the various petitions put out aren't of sufficient quality to accomplish this.)
The second is to show me why most climatologists and scientists are wrong about AGW. Note I've yet to see an explanation here that doesn't rely on the assumption that scientists are all idiots and/or in a giant conspiracy theory (propositions for which the evidence is sorely lacking).

So what would it take for you to change your mind?

Re:Won't Matter

[timmarhy]

but 40% by 2020 is what's being asked for, atleast here in australia anyway. our current government ran it as part of their last election, though they've back flipped on it now.

the greens party is still asking for it.

if 10% over 10 years was all that was being asked and it was implemented in a smart way that would actually encouraged business investment which gave a return, you wouldn't have the mass of resistance that exists now. I'm all for reducing our impact on the planet, fundamentally everyone is. I'm just not convinced (and a lot of other people aren't either) that global warming is the immediate threat it's made out to be.

lets tackle things like deforestation and water management first?

Re:Won't Matter

[Barrinmw]

Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels, but that won't happen since each year solar energy becomes more efficient and eventually Fusion will be a reliable method of Power Generation.

My biggest concern is that people are blowing this entire thing so out of proportion. I am a firm believe that all we have to do is continue progressing like we are and we will be fine.

The people who think that in 50 years that we will be consuming the same amount or more of carbon as we do now are delusional. If we had the same level of production as we do now, but 100 years ago, the amount of carbon we would release would be so much higher then it is now. Technologies become naturally more efficient and clean as time goes on. Just sit back and do nothing and natural advances is Tech will do the work for us.

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels, but that won't happen since each year solar energy becomes more efficient and eventually Fusion will be a reliable method of Power Generation.

My biggest concern is that people are blowing this entire thing so out of proportion. I am a firm believe that all we have to do is continue progressing like we are and we will be fine.

The people who think that in 50 years that we will be consuming the same amount or more of carbon as we do now are delusional. If we had the same level of production as we do now, but 100 years ago, the amount of carbon we would release would be so much higher then it is now. Technologies become naturally more efficient and clean as time goes on. Just sit back and do nothing and natural advances is Tech will do the work for us.

Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels.

As for the evidence convincing you being "Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels", is there evidence you'll accept that doesn't consist of waiting until its already too late?

Re:Won't Matter

[Barrinmw]

So 50 years is too late now? Last I heard it was 100 years, just keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Re:Won't Matter

[timmarhy]

"Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels."

no... epic fail....

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

So 50 years is too late now? Last I heard it was 100 years, just keeps getting shorter and shorter.

I don't know what the actual scientists are saying on this. But ~100 years (well 2100) is when many of the long term projections are based.

However as to the actual tipping point, when we go from one meta-stable system to another, that's based on CO2 concentration. I don't know the exact numbers here but I've heard some people who suspect we're already past the tipping point. I don't think that's the consensus view but I doubt there's many scientists who believe in AGW and think we can ignore the problem for another 50 years without passing the tipping point.

Re:Won't Matter

[quantaman]

"Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels."

no... epic fail....

What do you base this on?

Right now coal is the cheapest fuel we have, I don't even think large scale nuclear is competitive with coal. Why would you expect that to change? Sure technology will make other energy sources cheaper, but it will also make coal cheaper too.

Re:Won't Matter

[Barrinmw]

I refuse to believe in a tipping point when it comes to Carbon Dioxide levels as long as there has been precedent for the levels we are looking to face. Jurassic Period - CO2 levels in the thousands and life thrived.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Money

[AnonymousClown]

First of all the big bang, evolution and earth's origin doesn't effect massive amounts of the world economy.

Ah, money.

Combating Global Warming, even if wrong, wouldn't be a complete waste of resources. All this money spent on alternative clean energy will not go to waste because eventually, there won't be enough economically useful oil. Sure, there will still be oil, but it'll be at hundreds of dollars a barrel. People won't be able to afford it. There are over 7 billion people on earth who want to live like Americans and we're 300 million of that population using 25% of it - the numbers don't work. demand is increasing exponentially and supply isn't keeping up - and it doesn't look like there's enough oil in the world to keep up.

Which means we have to have other forms of cheap energy and if we wait for oil to increase to the point of being too expensive before developing these other forms of energy, our economy will collapse. At lease with other forms, the pain will be great (all those damn internal combustion engines), but it won't knock us out.

Let's say we don't do anything and the planet cooks. We being the richest country in the World will have people rushing into this country. Meaning, one way or another, it'll cost us.

So convince me, then

[medcalf]

If the catastrophic AGW hypothesis is correct, all of these must be true, in order (that is, falsifying any earlier point falsifies all later points from the point of view of the theory):

1. The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
2. The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
3. The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
4. The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
5. The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.

If the first is false, then there is no global warming. If the second is false, there is no way to prove the third, because we would have examples of the warming going past this point and then correcting. If the third is false, then we need take no action. If the fourth is false, then we need take no action. If the fifth is false, then any action we could take would likely be meaningless.

The scientific method being what it is, and with the hypothesis claimed to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, then there must be significant evidence and reasonable argument to draw each of these conclusions. I haven't seen it, and I've been looking for a while. Normally, the "argument" rapidly devolves into name calling. But I'm willing to try, and so I have some questions, starting with the first point:

What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?

When has it been at that temperature in the past?

Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?

How, specifically, do we know this?

In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you do not understand the risks of AGW. It's not that the warming is unprecedented (your point #2). It's that the warming will cause effects that will make it hard to support the seven billion humans living on Earth. For example, a sea level rise of one meter will cause hundreds of millions of people to have to relocate, at a cost of trillions of dollars. It doesn't matter that the sea level was hundreds of meters high at some point in the distant past. In short, it's the effect on humans that is the danger of AGW, not the effect on the planet.

Please take the time to understand what you're arguing against -- this is the main problem of the so-called "skeptics". They don't even know what they're skeptical of!

Re:So convince me, then

[oddTodd123]

Not sure why this is modded insightful. There are important qualifiers to all of your statements in order for them to matter in this discussion:

The temperature of the earth is warming over time.

It only matters if the temperature of the earth is warming through the timeframe that humanity has been settled throughout the globe, or at least within a range of climate zones.

The amount of this warming is unprecedented.

Again, this only matters within the relatively short timeframe that humanity has been settled throughout the globe, or at least within a range of climate zones.

The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.

... in the short term. It doesn't matter if the earth can correct in 100,000 years. What matters is whether the earth can correct what we are doing in 100 years.

The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.

This one is okay, but how falsifying this falsify point 5? Also, this is one of the few points you listed that is pretty well proven. See sea level rise, which will have catastrophic economic consequences at the very least.

The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.

This is totally irrelevant. What matters is whether humans can do something to reduce the warming, and only that they can do enough to avoid a tipping point at which catastrophe is inevitable. Yes, this implies that humans have something to do with the warming if one is arguing for reduced emissions as a solution, but who knows what percentage it is? If we are responsible for 30% of the warming, will reducing warming by 20% reduce the likelihood of catastrophic warming?

Re:So convince me, then

[gox]

For example, a sea level rise of one meter will cause hundreds of millions of people to have to relocate, at a cost of trillions of dollars.

Please take the time to understand what you're arguing against -- this is the main problem of the so-called "skeptics". They don't even know what they're skeptical of!

OK, help me find out what I'm skeptical of... Related to your comment and point #4 of OP:

What's the value of $(trillions of dollars) in the century time-scale? No, this is a serious question.

What do we know about the difficulties humanity will face, when the earth has warmed, 50-100 years from now? What are your predictions about the future technology and global economy? What is the degree of certainty here?

I'm not trying to make a point here, but it's also worth noting how pessimistic we've become, in just half a decade, from dreaming how to conquer the solar system to trying hard NOT to dream about the future of local habitation.

Re:So convince me, then

[medcalf]

You restated my point 4, that the warming will cause catastrophic effects. You are making an assumption that I understand nothing about this. That's as good a start as any, and I won't correct you. I only ask that you convince me that catastrophic AGW is correct, or at least holds a reasonably good chance of being correct. I even gave you the list of what you'd have to convince me of already broken out. All you have to do is explain the hypothesis and present the evidence and answer questions. "Shut up," which is the meat of your response, is not a useful substitute.

Re:So convince me, then

[Fareq]

I'm not a climate scientist.

I also am not a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm not convinced one way or the other. I suspect that sufficient evidence to reach a reasonable conclusion exists. I doubt we could "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" one way or the other -- we seem to understand too little still -- but we could probably make a fairly convincing statement. Unfortunately, bad political motivations on both sides (environmental extremism on one side, and drill, baby, drill [for lack of a better name] on the other side) for the evidence to be clearly and accurately portrayed. Most [vocal] players in this space are partisans and not scientists (even if they are "scientists" if they are partisans then they are not doing "science")

But, I have a rough explanation of the answer to one of your questions.

> How, specifically, do we know this?

Those graphs of global mean temperature that you've seen bandied about? Well, the temperature data come from a variety of sources.

We have temperature data in some areas that go back to 1850-1880. The number of weather stations and the accuracy of the measurements have improved in the last 160 years, but we have direct measurements for this period. This is called the "instrumental period." It is probably pretty safe to assume that, for measurements taken from the same weather station, the data are sufficiently accurate measurements of temperature at that station.

Any records that you see from before 1850-1880 are proxies. We have found several data sources that we have data for (or can measure today) that appear to be reasonable proxies for temperature in an area. Not being a climate scientist or expert in this area, I can't tell you whether they are highly accurate proxies or not. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on that. I'm not saying that they are not accurate. I have no information, and I haven't seen any significant evidence one way or the other.

According to Wikipedia, sources such as ice cores, tree-ring widths, borehole temperatures and others are providing proxy temperature data for about the last 2000 years in the northern hemisphere, and a briefer period in the southern hemisphere and the tropics. These records are at least qualitatively backed by human history records... basically, human writings that survive today that in some way mention the weather or climate of a given region at a given time. These records are generally considered accurate only to annual averages.

Temperature records from 2000 years ago to roughly 800,000 years ago are estimated based on measurements from antarctic ice cores. These records do not provide detail about short time frames... measurements using these refer to periods of time in kiloyears. Presumably, they are believed to provide a reconstruction of temperature with some degree of accuracy over wide swaths of time.

Beyond 800,000 years? dunno. There is a graph out there of the last 5 million years. I have no idea what backs it.

Unfortunately, these different sources are generally drawn onto a single graph with only one line. Probably because this graph has 2 useful properties
(i) it is easily read by people with no scientific background whatsoever and
(ii) it visually represents the desired outcome (showing that the earth is warming faster than ever before)

A more honest graph that used the ice cores, for example, would run all the way from 800 kyr ago to today using only the proxy data from the ice core. Then another, separate graph (or line on the same graph) showing data from 2000 years ago to today using only tree-ring-width data, and then finally a third line from 1850ish to today using only temperature data measured from weather stations that have been in continuous operation for that time -- and ideally using only stations that are in geographic areas that have not been changed substantially (the whole "urban heat island" thing).

Incidentally, if any of you out there are in possession of such a graph and can back up its sources (or provide me links to raw data that backs up those sources) I'd be interested in looking at them. It wouldn't, by itself, convince me... but it'd help a lot.

Re:So convince me, then

[Fareq]

I am worried about this too.

It seems that, as a people, we've decided to be weak and powerless. In other words, to die. Just watch our movies and television.

We no longer have awesome epics of humanity going out to the stars and doing great things. We have epic movies about how humanity's presence on foreign worlds is a scourge. Practically every movie that shows the future of earth shows a brown, dead planet that humans have wrecked so badly that nothing (except cockroaches and cute, lovable, garbage-smashing robots) can survive in.

This scares me way more than the possibility that the sea might rise a few feet over the next 100 years.

Re:So convince me, then

[NeutronCowboy]

Alright.... let me start with your corollaries.

The temperature of the earth is warming over time.

Correct. Specifically, the global average is going up over at least annual periods, and generally decadal periods.

The amount of this warming is unprecedented.

Incorrect. How warm it has been in the past is irrelevant to whether the earth is getting warmer right now. That's only a data collection issue, not a theory issue.

The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.

Not quite. The concern is that the warming will continue past the point where short-term feedback mechanisms can correct it - things like seasonal rainfalls, ocean currents, etc. Politicians specifically are only marginally interested in whether there's a 50000 year cycle that can correct the current temperature increase.

The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.

Define catastrophic. Was Katrina catastrophic? Seems like it was. And yet, not much actually happened. Is general population migration catastrophic? Is the wholesale change of a populations way of life catastrophic? To some, it is. Generally, it is to the people affected by it.

The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.

Sort of. I'd put it as "human activity has a significant impact on warming".

Right now, I'm looking at two largely correct corollaries, one irrelevant one, one that depends on where you are located, and one that is somewhat misleading. There's plenty of evidence for corollary one, models that predict the third one, regions that demonstrate the impact of localized changes in precipitation for the fourth one, and plenty of evidence for the fifth one.

Now to your questions.

What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?

The question is wrong, because as is it has no answer. The earth has no optimum temperature (unless you count the one that allows for rock to stabilize and not become an ionized plasma). What you want to know is what the optimum temperature range is for human habitation. As you can see by the current population distribution, it is quite wide, which could lead to the assumption that the optimum temperature range for human habitation is just as wide. That's incorrect. If you drop an Inuit into the Brazilian jungle, a Massai into the Midwest, or a Midwestern farmer into the Alps, they will die very quickly. See for example the pilgrims who first arrived in North America: they nearly died from starvation, even though the temperatures weren't that much different from what they were used to.

As a result, the answer to that question is: exactly the one that you have right now around you. Civilizations have adapted to work in their current environment. Change that only a bit, and the impact on the people can be devastating.

When has it been at that temperature in the past?

See above for why this question doesn't give you a useful answer.

Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?

Most decidedly. However, you don't want to go through the change again.

How, specifically, do we know this?

Historical records of both temperatures (inferred and directly recorded), and of historical records that chronicle the result of dramatic temperature changes.

In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?

It's a good question. In general, it is understood to be the yearly average of multiple points across the globe, preferably along all latitudes and longitudes. But yes, temperature measurements are difficult, and it requires a lot of work to make sure that datasets from one source can be used for comparison with other data sets.

Re:So convince me, then

[Fareq]

The reason that #4 precedes #5 is that if warming is, in fact, happening, and it will have either no significant consequences or on balance more positive consequences, then it is irrelevant that it is caused by humans, because it is not a bad thing.

Re:So convince me, then

[jd.schmidt]

I will try if you like

"The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
1. The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
2. The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
3. The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
4. The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly"
5. What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
6. When has it been at that temperature in the past?
7. Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
8. How, specifically, do we know this?
9. In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?"

Now as I answer these, remember the question I am really trying to answer is "Should there be any legal limit on the amount of CO2 from fossil fuels dumped into the atmosphere".

CO2 traps heat, CO2 is going up, Humans produce C02 from fossil fuels. So what is it you know that will prevent temperatures from going up?

1. Of course that is what the debate is about, will the earth warm over time and will it be unprecedented.
2. Same as one.
3. What feedback mechanisms? A block of iron sitting over a fairly constant fire can retain a fairly constant temp. I am not saying there are no such mechanisms, but you need you understand you are basically asserting there are some that will limit climate change. What is, how will it work, how much CO2 can it cope with?
4. All climate change costs money, even non catastrophic change. Moving farms isn't free, building houses to new standards isn't and so on. We much balance these costs with costs from limiting fossil fuels, but no change sound like an expensive plan. Further Catastrophic change is possible, how do you know we are not near it?
5. First, who cares if humans are mostly at fault, I wish to deal with disasters both natural and manmade. Also, we are taking fossil fuels out of the ground and therefore adding carbon to the carbon cycle, so again based on the first three things, why reason do you have to believe this isn't sufficient proof?
6. No idea, I know we have set up our activities to match the way they are now and change will cost us, even change that *may* be beneficial in some way. Do you have anything that will help show how the cost of the change will be in some way offset by future benefits?
7. No idea, and if you are following me at all you will understand why I don't consider this relevant.
8. Again, it doesn't matter.
9. I would define is as the average temperature of the air and water, in theory all of the energy divided by the mass. Of course you can also cause climate problems without changing temp.

I hope I have changed you mind, or at least opened it to engage in the conversation about how much CO2 we can add. But if I haven't, let me ask you the same question. On the face of it, adding CO2 to the atmosphere seems like it will raise temp over time. What do you know that can assure me we are in do danger and can burn fuels withoug limit?

Re:So convince me, then

[MikeBabcock]

No, you expect all sceptics are sceptical for the same reasons as though we have a hive-mind or something.

I have my doubts that humans are in fact causing an important percentage of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. As I understand it, those doubts are well-founded and very hard to prove one way or the other (timelines do not establish cause and effect, they establish coincidence. There's a massive difference).

I also have my doubts that any theory requiring the stifling of opposition is good science if it can't stand on its own.

All that said, if I'm wrong and there is a meter rise in sea levels in some drastically short period of time, I'm with the evolutionists: we shouldn't be living in easily flooded areas just because they're pretty and expect to survive.

Also noteworthy is that the costs of relocation have nothing to do with good science. That's just politics and/or economics. Whether it will cost money to adjust our society shouldn't influence our ability to do good science.

Re:So convince me, then

[Truth is life]

If the first is false, then there is no global warming. If the second is false, there is no way to prove the third, because we would have examples of the warming going past this point and then correcting. If the third is false, then we need take no action. If the fourth is false, then we need take no action. If the fifth is false, then any action we could take would likely be meaningless.

Your statements of the meaning of the second through fourth points are off. In actuality, (2) is known to have happened; it is known that (3) is not true (ie., that there are feedback cycles that can kick in to keep the Earth from turning into Venus); however even with (2) and (3) being that way (that there have been high temperatures in the past and that there are extreme feedback mechanisms in place) that doesn't mean there won't be catastrophic impacts. A comparison might be an air-conditioning system and a space heater. Suppose the air-conditioning system is much more powerful than the space heater. However, it takes a while to kick in. In the meantime, it will get awfully hot around the space heater.

What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?

This of course will depend on who you talk to. A polar bear will want it a lot colder than a tarantula, for instance. But for our purposes, it's fine to just consider human impacts. In that case, temperatures in the range of those we had when most of our current cities and population centers grew up would be best, as that would mean that none of them ought to end up frozen, flooded, or burning. So that means the average temperature in the period 1900-1950 or so.

When has it been at that temperature in the past?

Well, obviously 1900-1950. It has surely been at about that temperature at many other times, as we know that it's been hotter and colder than that at various points

Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?

Yep. Loads hotter in the Mesozoic or Carbonaceous. Colder in the Little Ice Age.

How, specifically, do we know this?

Well, direct measurements for the latter. Palaeontological evidence for the first two, such as the presence of huge tropical swamps and giant insects in the Carbonaceous. I'm not a geologist or palaeoclimatologist, though, so I can't really describe the methods by which they figure the temperatures of historical periods that well.

In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?

Well, like I said that's not my area of expertise. I'm perfectly willing to say that the people who DO have that as their area of expertise have doubtlessly thought about it a lot and come up with some good indicators, though, based on my experience in physics.

Re:So convince me, then

[Truth is life]

Hate to reply to my own posts, but oh well...

Also, just because the Earth has feedback cycles that will (probably) keep us from turning into Venus doesn't mean the new equilibrium is something we will like. In this case, it's like the a/c is being set by someone you can try to influence, but not yourself...if you do it wrong (pump loads of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere--note that people are worried about CH4, NO, etc., too--the really powerful stuff), then maybe the a/c will be set to 90 degrees (Fahrenheit) and you'll get to enjoy sweating it out inside the house...

Re:So convince me, then

[medcalf]

First, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I'm not a climate scientist.

I also am not a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm not convinced one way or the other. I suspect that sufficient evidence to reach a reasonable conclusion exists. I doubt we could "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" one way or the other -- we seem to understand too little still -- but we could probably make a fairly convincing statement. Unfortunately, bad political motivations on both sides (environmental extremism on one side, and drill, baby, drill [for lack of a better name] on the other side) for the evidence to be clearly and accurately portrayed. Most [vocal] players in this space are partisans and not scientists (even if they are "scientists" if they are partisans then they are not doing "science")

Actually, that's a fairly good summation of my position as well, as it happens.

But, I have a rough explanation of the answer to one of your questions.

> How, specifically, do we know this?

Those graphs of global mean temperature that you've seen bandied about? Well, the temperature data come from a variety of sources.

We have temperature data in some areas that go back to 1850-1880. The number of weather stations and the accuracy of the measurements have improved in the last 160 years, but we have direct measurements for this period. This is called the "instrumental period." It is probably pretty safe to assume that, for measurements taken from the same weather station, the data are sufficiently accurate measurements of temperature at that station.

Excellent. I have a few questions, then. What is the accuracy of the various thermometers? My understanding is that they are accurate to within anywhere from one degree to around five degrees celsius. Given that the changes hypothesized by the AGW crew are on the order of a degree or two celsius per century, are these thermometers even accurate enough to measure the temperature to the precision needed, within a reasonable margin of error? Moreover, my understanding is that attempts to survey the surface temperature stations have found that the records are often not well kept. For example, I have seen a report on a station in, IIRC, Australia, where the station was moved from a remote location to an airport, but the station ID wasn't changed. Given that the airport would be necessarily hotter than the remoter area (because of albedo from the concrete and such), it seems that this would make that station unreliable. Further, it's my understanding that the number of surface stations has been dropping, and moving towards the coast and inhabited areas, for the last fifty years. Finally, it's my understanding that many of the corrections introduced to remove the biases for such things have had the impact of making the temperature records consistently climb, even when the station has changed neither its location nor its equipment over time. These things make me rather suspicious that the temperature measured is reliable enough and accurate enough, and the corrections applied reasonably enough, to make any firm conclusion. (And note that this is just about the particular stations; I'm not addressing at the point the idea of how we go from that to a concept of global average temperature.)

Any records that you see from before 1850-1880 are proxies. We have found several data sources that we have data for (or can measure today) that appear to be reasonable proxies for temperature in an area. Not being a climate scientist or expert in this area, I can't tell you whether they are highly accurate proxies or not. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on that. I'm not saying that they are not accurate. I have no information, and I haven't seen any significant evidence one way or the other.

According to Wikipedia, sources such as ice cores, tree-ring widths, borehole temperatures and others are providing proxy temperatu

Re:So convince me, then

[zz5555]

"The amount of this warming is unprecedented."

This doesn't need to be true. I think it definitely has been warmer in the past, possibly very hot (but there was no life, so who cares?). And it could just be that the amount of warming isn't unprecedented yet. The current trend continues up and since there's no known mechanism for bringing it down in the near future, it seems we'll be getting a lot warmer.

"The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it."

This, too, doesn't need to be true. All that needs to be true is that the earth's feedback systems are too slow to correct it. At some point, we will stop adding massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. Either we voluntarily do so, or we run out of fossil fuels, or we all die - one of those will happen. Then the earth can take the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere. But the mechanisms that the earth uses to do this take thousands of years and we've released millions of years of stored carbon in just a few centuries. So it will take a while for the balance to be restored (unless we devise a way to speed it up).

"What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?"

I don't think this is important in the current debate. We know that humans have released large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere which has upset the balance. We also know that CO2 causes warming. Both of these are facts known because they've been measured (ie, there's no modeling involved). Where modeling gets involved is saying what will happen as we warm up more. As far as I can tell, that's the only debatable part of this - how hot will it get and what will be the consequences of that.

Re:So convince me, then

[bunratty]

You can read the Stern Review for a detailed look at the cost of dealing with the effects climate change vs. the cost of avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Go and educate yourself on the topics you're interested in. There's no way Slashdot comments could do justice to the vast research that has been done on the topic. It's almost like asking for an explanation of physics in a Slashdot thread. Inform yourself on the issues, making sure you first understand there's lots of misinformation on the Internet.

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree with you. Real scientists should be able to simply answer that, and for each counter question have an answer, until everyone gets an "ok it's true". If the fate of million of people, and/or the whole life on earth, depend on theses questions, it's mendatory to do something like that.

No, all we get is "it's happening faster than ever" based on data that for my point of view are totally unreliable. Temperature took just beside an air conditionner IS NOT the way to take temperature. And 0.79 C over 150 years, knowing a bit how things were dont 150 years ago, doesn't convince me a lot.

To convince me, all that has to be in front of me, with full analysis.

Example : Here is the zip file of all the temperature took from the same instrument at this location for the last 150 years. Here is the graph. Here is the average temperature raise.
This, for 8000 stations.

For these 8000 stations, Did they ever change the way to take temperature? Did they ever changed instrument? Was it in a small town and now in a middle of a 2 millions people city?

Is it possible that where we mesure temperature temperature did increase a bit but other places where we do not mesure, temperature decrease?

It is possible to make science as easy as 1+1 = 2, people must not think that only 10 people in the world can understand this. Yes some concept take more time to understand, but there is no way someone will convince me that if AGW is true it cannot be fully be prooven and made understandable for the average Joe.

Re:So convince me, then

[WeatherGod]

This is fairly rational, and thought-out, and it posits a well-testable set of conditions. To deal with your first question, one must define "optimal". There is a certain overall temperature that the planet must be at from a pure radiative balance point of view. It is a function of only the solar radiance, the distance of the planet from the sun, the size of the planet and its albedo. An atmosphere is just another layer of mass to account for on top of the surface.

If you mean 'ideal' in the sense of what is biologically sustainable, then you get into fun stuff involving dynamics and biology. Also keep in mind that very slow changes to the ideal temperature can still be sustainable if we can adapt. This is different from very rapid changes (same temperature change, but over shorter time, with no return to original temperatures), which can devastate wildlife and the foodchain, among other things.

Keep in mind that I have yet to talk about warming in particular, as the same is true if there is a cooling. The same is also true for any fundamental changes to a region's climate, for whatever reason. This is why the discussion "shifted" from one of just AGW, to Climate Change in general as the policy discussions apply equally in all cases, but I digress...

In regards to some of your other questions, yes, the temperature of the Earth has changed before for a variety of reasons. And so, some would argue that this situation is just a continuation of the natural variability. However, that still doesn't mean that one should not discuss adaption/mitigation policies because changes in the past has always been associated with significant changes to the biosphere. Are we as a species ready for that?

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally irrelevant. What matters is whether humans can do something to reduce the warming, and only that they can do enough to avoid a tipping point at which catastrophe is inevitable. Yes, this implies that humans have something to do with the warming if one is arguing for reduced emissions as a solution, but who knows what percentage it is? If we are responsible for 30% of the warming, will reducing warming by 20% reduce the likelihood of catastrophic warming?

So here's the real issue. REGARDLESS of the source of warming, it requires a change in human lifestyle: Massive expenditures on methods for combating rising sea levels, and figuring out how to grow crops despite increasing desertification.

Even if humans are not to blame, serious consequences follow. AGW deniers truly are climate deniers- they assume that because they attack the messenger, that the message is no longer valid. This isn't true, nor is it sane. If there is risk of catastrophic consequences, -the responsible thing to do is to plan accordingly, regardless of the particulars of the messenger.-

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

"It only matters if the temperature of the earth is warming through the timeframe that humanity has been settled throughout the globe ..."
I don't agree - even if there is long term cooling which simply isn't as much as it would have been without people, that is AGW. Otherwise, if you have a natural temperature cycle on which human effects are overlaid, and human impact starts at the top of the cycle, you may erroneously attribute the cyclic cooling to human influence. And if you aren't going to try to parse out which part is human-generated then why are we concerned with the anthropogenic warming?

Maybe I agree with you on this: I have no doubt the biosphere as a whole will survive global warming (whether you think it's anthropogenic or not is really academic - what is not academic is how much impact we can have on it). I am more skeptical that global warming will leave things we humans (particularly in our modern age) value wholly intact, or that there is no difference we can make which would be worth it.

Fully agree that the question of "blame" is only tangentially important, insofar as the question of causes is tied up with what we can do.

Re:So convince me, then

[Reservoir Penguin]

I read the section on effects from the quoted wiki article. Nowhere I saw anything about catastrophic consequences. And no I do not consider sinking of Tivalu or even entire Micronesia and relocation of 11 million people in Bangladesh as catastrophic for the entire human civilization.

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how you got that out of the response... nor do I see the need to satisfy all your various stipulations for how to prove global warming worth worrying about, since many of them seem arbitrary and drawn to reach a certain conclusion. To me the concern over AGW is straightforward and legitimate and not dishonest or conspiratorial and I think I can appreciate this without having to appeal to any abstruse reasoning.

To start: the bottom line is really whether what we do in the next (say) 50 years will have a significant negative impact on things we (as humans, as people of our modern age) value. Any significant negative impact on any things we value would do.

Since we know a little about the world, and about effects of temperatures being higher than they otherwise might be, we can work our way to reasonable and conservative forecasts of what the effects would be of any given temperature increase. The details will differ with assumptions and methods, but reasonable forecasts do not have infinite range. Extreme examples to illustrate this point: if temperature stays the same, the oceans do not freeze. If temperatures increase greatly, sea levels rise. Yearly ice retreats have less impact on polar ecosystems than permanent ones, and a doubled rate of temperature increase would have bigger economic and sociopolitical effects than a normal rate of increase.

We can also pretty reasonably (though again with individual variation) say something about how unpleasant, unacceptable or "catastrophic" effects would have. As an extreme example to show this principle: if mean temperature rose by 100 degrees F, a few people will disagree but most of us would say that humanity (not to mention civilization as we know it) would be boned in all kinds of ways.

Set quibbling aside about all but the most conservative forecasts and all but the most marginal evaluations of these forecasts. What remains is how much increase we stand to create by taking course A over course B (choose your favorite values for A and B). Of course we aren't 100% sure - but if we proposed dropping a hammer or a piano on someone's head, it would mean nothing to point out that there was a spread in foreseeable outcomes. Also, many values of A and B have no bearing here - legality of marijuana, whether women work in the kitchen probably have no impact, modifying the albedo of the earth's surface has some, and things like deforestation and fossil fuel burning are undeniably among the most relevant.

So we naturally have a strong interest in the temperature effects of things like deforestation and fossil fuel burning, which are things we can estimate reasonably well, and which also (really just by-the-way, honestly - I do not believe in eco-holiness) are things we have some control over at a policy level and at a social level. And which we may have some interest in affecting, insofar as these things do increase temperatures relative to where they'd otherwise be, and we already very reasonably forecasted a significant possibility of being in some way collectively boned.

I hope you agree that there's no point arguing e.g. that sea levels would not rise at significantly higher temperatures, or that nobody should care if sea levels do rise by x feet, or that we shouldn't curtail fossil fuel burning if it's going to have an effect which increases the chances of events which most people agree would constitute us being moderately to severely boned.

Rather, what needs inspection are the basically physical mechanisms linking stuff we have control over, to temperature. Take CO2: first, can we neutrally clarify the effects of CO2 and can we apply that knowledge together with our knowledge of earth's atmosphere to get a reasonable picture of how CO2 increments affect temperature? If we do this, we are using a model. This is perfectly respectable activity, and it is perfectly respectable if many of us make models and if our assumptions vary within reason. Second, how much CO2 can we conservatively estimate that we will dump given policy

Re:So convince me, then

[medcalf]

I was attempting to break down the major elements of the AGW claim, and order them such that proving the progression proves the hypothesis. You are welcome to submit a different set of claims and breakdown.

Re:So convince me, then

[gox]

It might sound surprising, but I _know_ I could go and read the Stern Review. Considering how old it is, I'd be surprised if most people here haven't read parts of it, and its criticisms. OTOH, it's hard to find it conclusive, at least regarding the points I mentioned. I'd be inclined to go and read it thoroughly, but it's where some heuristics kicks in, causing me to believe that I'd be more harshly criticized and accused of being ignorant if I did criticize specific points in that report.

Therefore, I think the main dispute here is about heuristics, more than misinformation. Also, it's not about the Internet. Let me give you an example... I mostly encounter the "go and read a book" argument when discussing about religion, Marxism or nationalism. It's like "go and read Das Kapital!"; "Erm, yeah, I /have/ read it, and here's the quote supporting what I had said."; "You ignorant bastard, it's more complicated than you think. You have to read thousands of more pages and educate yourself!"; and so on... There's a pattern there, so I inevitably match it to your reply. These heuristics we base on prior experience can be wrong, but it's how we live our lives. On the other side of the picture, there are people already convinced, for whom spending more time digging the old issues is a waste of time. From this, IMO, it's obvious that these people shouldn't reply to these threads.

Also, sorry, but this doesn't happen when you ask for an "explanation of physics" on Slashdot... Or anywhere... At least if you're not questioning a well-established doctrine. Even then it's rare.

Re:So convince me, then

[Xyrus]

The temperature of the earth is warming over time.

It is. If you can't find a historical temperature graph (or better yet, the IPCC report) then you haven't tried.

The amount of this warming is unprecedented.

Again, this is in the IPCC assessment. However, you need to be more careful with you qualifiers. There may have been times in the past where, perhaps, the temperature has risen more quickly. But hat is important is whether or not it has happened in modern times. Rapid climate changes have never bode well for any creatures alive at the time they happened, including humans.

The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.

Irrelevant. The Earth does not "correct". The climate will stabilize at some point, and life will eventually adapt to the new norm. Typically this process takes hundreds to thousands of years. In the intervening period, a lot of bad things happen to life forms that can not adapt, and even to those that can.

The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.

There is already debate whether or not we are in a mass die-off period, mainly as a result of human activities. However, life will continue anyway. We have not yet poisoned the Earth to the point where there will be catastrophic effects on all life.

There will be consequences to warmer temperatures, both beneficial an not. For example, one scenario is a change in weather patterns over the midwest of the US, making it hotter and drier. If that were to occur it would have a very large impact on our food production capabilities. Rising sea levels would affect a large number of coastal cities. So on a so forth. These have been discussed at length and can be found in the IPCC report as well as numerous research papers and articles. You can't tell me you can' find any of this with google.

If you're thinking the end of human civilization, no that is not a given result. If wars break out as a result, then perhaps but the main effects are going to be related to human enterprises the depend on a fairly known and well behaved climate.

The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.

This is fairly well established. Again, google will turn up tons of sources for this.

What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?

Irrelevant. Earth has no "optimum" temperature. Nor does life in general. Life adapts to whatever changes happen (usually through adaptation or dying off). Human civilization however depends on a certain climate (not just temperature). If this deviates too strongly or to quickly than it can adversely impact civilization. Oh we'll still be around, but there would be a cost.

When has it been at that temperature in the past?

Irrelevant. Life adapted optimally to climates in the past, as they continue to adapt to climate now. The problem happens when things change to dramatically and to quickly.

Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?

Again, irrelevant. Life adapts to whatever is the current climate.

How, specifically, do we know this?

Google paleoclimatology. There's quite a wealth of information on the subject.

In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?

Ah. It seems you don't have much background in the subject material.

You can either get some books on climatology in general or you do some online research. Once you get fundamental understanding of the basic concepts you should be able to formulate some better questions. So far there is nothing you have asked that hasn't already been addressed and answered many times over.

~X~

Re:So convince me, then

[Anonymous Coward]

The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.

The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.

Also, this is one of the few points you listed that is pretty well proven.

Actually, both of these points are entirely speculative. They are based on computer models and computer models can be made to say anything. But, unless there is an impending catastrophe, there really is no reason to let a handful of unaccountable politicians and scam artists run the world, is there? Quit being a tool and a fool. That which you call "pretty well proven" is nothing more than an assertion by men who have proven themselves to be dishonest and self-interested.

Re:So convince me, then

[riverat1]

When talking about thermometer accuracy in regards to temperature trends the absolute accuracy doesn't matter so much as the repeatable accuracy. In other words the thermometer gives the same reading for a particular temperature all of the time. Then, even if it's not reading the correct absolute temperature it still accurately shows temperature differences.

Climate Deniers?

[frist]

So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem. Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier". The holocaust was undeniably real - because there are still some living eye witnesses, photographs, original videos, documents etc. that clearly prove that it happened. What does it mean to be a "climate denier"? No one denies there is "climate". For too long people who challenged the "science" behind global warming were shouted down and ridiculed by their "peers". Now for a little bit, the shoe is on the other foot, and they don't like it a bit. BTW - CFL bulbs are a perfect example of why this type of "science" really has to be tried before accepted, and not pitch a fit if it is challenged - http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/lighting/cfls/downloads/CFL_Cleanup_and_Disposal.pdf Just think about that - what about places where there is no window, where the only ventilation is forced air. Give me an incandescent bulb anyday. If it breaks, worst you worry about is a cut. When it burns out, you can safely toss it w/out worry about what its components will do to the environment or your local groundwater. Not to mention that the CFLs do not last anywhere as long as promised if you don't follow their optimal usage pattern (leave on for at least 15 mins, etc.) Certainly there are places where they are appropriate, but "environmentalists" pushing them down everyone's throat, and corporate greed (Walmart) jumping on the green bandwagon and being dishonest with people - you wonder why people with a brain are skeptical? If they posted the cleanup instructions next to the bulbs on the shelf, would people still be buying these?

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Cyberax]

"The holocaust was undeniably real"

Nope.

"because there are still some living eye witnesses"

Worldwide Jew conspiracy.

"photographs"

Faked.

"original videos"

Staged.

"documents"

Faked and/or misrepresented.

"etc. that clearly prove that it happened."

Hah! You are sheeple if you believe in that crap. Hail Halliburton!

Re:Climate Deniers?

[rastoboy29]

While I agree that the label "denailist" is supremely unconstructive, it's a bit silly to trust science to build the airplane you're riding in at 30k feet but not listen to scientists when they tell you why the earth is warming and that it might be very unhealthy for us.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Attila Dimedici]

The reason that regular incandescent bulds were "outlawed" was because big companies couldn't make enough money off of them. By forcing ordinary incandescent bulbs (whose patents have all expired) off the market, companies are able to charge more for bulbs that they have patents on. Additionally, they are able to take light bulbs out of the pure commodity market, allowing them to capture more profit. As usual, environmentalism is just an excuse to limit people's choices.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Virak]

So the theory of anthropogenic global warming is false because you don't like a particular lightbulb technology? You're not a person who has a brain who's just being skeptical, you're a person with no understanding of any of the relevant issues who is lumping scientists with mountains of solid evidence and laymen you are ideologically opposed together as though they were identical.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[IICV]

So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem. Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier".

Cite one. Please, I beg you. Cite one scientist with a reasonable publication record who "challenge[s] the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis". Don't just leave statements like this hanging there in the breeze - this is the Internet, and with a quick copy, paste and a href= you too can create a link to support your claim!

I bet you that whoever you cite has either a terrible publication record or almost no background in anything like climatology. If they have both of those, then I bet that their "challenges" are nothing of the sort - they probably disagree on the magnitude of global warming, not the fact of it.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Abcd1234]

So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers"

No, some of those are skeptics (though, alas, not all).

People who claim there is no science supporting the idea that CO2 leads to global warming, or claim global warming can be entirely explained by solar forcing, or claim the last ten years have cooled despite all evidence to the contrary, or claim that an inability to predict weather translates to an inability to predict climate, or claim that global warming will really be a good thing so don't worry about it, or...

Well, I could go on. Those people are deniers. Why? Because they parrot the same stupid, tired, debunked arguments over and over and over again, as loud as they can, while ignoring any evidence that they are actually entirely wrong. These people do nothing to further the discourse on the topic. They aren't performing novel research. They aren't making discoveries that further our knowledge of climate. They aren't contributing anything of value. They're simply yelling as loud as they can, as long as they can, while hoping to drown out the real facts.

Those people are deniers.

Now, perhaps that describes you. If that's the case, well, sorry buddy, I hate to break it to you, but you're a global warming denier.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point. Tying global climate warming change skeptics to the holocaust is unproductive and antagonizing. Science doesn't need to belittle people who disagree, they'll become aware of that status soon enough if the evidence is compelling enough.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Abcd1234]

Science doesn't need to belittle people who disagree,

But that's the problem. They don't "disagree". They deny. Faced with plain, simple facts, they ignore them and simply yell louder. To compare these people to holocaust deniers is, granted, intentionally provocative, but it's also unfortunately very apt. Why? Because, in both cases, we have groups of people who flat out deny reality in the face of a wealth of information which contradicts their beliefs.

Furthermore, I disagree that using such a label is "unproductive". In my opinion, these people need to be engaged and, yes, marginalized, because they've been allowed to set the tone and agenda for *far* too long.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[tmosley]

It's silly to trust the science that built the ships that take you across the Atlantic, but not to listen to the doctors who tell you that your headache is being caused by bad humors that must be drained by way of bloodletting.

You're using a logical fallacy that assumes a uniform scientific progression in all fields at the same time, which is certainly not the case. For example, we put a man on the moon, but we can't cure the common cold. We can build a computer that makes an absurdly high number of calculations per second, but we can't make tires that last longer than 6 years. Etc.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[khallow]

But that's the problem. They don't "disagree". They deny. Faced with plain, simple facts, they ignore them and simply yell louder.

{{citation needed}}

Re:Climate Deniers?

[khallow]

I bet you that whoever you cite has either a terrible publication record or almost no background in anything like climatology.

in case you haven't noticed, the original poster is claiming that the culture in climatology prevents such circumstances from happening. So this test would not distinguish between his claim and yours.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[IICV]

How can you distinguish between "the culture in climatology prevents people from publishing evidence against AGW" and "the majority of data is consistent with AGW"?

Oh right, because if anyone had actual evidence against AGW they would publish it. The idea that science is somehow cliquish to the point of quashing dissenting data is weird and I have seen no evidence for it. Yes, scientists will try to keep poorly-written papers from being published - it's a matter of pride at that point, because if your field gets flooded with shit its reputation will go down the drain. Hell, the journals go out of their way to publish dissenting data - just imagine the prestige of being the one journal that published the truth about AGW.

The problem is that no such data can be found in reality, and believe me people are trying.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[khallow]

The idea that science is somehow cliquish to the point of quashing dissenting data is weird and I have seen no evidence for it.

Climatology is not equivalent to generic science. We don't have to have the entirety of science compromised. Keep in mind several factors that make climatology different from say astrophysics. First, there are numerous powerful political bodies controlling a lot of research in climatology (for example, the UK MET, the executive branch of the EU (whatever that is called), NASA's Earth Sciences division, and the NOAA), a few organizations control the aggregation of paleoclimate data into a global temperature estimate. Two of these groups are known problems, the CRU in the UK and James Hansen's GISS group in NASA, and finally the high level politicization of climate research by the IPCC controls what the "decision makers" hear (or perhaps want to hear). I frankly think there's plenty of power available to squash contrary evidence.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem.

Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier". The holocaust was undeniably real - because there are still some living eye witnesses, photographs, original videos, documents etc. that clearly prove that it happened.

What does it mean to be a "climate denier"? No one denies there is "climate".

I'd call your argument a straw man, but you obviously didn't bother to RTFA! No one is claiming there are people denying there is a climate. This is something a normally intelligent being should understand, regardless of the fact that there's a typo in the summary and not in TFA!

I'd get it if you'd been moderated as "Funny", but the fact that someone would regard your lack of common sense as "Insightful" is just scary!

Re:Climate Deniers?

[rastoboy29]

No, I'm not.  I'm saying it's silly not to listen to them.

Re:Climate Deniers?

[NonSequor]

So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem. Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier".

Cite one. Please, I beg you. Cite one scientist with a reasonable publication record who "challenge[s] the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis". Don't just leave statements like this hanging there in the breeze - this is the Internet, and with a quick copy, paste and a href= you too can create a link to support your claim!

I bet you that whoever you cite has either a terrible publication record or almost no background in anything like climatology. If they have both of those, then I bet that their "challenges" are nothing of the sort - they probably disagree on the magnitude of global warming, not the fact of it.

Take a look at this:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/towards_rebuilding_trust.html

I'm not aware of any statements she's made about the magnitude of global warming, but she is expressing concerns that the IPCC is being warped by political and sociological pressures within the climate science community. I can't find where she said it (somewhere among the links in the first page), but she specifically mentions concerns about pressures to publish research that conforms to the IPCC established narrative.

Here's her CV:
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currycv.html

Re:Bad analogy

[Obfuscant]

Since it has not yet happened, it can be tested.

That's a flaw in the logic that puts the whole issue into the political arena to start with.

There is no control group, no chance to compare the results with and without the influence of whatever it is you want to claim is causing the warming. The warming may be caused by X, but you'll never be able to prove it because you don't have a control that lacks X. You may think the warming is caused by Y, but you won't be able to prove that because you have a system with both X and Y.

Today we have people who claim X is the cause, who try shouting down and insulting those who think Y is the cause, thinking that the louder they shout and the more they complain about those "knuckle-dragger Y believers" or "those nutball propagandists with their Y theory" the more X will be proven correct.

Science is not just correlation, it is causation. "We gave 100 people pink pills with midichlorians in them and they lived." In climate science, this would prove that little pink pills with midichlorians caused those people to live. In order to reach that conclusion, you have to have 100 people who you didn't give the pills to and they had to die in order to come close to causation and not just correlation. That's why scientific drug studies have control groups who get "pink pills" without midichlorians along with the ones who get the midichlorianated pink pills.

So no, just because it "hasn't happened yet" doesn't mean it can be tested.

hmm

[buddyglass]

Is it worth mentioning that the National Academy of Sciences has on the order of 2100 members, of which 255 were willing to sign this letter?

Re:hmm

[tgibbs]

Over 10% in such a short period of time? That's pretty impressive. Of course, virtually every major scientific society in the world has previously come out in support of climate science and concerns about global warming

Re:hmm

[nickdwaters]

No. It means that the remainder either a) were unavailable / busy, b) not willing to stick their necks out due to political reasons, most likely having to deal with their uppers.

Re:hmm

[blueg3]

Is it worth mentioning that any scientist should know that "on the order of" refers to, essentially, the logarithm of a number and, as such, there is no reason to be so specific as "2100". You might as well say "on the order of 1000".

Re:hmm

[WelshRarebit]

It is also worth mentioning that alpha-dog libertarian anti-environmentalist and the chief editor of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer, now subscribes to AGW. In his own words:

Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

Re:hmm

[sl149q]

And, ahem, absolutely, not even one, respectable scientist, anywhere, has come out and challenged some of the assumptions or ethics of the IPCC and Climategate mob.

Quoting Judith Curry: "When I first read the [Oxburgh] report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren't any."

See here: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/

Its simply not science if it can't be replicated elsewhere.

Re:hmm

[WeatherGod]

In addition, many members are not involved in the currently impacted fields and might not care enough to be bothered. Heck, they may have never even been approached on the matter.

Re:hmm

[tgibbs]

And, ahem, absolutely, not even one, respectable scientist, anywhere, has come out and challenged some of the assumptions or ethics of the IPCC and Climategate mob.

Oh, scientists are a pretty contrary lot. You can probably find one or two who disagree about pretty much anything, no matter how well established. However, Dr. Curry seems to be mainly disagreeing with how the report was presented, rather than its conclusions, since she states "I don’t disagree with their conclusion about finding no evidence of scientific misconduct: I haven’t seen any evidence of plagiarism or fabrication/falsification of data by the CRU scientists. "

Re:hmm

[tmosley]

Prior to the scandal. I'd like to see if they could muster the same numbers today. I'd bet a shiny penny that they couldn't.

Re:hmm

[tgibbs]

Prior to the scandal. I'd like to see if they could muster the same numbers today. I'd bet a shiny penny that they couldn't.

Scientists tend to be less susceptible to media hysteria than the general public. Many have seen their own work misrepresented in the press. Also, scientists do not find anything particularly shocking about a scientist getting angry and saying some dumb things in an email--they've seen it happen live. They are more likely to pay attention to the fact that two separate review panels have already concluded that there is no evidence of falsification of data on the part of Jones or CRU. And CRU is just one of many research groups that have studied climate change, and other groups have replicated their major findings. Even if there had turned out to be some substance to the accusations, it would have little influence on scientists' opinions regarding the reality of AGW, which are based upon the entire body of data, not a single lab or personality.

Re:hmm

[TheTurtlesMoves]

But they are not climatologist. I was told if they are not a climatologist i should not listen to them about climate science. Now your telling me i should listen to them only when they support a particular view point?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a rather poisonous statement--

I also support climate science, and am quite concerned about global warming.

What I am skeptical of, are the predictions of certain politically affiliated research groups; and their claims of the weight of anthropogenic carbon emissions VS other forms of carbon emission.

Additionally, that skepticism is heightened even further by the proposed "Solutions" to the carbon dioxide problem. (No denying it, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rising over time *IS* something to be concerned about.) Solutions like "Lets pump it into the ground under intense pressure!"[under which conditions it becomes a chemical solvent, and can help to bring otherwise insoluble contaminants up to the surface when it eventually shatters the bedrock that is retaining it-- look into the recent Hutchinson Kansas natural gas storage leak. The gas traveled several miles through microfissures in the bedrock before finding an exit point, and then venting violently.]

Better solutions would be "How can we rarefy carbon dioxide into elemental carbon and oxygen prior to sequestration?", because elemental carbon is inert, and stable over geological time periods.--- Yet I keep reading all these widely publicised "Lets bury it in a big tank in the ground!" proposals, with a veritable FAMINE of the latter. Not even research grant proposals!

Taken all together, I am very skeptical of the CURRENT TRENDS in climate research, but very much approve of, and support the idea of climate research.

Two very different kettles of fish.

Re:hmm

[tmosley]

I am a scientist, and I found the abuse of the peer review system to be an unforgivable sin. These people should be stripped of their PhDs.

Re:hmm

[tgibbs]

But they are not climatologist. I was told if they are not a climatologist i should not listen to them about climate science. Now your telling me i should listen to them only when they support a particular view point?

Climatologists are certainly the most qualified to evaluate climate science, and the notion that virtually all climate scientists in the world are engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up fatal flaws in the current climate models in order to promote a political agenda is more than a little nuts.

Nevertheless, there are powerful and wealthy interests that stand to gain by convincing people that that is what is happening, and successful public relations strategies designed to create public doubt about the scientific consensus, originally developed by tobacco companies to distract the public from the evidence linking smoking and cancer, continue to be used today (indeed, some of the same spokesmen are involved). These people are expert at crafting plausible-sounding arguments designed to mislead nonscientists.

Other scientists, while not having the same level of knowledge of the details of climate science as actual climate scientists, do understand the nature of scientific evidence and how to evaluate it, and are qualified to distinguish real science from the sort of plausible-sounding bullshit that is used to mislead the general public. In particular, the members of the US National Academy of Sciences, and similar Academies of other nations, are the most experienced and critical scientists in the world, people who have actually made major scientific discoveries. So if you want somebody with no vested interest either for or against climate change research, and with the general competence to evaluate the evidence and judge whether the work in a particular field is legitimate or pseudoscience, these are the people to ask.

Re:hmm

[tgibbs]

I am a scientist, and I found the abuse of the peer review system to be an unforgivable sin. These people should be stripped of their PhDs.

  A Ph.D. is a record of educational achievement, not some sort of professional license that can be taken away for bad behavior, even criminal behavior (of which none is in evidence, aside from theft of emails). I find it difficult that to believe than an actual scientist would talk about "stripping somebody of their Ph.D." But perhaps you were just reacting emotionally, and didn't mean it seriously. People do this, sometimes. It is likely that many of the email comments that have been interpreted as "abuse of the peer review system" were also words written in anger and not meant seriously. After all, the papers being discussed were in fact published, and even made it into the IPCC report. Which may be why two separate review panels have failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am a scientist, and I found the abuse of the peer review system to be an unforgivable sin."

What abuse of the peer review system? If you really consider what happened in this case to be abuse then I don't know how you can function in a scientific capacity. Because you have experienced it, benefited from it and almost certainly dished it out at one point in time in your career as a scientist. You may not realize it or want to admit it-cognitive dissonance is powerful.

Re:hmm

[buddyglass]

Worth mentioning that I never claimed to be a scientist?

"On the order of" is a frequently used English idiom meaning "approximately". It need not necessarily refer to orders of magnitude.

Re:hmm

[TheTurtlesMoves]

..and are qualified to distinguish real science from the sort of plausible-sounding bullshit that

Unless folks here disagree with the statement. Then they are not climatologist and should be ignored.

But Al Gore, now he is special. How much does he make from carbon credit trading again?

And here's an open letter back

[Anonymous Coward]

from Borepatch:

Dear Really Smart Scientists,

Your letter to The Guardian is an example of how a bunch of really smart people (11 Nobel Laureates!) can be really dumb. In fact, it is a one-page summary of everything that is wrong with climate science today. For example, you say:

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

The first problem here is that you not too subtly imply that anyone who doesn't agree with your climate science predictions must be some sort of Bible literalist. You know how poisonous the current debate is, that's what your letter is complaining about. You're either part of the problem or part of the solution, dudes.

But the big, huge hairy problem is that there's quite a large set of data that falsifies your man-is-causing-the-change hypothesis. As a public service, let me point out a few:

The climate changed dramatically in pre-industrial times, most notably in the Medieval Warm Period (ca 800-1300 AD). There's quite a lot of time spent in the climate science community poo-pooing this MWP as "only European in scope", despite all sorts of data from China and the Indian Ocean (to name only two) that show it was world wide in scope.

Even worse, the MWP was accepted as a fact before climate science became so politicized (see the 1990 IPCC AR1 report). Only when Michael Mann's bogus "Hockey Stick" chart (you know - the one generated by his code, that creates Hockey Stick shaped graphs from even random data), combined with a few years of unusually warm weather in the late 1990s (translation: "weather is not climate") combined with a hundred billion dollars in government funding looking for a problem to hang their Cap-and-Trade program on - only then did we start hearing revisionism. An Inconvient Truth, perhaps?

But it gets worse. The current Climate O' Doom(TM) warming model requires four supporting assumptions, or it collapses: the current temperatures are unprecedented (thus the attacks on the MWP), the recent rate of change is unprecedented; the magnitude of the recent change is unprecedented; and the current rate of change is accelerating. It appears that at least three of these have been falsified (Vinther, et al., Nature, 461, 385).

Say what you will, but to lump some quite shoddy climate model printouts in with our understanding of the age of the solar system is to engage in precisely what you are complaining about:

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.

Yup, that's the suspicion that we have of the lot of you. It doesn't help that, in addition to trying to plow under any data that falsifies your pet hypothesis, you engage not in sober scientific discussion (especially of the uncertainties), but rather shriek oh noez thermageddon! Quite handy for a certain set of politicians, right there.

We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.

Fortunately, the public isn't buying it. It seems that they have looked at the $50 Trillion cost of the proposed "solution", looked at what's been the snowiest decade ever recorded, and are saying "no thanks." And in all honesty, they

Human Nature

[mkiwi]

One of the main problems in all of this is human nature.

Climate change is a real problem, but many people are trying to profit off of that problem. There's a lot of money changing hands here, and most of the corporations that will stand to benefit or be destroyed really don't care about the science. They want their money. Everyone on slashdot knows just how much a corporation can be trusted to do the right thing.

Thus, there is an inherent lack of trust among some people who, wrongly, don't think anything is happening. The green movement is so highly politicized that it loses credibility in the eyes of many, since we all know politicians are the most credible people we know.

My analogy for the climate change problem is that of parents telling their little kid to eat their spinach. The parents know the spinach is good for the kid, the kid knows it too, but out of spite for his parents the kid avoids eating the spinach at all costs.

Is it a logical position? No. Is it human? Yes.

Re:Human Nature

[YttriumOxide]

I completely agree with your observation that the problem here is human nature - we aren't very good at accepting (or passing around) information without bias. This therefore taints things in both directions and ends up with ridiculous schisms. The money just makes it that much worse since in our society money is such a powerful social force.

My analogy for the climate change problem is that of parents telling their little kid to eat their spinach. The parents know the spinach is good for the kid, the kid knows it too, but out of spite for his parents the kid avoids eating the spinach at all costs.

Your analogy fits up to the point where you give the reason... I don't think kids refuse to eat their spinach "out of spite for their parents"... they do it because they don't consider the long term value to be worth the short term displeasure. It's similar to why a smoker (such as myself) continues to smoke while knowing all the risks. I know it's extremely harmful for me and is quite likely to kill me in an extraordinarily unpleasant way at some point in my future. However, quitting smoking is a very unpleasant experience also, and I therefore avoid giving up, which is really only avoiding the immediate and short term "very unpleasant experience", and likely replacing it with a later and permanent "extraordinarily unpleasant experience" (i.e. gruesome and painful dying, followed by being permanently dead), but I still can't convince myself to do it.

Lack of Falsifiability

[TheNarrator]

Climate Science's real problem is lack of falsifiability.

If all of a sudden, hundreds of completely bizarre species of creatures of a rather large size (say the size of small mammals or bigger) with totally novel biology (say silicon based) and adapted well to earth suddenly appeared in the middle of central park in New York City, one might start to doubt the theory that all life on earth evolved from one-celled organisms, at least on this planet. This has obviously not happened, but it would disprove the theory of evolution.

If one discovered galaxies that were not red-shifting and were instead accelerating in all sorts of random vector paths, one might doubt the big bang theory.

On the other hand, If the temperature goes up, or down, if there is more rain, or less rain, more hurricanes, or less hurricanes, glaciers get bigger or smaller, see ice expands or contracts, droughts or floods, it's all evidence for global warming! If we entered a new ice age or a new warm period everything and anything is proof of global warming! Global warming can not be disproven!

In the end, the people who have to believe in global warming are the Chinese and the Indian governments and they don't believe it. That and no government has meaningfully reduced its carbon emissions since the Kyoto protocol was signed anyway. There is a heck of a lot of money in cap and trade though.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[Anonymous Coward]

If global temperatures went down significantly over a period of many years, it would certainly be fantastic evidence against anthropogenic global warming. But the fact is that past decade is the warmest on record. Ice in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and Greenland has been melting as a result of this warming.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[CPTBMan]

Your lying is as bad as Obama's. The world's mean temperature has been dropping every year since 1998. Why do you think the term switched from glo-bull warming to "climate change"? Just as The Narrator said above, global warming can never be disproven, especially now since it's called climate change. ANY EVENT, rain, drought, hurricane, etc. supports "climate change." However, that doesn't mean that the Earth is warming. It isn't.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[Cyberax]

"Climate Science's real problem is lack of falsifiability."

How so? Models are shown to be pretty good.

"On the other hand, If the temperature goes up, or down, if there is more rain, or less rain, more hurricanes, or less hurricanes, glaciers get bigger or smaller, see ice expands or contracts, droughts or floods, it's all evidence for global warming! If we entered a new ice age or a new warm period everything and anything is proof of global warming! Global warming can not be disproven!"

It can certainly be. Climate models predict that in general glaciers will retreat (and they do, at predicted rate), the same with sea level, etc. The data is noisy and requires a fair bit of time to gather. But we are pretty good at analyzing and gathering data now.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[Barrinmw]

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.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

On the other hand, If the temperature goes up, or down, if there is more rain, or less rain, more hurricanes, or less hurricanes, glaciers get bigger or smaller, see ice expands or contracts, droughts or floods, it's all evidence for global warming!

And this is your very understandable misconception. The press often claims such things are evidence of global warming, but do you see any scientific models predicting these things? All the climactic models I've seen make predictions about general trends over the course of many years, not specific temperatures at specific places at a specific time, nor glacier size in a given year. If you think that's what global warming models predict, you must be looking at very different models than I.

In the end, the people who have to believe in global warming are the Chinese and the Indian governments and they don't believe it.

That's a different issue. Many people in the government might believe, but they also might not act on that for any number of reasons. It doesn't change what is true and that we need to face reality and do what we can, be that completely stopping trade with China until they do comply with pollution controls, or implementing carbon sequestration to compensate for the carbon being emitted.

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[hkmwbz]

The world's mean temperature has been dropping every year since 1998.

Not at all. Why are you parroting this denialist lie?

Re:Lack of Falsifiability

[hkmwbz]

A good graph of the earths average mean temperature over the past 10 years with error associated and source.

Hooray! More dishonesty and cherry-picking by Lindzen.

Re:Bad analogy

[etymxris]

Yes, I was simplifying a bit. Evolution does have predictive results. Yet there are still accepted truths that we cannot test. We cannot (yet anyway) evolve humans from primates, yet we still accept that humans evolved from primates. Not by running an experiment and reproducing the results. We base it on the limited experiments we can do and the historical evidence we have available. Biomedical research certainly tests the theory of evolution in many different ways, but these tests are quite limited when compared to mammalian evolution over millions of years. I would still say that mammalian evolution is a scientific "fact", though there is no good way to "predict" it.

What I Wonder Is...

[Anonymous Coward]

why all these climate scientists aren't multi-millionaires. If they can accurately model something as complex as the climate based on a minimal data set, I'm sure they could knock together a very profitable automated stock trading system in their spare time.

It's the same sort of thing - you buy a data set, analyse it for trends and patterns and use this analysis to predict future trading action. In the case of the stock market the data set would be much more complete than the tiny amount of climate data they have to work with so it should be a much easier task.

These "scientists" are extremely confident in their climate models and their ability to predict future trends through analysis of data so why aren't they making a few million on the side by applying their skills to the stock market?

I'm a moronic denier and yet even someone as stupid as me can me in excess of $100K a year from automated trading. I'm sure these genius climate scientists who can make incredibly accurate predictions based on very limited amounts of data could make billions. Hell, they could probably predict the market action for the next hundred years based on only a year's worth of historical data. They're just that damn good! It's almost like they use some kind of fairytale magic!

Re:What I Wonder Is...

[CrazyDuke]

You think like my grandmother. She can't understand why her EE son can't fix her TV for her.

Specialization

Question

[hysterion]

How many mathematicians or physicists are there in this list of authors? (I may be wrong, but it seems to me that they my be under-represented?)

Re:Question

[Kingrames]

They had trouble counting each other.

Re:Question

[digitalderbs]

At least my boss and one colleague, who are prominent figures in chemical physics, and who are highly competent and rigorous scientists, are on the list.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more concerned about how many of these are philosophers or at least have some sense of discernment and critical thought. Those are the types of people able to weed through bad ideas and see the difference between science and politics.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How many mathematicians or physicists are there in this list of authors? (I may be wrong, but it seems to me that they my be under-represented?)

Many. For example, I've counted everyone who is an academy fellow in the Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences department working on physical oceanography, climate, atmospheric science, and chemistry at MIT.

How about a Day without a Scientist?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the theme of previous social strikes like Day without a Mexican and the likes...

It might make ALL of us appreciate just how much science means to our lives.

Nothing electrical, no clean water, no germ fighting disinfectants, no polyester clothes, no math (so no one can get paid or get any work done.)
g=

Re:First post

[reboot246]

They're on their way! Unfortunately the strippers are all over 70, and the money is from an old Monopoly game. Have fun! :)

Re:Bad analogy

[etymxris]

You are correct about the complications in making climate predictions. Regardless, I think AGW will be accepted if there is dramatic average warming in the next few hundred years, and similarly it will be rejected if there is no significant warming over the next few hundred years. I don't think the remaining decades I have to live will be enough for widespread acceptance or rejection of AGW.

The big bang theory isn't going to cost trillions

[Olentangy]

No one is proposing trillion dollar economic changes based on the big bang theory. They are proposing such changes based on AGW theories.

If the big bang is wrong, some physicists will be embarrassed, if AWG theory is wrong, trillions of dollars will have been wasted.

Cry me a river

[Mr. Firewall]

Oh come on. These guys have spent the last 20+ years politicizing science, subverting the Scientific Method and committing massive fraud -- and they're upset because they are beginning to be investigated?

What these people have done to Science is absolutely inexcusable. They have set back scientific progress -- and the public's confidence in Science -- by decades. As a science nerd, that just flat pisses me off.

I hope this doesn't end until Al Gore himself is in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Re:Bad analogy

[sznupi]

First of all the big bang, evolution and earth's origin doesn't effect massive amounts of the world economy.

Efforts to subvert methods leading to all of those theories are making great, long-term harm to us. Look at this image; it's obviously way overboard and not exactly accurate (as I wrote there as zima), but...well, you get the idea now, right?

Sure, basing out understanding of the world on faith was certainly a beneficent adaptation for a long, long time. But that time has passed.

"climate deniers"

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you call your opponents "climate deniers", you expose yourself as a shrill.

The real credibility gap in climate change

[jd.schmidt]

The real problem Climate Change is the weakness of our future weather models. I really do believe they are quite bad.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that humans are producing it and that CO2 levels appear to be going up.

I however don't believe we can really accuratly predict climate changes. Too much about the world is unknown and we have been wrong many times in the past.

But the good news is the models don't have to be perfect, once you accepted the three things I listed I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action", what models do YOU have that prove everthing will be fine? Are you prepared to present them for peer review? Tell me why I should take the risk of no action!

The opposing side in this debate simply doesn't give any good information to act on(or not act on), so by default the side that has something wins my vote.

Re:The real credibility gap in climate change

[Olentangy]

'I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action"'

I disagree. Before the world spends itself silly fighting AGW, I want to see solid scientific evidence that it's worth spending all that money. And the current computer models using data tweaked to agree with the predetermined conclusions are far from solid proof.

Re:The real credibility gap in climate change

[shutdown -p now]

Well, even without models, we do have an observable steady temperature increase which doesn't show any signs of stopping so far. I mean, yes, it is of course possible that the system is much more complicated, and said increase will just go away after a while - but I think that, unless we have solid evidence for that, we have to assume the same development as our most likely scenario, and prepare for it.

Re:The real credibility gap in climate change

[jd.schmidt]

'I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action"'

I disagree. Before the world spends itself silly fighting AGW, I want to see solid scientific evidence that it's worth spending all that money. And the current computer models using data tweaked to agree with the predetermined conclusions are far from solid proof.

I understand you disagree, but I don't understand why. Actually I am not totally sure what you are disagreeing with.

I hope you agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that we can measure how effective it is at holding back heat. That we also know about how much humans are adding each year from fossil fuels.

Based on the facts I know about the situation, without knowing anything about any climate model simple back of the envelope calculations would suggest temperatures to rise, snow to melt, water to expand, climate patterns to change and so on.

Now I know dynamic systems will sometimes give unexpected results so more research is needed, I am just saying this is what I would expect from what I know. Climate models seem more like details of how it will happen.

(if you don't agree so far please tell me why)

OK, even if every model is wrong (and that is a pretty big if) why should I not be concern, or in other words, why should I support no limit to how much more CO2 we can add to the atmosphere?

Is there any kind of credible "everything is OK" model you can point to?

OK, now for what I think your real issue is, spending ourselves silly over an unsure problem. Let me say this, only pointing out flaws in other peoples models doesn't help me decide how much risk we are in. Unless you mean to spend no money whatever (no research, no nothing) in order to figure out what needs to be done I need some kind of model. So, I simply ask, do you have any research to show me that I should not be so concerned?

YOU are not the peer review process.

[Chas]

You're just some "loudmouth" on the internet.

What they're talking about isn't simply answering Joe Bob Everyman's questions in a public shouting match.
They're talking about getting papers published in peer-reviewed, that actually meet the criteria for publication in journals that are even the least bit contrary to the "party line" that you're spouting.
Because of this sleazy, nasty territoriality, the process of putting data out there for peer review (even if the opinions expressed in there aren't popular or even possibly correct) has become something of a sham.

The point of the peer review process is that others can take the data put forth, run their own tests and corroborate or invalidate the results and provide their OWN data on why they did the former or latter.

Re:YOU are not the peer review process.

[MikeBabcock]

And you're not just a loudmouth on the internet? The numbers scientists are publishing don't add up. That's well established and deserves debate.

Their models haven't come true, which means their models are faulty. That's what science is all about.

Here's a clue for you: getting published has a lot to do with grant funding, not good science. A lot of good science is done in home basements and garages and gardens every day of the year and isn't published. A lot of good science is being well-funded by groups who don't want the results published too.

As the parent did to the GP's point, why don't you refute what he said, instead of ranting like an internet lunatic. You don't have any numbers to show he's wrong either, do you?

Critical thinking is about thinking, not being subdued easily by the masses.

Re:YOU are not the peer review process.

[Chas]

1: I never said I wasn't another loudmouth on the internet.
2: By coming up and demanding that I refute him, you completely miss the point of my original contention here.

I am not arguing climate science here. I'm arguing that some of the processes involved in getting published are being gated not by merit, but personal opinion.

Re:YOU are not the peer review process.

[hkmwbz]

The numbers scientists are publishing don't add up.

Wrong. They do add up.

Their models haven't come true

As a matter of fact, the models have been surprisingly accurate.

A lot of good science is done in home basements and garages and gardens every day of the year and isn't published.

Yes, great scientists like Answers in Genesis and those cool guys, eh!

Critical thinking is about thinking, not being subdued easily by the masses.

Your rejection of scientific fact and active lying because the scientific facts don't match your ideology isn't critical thinking. It's dishonestly and denialism.

Do Not Doubt the High Priests of Science

[Glass Goldfish]

Whenever a religious figure speaks of fire and brimstone, I take it with a grain of salt. Whenever a politician makes the claim that anyone who speaks against them is racist/immoral/greedy/stupid, I tend to think they're frauds. Why would I let the scientists make claims without doubting them? I'm not calling climatologists liars; I'm saying that they're acting like liars.

Can anyone seriously say that evolution is as proven as Newton's Laws of Motion on the scale of billiard table? Or that our understanding of the Big Bang is as complete as our understanding of muscles contracting? So why choose evolution, the Big Bang and the age of the Earth? Don't get me wrong, I think that all three likely happened, but I wouldn't roll them out unless I had a political agenda. I've heard a variety of estimates for the age of the Universe, I haven't heard of anyone contesting the law of conservation of mass. Why not use photosynthesis and covalent bonds as established principles of science?

The central problem with the open letter is that they suggest that all scientists are apolitical and possess peerless moral character. That they can be trusted to police themselves and everyone else should just stay out of their business. Any organization or group that has been given the authority to police itself won't. Just because there's a witch hunt, doesn't mean there aren't witches. Given the trillions of dollars at stake, I'm perfectly happy to have a few annoyed PhDs to ensure public accountability. And government overreach is always a concern, remember that the Australian firewall was sold to the public by saying that it is protecting people from child porn. But somewhere there's a happy medium between anarchy and totalitarianism.

Re:Do Not Doubt the High Priests of Science

[Anonymous Coward]

fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong.

They're not saying they cannot be wrong and must be trusted. They're saying that if they're wrong, go ahead and prove them wrong with scientific evidence, rather than using rhetoric against them as you are doing. Understand now?

Re:Do Not Doubt the High Priests of Science

[hkmwbz]

Why would I let the scientists make claims without doubting them? I'm not calling climatologists liars; I'm saying that they're acting like liars.

How are they acting like liars? Because you are ignorant, you assume they are liars?

The central problem with the open letter is that they suggest that all scientists are apolitical and possess peerless moral character.

Nope. They don't have to be. The scientific process is designed to deal with human error or cheating.

Re:Do Not Doubt the High Priests of Science

[LanMan04]

Can anyone seriously say that evolution is as proven as Newton's Laws of Motion on the scale of billiard table?

Evolution is a quazi-random process, so it can't be proven like LoM. But seriously:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

And that's only in 20 years. Now multiply 20 years by 190,000,000 for how long life has been around on our planet. Add in constantly changing fitness conditions, vast amounts of energy input (solar), temperature gradients up the wazoo, and some of the most reactive molecules in the universe (O2, liquid H2O) being present in MASSIVE quantities (well, O2 later on) all at a temperature that makes such molecules possible (i.e. not 2000C), and you get life/evolution.

How could you NOT get life/evolution in those set of circumstances?

Re:Bad analogy

[Chas]

We either accept the methods

Nobody is questioning the scientific method.

What they're questioning is the integrity of the data being put into the process, and thus, the data being extracted by this method.

If you have a computer program that adds 1 + 1 and comes up with 3, repeatedly, regularly, without fail, and is easily duplicated by anyone, does that mean it's correct?

Simply because one disagrees with the outcome of an experiment doesn't mean they question the whole of science. And conflating the two is the worst and sloppiest form of intellectual dishonesty.

Re:Science is not 100% correct

[rrohbeck]

"If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part."
- Richard Feynman

Uh... Sorry but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is modifying data to fit a model "minor errors"?

"Deniers"? Obviously no agenda here

[John Jorsett]

When people who sling around the term "deniers" either drop that or start using the equally-loaded term, "believers", then I'll know we've begun an honest debate. Until then, they're just exposing themselves as partisans who've staked out one side and are intent on demonizing even principled opposition as being from a bunch of know-nothings. That this comes up in the context of a decrying of "political assaults" takes this from hypocrisy to farce.

Scientists as Uber Citizens

[anorlunda]

When scientists are doing science, or explaining science, they are entitled to a great deal of deference and respect by laymen. However, when they are advocating and trying to persuade or to steer policy, then they are entitled to no more respect than any citizen.

Think of Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" The seated man in Rockwell's picture appears to be more wealthy and better educated than the man speaking, yet he listens with utmost respect. That, IMHO, is the American ideal.

The recent problem is that scientists want to act like über citizens. They want to lecture citizens and lawmakers paternalisticlly and to dictate policy and politics, while still claiming the right to superior deference and respect while they're doing that.

What is happening to the climate might be explained by science. What to do to reduce carbon emissions and the priorities of competing values is not science, but politics. For example, tanking the economy seems to be an effective and immediate method to reduce emissions. Whether to do that deliberately is hardly a question of science. Climate scientists have crossed the line and are trying to impose their values on everyone else.

The right way to handle it is for scientists to stick to science and stay out of the limelight. Let layman champions like Al Gore make their case in public.

At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[rbrander]

I'm a proud skeptic, that is, somebody who wants to see evidence of extraordinary claims.

George Monbiot has pointed out that "skeptic" is not an appropriate word for somebody who goes far out of their way to ignore evidence presented to them and seizes upon the thinnest contrary statements. That was his defense of the word "denier" and it started me using the word again. I remained skeptical until about five years ago, when the evidence started to look very convincing. Then the 2007 IPCC report won me over.

What we're seeing the last few months is, to me, a fascinating study of how resistant people are to news they don't want to believe. The climate science has been slowly building up for decades, one peer-reviewed article after another, one dataset after another, the same story emerging from multiple angles. The scientific disputes dwindled away until we now have 97% of climate scientists surveyed last year on board with the same basic conclusions. Some thousands of scientists represented by the IPCC summary.

Yes, Michael Crichton was correct that science isn't subject to voting and one guy can be right and a thousand wrong. But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?

Then along comes "climategate" and everybody is actually told that they are being read a few sentences cherry-picked from thousands of E-mails, stripped of context. Hundreds of voices protest that the word "trick" is widely used for legitimate data manipulations.

Nonetheless, not only do the denier voices, many of them from organizations shown to be funded by Exxon, immediately proclaim this to outweigh decades of work by a couple of battalions of PhDs, the general public starts polling sharp drops in agreement with climate-change theory that had slowly won them over.

Conclusion: when people don't want to believe something because of its terrible costs, you have to convince them with a weight of evidence on the order of magnitude of 1000:1.

A thousand to one. Oh, man, we get all the hard jobs.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[Svartalf]

A thousand to one. Oh, man, we get all the hard jobs.

Heh... Sometimes you also have to do it for things that people don't want to believe because of their cherished notions that run so counter to the idea you're proposing.

World not being Flat...
A heliocentric universe as opposed to a geocentric one...
Disease vectors...
Antibiotics... ...and MANY, MANY more.

The problem with anything world changing/shattering is that it absolutely does require that level of weight of evidence. And if you want the honest truth, NOBODY dealing with the concepts with "Global Climate Change" are being willing to own up to the fact that they NEED this level of scrutiny no matter how those chips fall.

Not a single one of them have HONESTLY done this. Even minor dinking with that data (which HAS happened) indicates that they're not doing it. Seriously. Calling the people that don't believe "deniers" like we seem to have people doing here and in the community doesn't do the community anything other than a disservice and just simply lends to the impression that it's a damned religion instead of the science it's being claimed as. Regardless of the real status of things.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[rbrander]

Well, there's an additional problem. It isn't just the resistance of people in general to paying somewhat more for electricity, heating, vehicle fuel, and so on. It's the very active and well-funded resistance of the fossil fuel companies that doesn't just parallel the denial of cigarettes causing cancer by Phillip Morris; it's the exact same P.R. firms doing the work.

That was the journalistic work of George Monbiot to which I referred:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/dec/07/george-monbiot-blog-climate-denial-industry

When I went back to using the term "deniers", it's not for people that are honestly doubtful, it's for the P.R. people funded by those firms. They include the "Heartland Institute", and Steven Milloy of "junkscience.com", much used by Fox News Channel through 2006. (At least a search of Fox News site just now found no hits on "junkscience" later than 2006, the year when Monbiot's book "Heat" came out.)

The active denial of cigarettes-cause-cancer lasted a good 20 years after the 1964 Surgeon General's report and likely added an extra million or more to the early-death toll, over and above the normal resistance that people would have had to breaking their addiction.

It's fair enough to say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", but the point of the letter that started this story is that researchers are not just having careful work demanded of them, their integrity and honesty - and careers - are being aggressively attacked.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[wall0159]

Just a note about using the word "trick." This does not imply an effort to mislead -- trick can also mean a useful or neat idea.
eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_trick

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[RebelWithoutAClue]

The key phrase there is actually "hide the decline".

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[khallow]

I'm a proud skeptic, that is, somebody who wants to see evidence of extraordinary claims.

Sure you are. But a lousy one, if you can't understand how the CRU emails and far more importantly, the CRU code didn't win over people. The CRU may be absolutely right, but they were running an agenda rather than being scientists. People don't like that and there are consequences for that sort of behavior.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[Anonymous Coward]

There are rational sceptics, and then there's people who just don't want to believe. There's still a ton of people not believing in *evolution*! We have tons of factual proof for that one, from fossils to gene sequences to experiments that actually semonstrate evolution on fast-growing organisms! Tons of proof, and yet people don't believe.

On the other hand, climate science still is mostly about predicting the future. Even with tons of funding, that's horribly difficult! The best we will *ever* have about the climate in 50 years is an educated guess, not more. I give up on the crazies who don't want the truth. The rest can read the current facts and see that Climate Change will likely be a problem, and probably a big one. Then we can have a reasonable discussion about what to do. This is about cost/benefits and risk assessment, not proof.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for fucks sake. Who cares if scientists have an agenda? Take their science and show the world where they are wrong.
Scientists have agendas all the time, it can get downright nasty. But in the end it doesn't matter, you take their evidence and show them were they are wrong.
This is how science progresses, it strengthens science. If your theory comes under attack, you have to clarify and sometimes refine the theory.

Take the Bohr-Einstein controversy. They didn't whine and bitch about how the other guy had an agenda. They went back and forth attacking and defending the underlying science.

If anything, if all the other guy has to back him up up is his agenda, it should be easy to come up with observations or competing theories to knock down his ideas.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[GPLHost-Thomas]

First, I don't know where you have found this 97%. Maybe from the IPCC itself?

But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?

Second, what you say above endorses burning Galileo. What's that war with the number of scientist that you are trying to make? Why are you talking about "battalions of PhDs" this way? It doesn't make sense. I can point to PhDs that are skeptics.

3rd, your conclusion is your own. And like many, you are pretending everyone that doesn't think like you is stupid. That makes readers believe you aren't that smart, if that's your only argumentation...

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[khallow]

Who cares if scientists have an agenda? Take their science and show the world where they are wrong.

The public apparently does. Moving on, as I see it, the three main problems with climatology are 1) aggregation of data that's based on subjective and obscure statistical methods (eg, how the "urban heat island" effect is filtered out, how temperature sensitive data like tree rings over the past few thousand years are correlated with estimated global temperature), 2) computer models that haven't been sufficiently tested yet, and 3) an imbalance of climate research funding in favor of pro-AGW parties.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[rbrander]

The google you could have done in a fraction of the time taken for all the insults was

survey of scientists on global warming 97%

Of that, I only had to type "survey of sc" before google finished the rest for me, except the "97%" that I remembered from the news. The first link that came up was CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html

which would have told you the study was conducted by the University of Illinois, using names pulled from "The American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Departments".

Since your next six sentences all boil down to the same problem, that you don't see why an overwhelming majority is significant and that the smallest number of contrary opinions should be respected equally, I'll repeat my point very carefully a few times.

1) This does not endorse "burning Galileo"; it endorses the Vatican not taking what vast numbers of others say is a large risk, just because Galileo says so. I don't think Galileo would have minded that much.

2) I'm not trying to make a war with "numbers of scientists"; the "war" seems to be with those suing them and publicly defaming them.

3) I'm talking about "battalions of PhD's" to emphasize the sheer number, it gives a visual.

4) Actually, it makes a lot of sense to most people.

5) I'm glad you can point to PhD's that are skeptics. They should be. So are the ones on the other side; they're skeptics that became convinced by evidence. And, yet again, there are a lot more of them. Public policy (elections) and justice (juries) depend on numbers for confidence of correctness.

6) Again, my point is that my conclusion is not my own, it's the conclusion of many, many, many, and that in turn is what convinced me.

And lastly, my entire point is that people having a hard time absorbing this are not "stupid", they are human, and it is normal human behaviour to resist unwelcome news. "Chocolate is bad for you" is resisted, "Chocolate is good for you" is instantly believed.

The only problem I'm left with is wondering whether your post was serious, or fabricated to help me prove my point.

Thanks, though, for not doing that google and goading me to do it for you. The second link was from the Gallup organization:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/americans-global-warming-concerns-continue-drop.aspx ...which was a group of survey results over time showing how public belief in AGW, and indeed the numbers of public that believe *scientists* generally support AGW, has been dropping recently, which was another of my points. I'll have to save the link.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Yes, save your ink, because you have just rephrase your first post (saying in short: numbers of believers, numbers of PhDs, numbers of whatever...).

You in fact have just added more silliness (to say the least):
- CNN says it: amen, they must be right! It's like for WMDs, 9/11 and all, we shall always trust CNN, shouldn't we? Unfortunately, this article is from the January 20, 2009, and since, a lot of things happened. I can't believe that such poll would have the same results again now, even if we were to believe the crap from CNN.
- You are now endorsing a non-scientific organization to give an opinion (when you write: "it endorses the Vatican not taking what vast numbers of others say is a large risk", the truth is, Vatican should have just shut up). That's not brilliant either.
- Or again, being off topic, talking about elections and justice when the topic of this /. story is about exactness of science...

Now, if you didn't know, and if you want to keep talking about majorities, from the 30ties up to the 60ties, a majority of scientists were claiming that the continent drifts theory was a pure stupidity. A VAST MAJORITY of them, maybe up to 97% as well. Currently, I don't see any scientist opposing this theory, did you? I guess at that time (before the 60ties), you would have say that the majority was of course right... So many battalions of PhDs, can't be wrong.

But even though your reasoning was right, I highly contest your numbers and the "vast majority" fact. Sure, you could say "a vast majority at the IPCC", the same that wrote the falsification that is the AR4 synthesis...

It's amazing to always read how "a vast majority of climatologists believe this". Of course, they are all paid to tell the world is warming up. Have you noticed that the only people that are standing up against them ARE NOT from this field, most of the time? (like for example, Vincent Courtillot). At the same time, we hear only climatologists should have the rights to tell what's science or not. Sorry, it doesn't work on me, you need a bit more to convince me. I want to look at numbers, and the scientific argumentation(c) (tm), because I got a bit more than half a brain, and that I believe I can read a graphic (and even the (falsified pascal) code to generate it). If you think science is about poll and elections, I don't know what else to say... Or maybe: let's go back to middle age, and let's ask the pope what he thinks about global warming!

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[medcalf]

And yet, Monbiot earlier this year, or late last year, called out the very scientists who are the main proponents of AGW for their shoddy science. Hence the danger of appeals to authority, whatever authority Monbiot could be said to have on the subject.

Re:At least it's an opportunity for psych science

[caldodge]

Hundreds of voices protest that the word "trick" is widely used for legitimate data manipulations.

So "hiding the decline" (i.e., tree ring data which does NOT support AGW) is "legitimate data manipulation"?

ESR looked at the CRU code, and described it as "blatant data cooking". Is that "legitimate data manipulation", too?

Re:Science is not 100% correct

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is a natural phenomenon. Changing temperatures and gas fluctuations are a part of that, and always have been. The beauty of the world is that these changes are eventually self-correcting.

Montecito

[tgibbs]

Have you ever been to Montecito? It's a lovely little town where the hills come almost down to the water. You can be pretty high up and still have an ocean view. Perhaps Gore is anticipating his house in the hills becoming beach-front property....

You're wrong about one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"In contrast, the it's-not-happening crowd does not have a good explanation for why it should not be happening, nor do they have good data showing that it is not happening (noisy data has the annoying property that it proves nothing for nobody, neither presence or absence)."

Those who deny catastrophic anthropogenic global warming do not necessarily say that there is no global warming. In fact, many/most of the serious scientists in the group accept that we are still warming ourselves out of the little ice age. There are several explanations of the warming we are seeing that are just as believable as CO2 forcing; I wouldn't bet a lot of money on any of them. What they do say is that CO2 is not going to cause catastrophic global warming. I have bet a serious amount of money that they are correct about that.

Bottom line: They're not saying global warming isn't happening. They do have viable theories on why the climate is changing the way it does.

If you aren't aware of what scientists are publishing, it means that you aren't following the field very closely.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Eggnogium]

Certainly the evidence for AWG is not conclusive, and it seems possible (even likely) that no matter what we do, temperatures may rise. However, in light of the fact that there IS some evidence for AWG, and that the long term effects could be downright apocalyptic, some people (myself included) think it's worth it to cut down on resource usage just in case the worst is true. Not only that, but there is plenty of damning evidence that our species' enormous resource usage is having a negative effect on other aspects of the ecosystem through water scarcity, deforestation, overfishing, and the like.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[dr2chase]

I have enough trouble following my own field; I know at least one climate scientist personally, and he's well and truly convinced. But, every time someone has put forth a contrary theory, if/when I take the trouble to look into it, it falls apart. So if there are better contrary theories, by all means advertise them (links, perhaps?) The massively funded PR campaign is surely working against good science here, since I am certain that they will indiscriminately fund scientific-sounding cranks.

There is this other problem, which is that in any naive model, increased CO2 absolutely increases temperature, because it really is a greenhouse gas (transparent to many wavelengths, blocks various IR bands). So a good theory would not only explain observed warming in ways that did not depend on CO2, it would also demonstrate (or a companion theory would demonstrate) why CO2 does not produce warming in the world that we live in. (And obviously, we know we are not living in the naive model.)

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[osgeek]

This illustrates a bit of the disconnect between the people discussing this issue.

I don't think the sincere anti-AGW crowd completely denies temperature and CO2 trends. We all know there's a correlation, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that man has likely played a roll in its increase. The real question is where is it all going. Some of the predictions popularized by those like Al Gore are pretty dire. Just because CO2 causes warming doesn't mean those predictions are correct.

Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.

Like you say, I have trouble following all the intricacies of my own field. I won't put in the effort to become a climatologist any time soon. I have to rely on the judgement of people and sources that I trust. That trust is built upon my trust in those who dispassionately follow very clear Scientific methods and principles. Secrecy, vitriol, and a money trail doesn't give me warm fuzzies.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[bhiestand]

Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.

While I agree overall and wish things were more open, it's very important to take that in context. FoIA requests are being used as weapons. Anyone working anywhere near climate science is on the defensive precisely because they have such powerful attacks come in from all directions. It's really no surprise that people are sick of answering the same questions, disproving the same lies, etc.

The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) most scientists aren't good programmers and 2) most scientists aren't good statisticians.

There. I said it. Sorry, but the guy who self-taught coding during grad school probably doesn't have the skills needed to consistently and reliably code some of this stuff. Ditto for scientists who don't have at least a BA/BS in math.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[osgeek]

The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) most scientists aren't good programmers and 2) most scientists aren't good statisticians.

As a software developer who's worked in the field of RF simulation, I know how hard it can be to create a software model that accurately predicts reality. Even with such a relatively small set of inputs, it takes a great deal of effort to create models that are commercially useful. Fortunately, the RF environment was simple enough and we had enough control of the cell networks so we could create a model, use it to create a frequency plan, put the frequency plan in place, then compare our predictions to reality. Even then, we had many models that were useless to flat-out wrong. Our competitors tended to do even worse.

The CRU and the "Scientific consensus", on the other hand, have many more inputs, no ability to implement controlled changes to observe results, and no track record for showing that their models are accurate.

Maybe I'm corrupted because I know how difficult that simulation can be. I know that just because you can create a pretty map with interesting colors, doesn't mean that you can predict anything at all.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Teancum]

Where I have a huge problem with those promoting "anthroprogenic global warming" is the complete and total denial that any other mechanism might be in play, and that other sources of that climate change may be happening. I've listed those on other /. posts, and I still assert there are other factors beside CO2 production we should be concerned about. Even the more recent "concerns" about the impact of smoke and dust (or lack thereof now that we have environmental regulatory agencies like the EPA eliminating that form of pollution from traditionally smoky industries) only begin to scratch the surface of what may be causes of climate changes around the world.

I've discussed in more formal forums concerns about these "missing variables" in climate models, and the response for why they are not included is usually rather lame.... mostly that they need to simplify to be able to make any sort of prediction and then wonder why their models no longer make good predictions.

BTW, I agree that we need to be better stewards over the things we are responsible for in this world, and that we should make some significant headway with some of the major issues you mention here too. I would even go so far as to suggest if we were to be more responsible with our environment and it resources, that the other issues like AGW and CO2 production would be put back into balance and be much more effectively dealt with rather than creating whole new levels of government bureaucracy to deal with one or two narrow issues that are oh so easy to overdo.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Xonstantine]

The massively funded PR campaign is surely working against good science here, since I am certain that they will indiscriminately fund scientific-sounding cranks.

Who is funding this supposedly "massively funded PR campaign" against AGW?

How much funding is it receiving?

How much funding is it receiving compared to funding allocated to the PR campaigns (IPCC, anyone?) of the AGW crowd?

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Xonstantine]

Exactly. Sure, human activity has sharply increased CO2 levels. Here's the thing though. CO2 levels have sharply increased in the past, well before there were people walking the earth. Life did not end. The catastrophic AGW scenarios depend on a positive feedback loop being in place, and if that were the case, we'd have become a hot house like Venus a long, long time ago.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Troed]

increased CO2 absolutely increases temperature

CO2 absorption decreases logarithmically, and we're already at a level where increased levels of CO2 makes no real difference. Catastrophic AGW is not due to CO2-warming, it's due to (unknown and still falsifyable) positive feedbacks.

http://brneurosci.org/temperatures6.png

(from http://brneurosci.org/co2.html - first hit I got on google. Don't know what the rest of that page contains)

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Eunuchswear]

Where I have a huge problem with those promoting "anthroprogenic global warming" is the complete and total denial that any other mechanism might be in play,

Name another mechanism that has been proposed and not disproved. Propose a mechanism for increasing C02 not causing global warming. Win a Nobel prize.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[Eunuchswear]

How much funding is it receiving compared to funding allocated to the PR campaigns (IPCC, anyone?) of the AGW crowd?

What is the budget of the IPCC?

Between 1988 and 2007 the IPCC received 94,910,768 CHF http://earthwatch.unep.net/about/docs/scpIPCC.htm

You're going to buy a lot of propaganda with less than 5 million dollars a year.

Re:You're wrong about one thing

[hkmwbz]

Where I have a huge problem with those promoting "anthroprogenic global warming" is the complete and total denial that any other mechanism might be in play

What are you talking about? Papers discussing other mechanisms are being released all the time, including papers by skeptics like Richard Lindzen! You are the only one in denial here. You don't know shit about the actual science, so you make these insane assumptions. How the fuck can you claim that there is a denial about other possible mechanisms when other possible mechanisms are constantly being investigated?

Where are the contrarian models?

[tgibbs]

Now, it certainly seems plausible that there are models out there with variables and assumptions that result in no warming, or a cooling. What is the likelihood these would get published based purely on their results?

Close to 100%. There are "fringe" journals such as the notorious Energy and Environment that are extremely friendly to critics of global warming. While not highly regarded by serious scientists, there is little doubt that E&E would publish such a model. Besides, one can publish one's models on the internet these days. Many of the models used by climate scientists are available to the public so one could get a head start by modifying an existing model. And there is little doubt that many of the fossil fuel companies would be happy to fund the development of such a model. Heck, I imagine you could get enough money to fund such a study just by asking for donations on right-wing websites. Isn't it curious that nobody has managed to produce such a model to date. Of course, maybe it isn't actually all that easy to come up with a model that is reasonably consistent with known physics, with the historical climate data, and with the climatic effects of "natural experiments" like volcanic eruptions, and yet does not predict substantial warming in response to continued CO2 emissions...

stop it!

[nten]

Every time someone uses the term "denialist" to refer to *anyone* regarding AGW. It weakens the case. It is not ok. For any reason. It hurts the science, because people associate the climatologists with the insult they received for being skeptics. Being skeptical is good! I know its annoying that people keep asking for more and more and more proof, especially because its obvious they have something they *want* to believe. But just keep answering the questions or pointing to places where they can get the answers. I have no data, but my intuition indicates that many skeptics are being reinforced in their viewpoints simply because they are being ridiculed for their beliefs by well meaning people. We got past the question "is the climate really changing"? Its really past time that we moved on from "are we causing it"? And got on to "is the change bad for us"? Because that is going to get asked (and has been), and its going to take at least as much time to answer to the satisfaction of those who can change behavior as the first two.

Re:stop it!

[CrazyDuke]

Likewise, they should not be automatically afforded the label as "skeptic" as a genuine skeptic is actually interested both information that confirms or denies (or perhaps something completely different) what they think may be true, in short a neutral position.

"But just keep answering the questions or pointing to places where they can get the answers."

How do you keep an idiot occupied?
I dunno, how?
How do you keep an idiot occupied?
I dunno, how?
How do you keep an idiot occupied?
I dunno, how? ... I'll pass thanks.

"I have no data, but my intuition indicates that many skeptics are being reinforced in their viewpoints simply because they are being ridiculed for their beliefs by well meaning people."

Skeptics? More like people in general. People have an amazing ability rationalize any belief. Seriously, get a hold on a social psych text book. The more pressure the person feels to justify the belief, the stronger the urge to reinforce that belief. For some real-world examples: 419 scams, cult worship, fraternity indoctrination, battered wives, etc...

As for progress: The circular arguments have more nodes now. But, it's still basically the same style of argument. And, quite frankly, I myself need to go through the numbers to weed out the political happy crap I've been fed over the years.

Re:stop it!

[riverat1]

I'm not to "anyone". There are honest skeptics out there that I can respect but too many people's opposition to global warming is because the proposed remedies don't fit their political/economic/social ideology instead of having some real science to back themselves up. I'm comfortable with calling that denial. As the NAS letter says scientists face harassment that has little to do with refuting their science.
 

Re:stop it!

[riverat1]

Argh! Should be [I'm not referring to just "anyone".]

In other words...

[J'raxis]

In other words, this is basically one side of the political debate complaining that the other side is politicizing the issue.

It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues ..."

So where were these guys when the pro-climate change crowd were trying to have climate change skeptics like Bjørn Lomborg charged in a similar manner?

... the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action ...

"Taking action" is buying into one side of the political debate over climate change: Either "do something" or don't do something. But, I guess if someone agrees with your side, they're not politicizing the issue, they're just "making policy decisions."

denier, niggardly, tar baby,

[Anonymous Coward]

I think many of the the people labeling others as deniers are full aware of its connotations with Hitler denialism and Evolution denialism.

I don't think you are being honest with yourself or us to claim it's purely an innocent word.

It's also very inaccurate as many of the people labeled deniers, like Dyson, agree with most of if not all of the theory but disagree with the conclusions and the policies promoted.

I think using denier is a real tar baby.

"Minor errors?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that the whole process is broken. Minor errors are a sign of larger errors and problems with the way it all works. The problem is the entire institution is geared to only "prove" man made global warming. It isnt there to look at the risks and report back that "Business as usual" is the best policy, its there to create unnecessary change and make enough money to build private golf courses in the middle of drought stricken Indian provinces.

reported science

[Anonymous Coward]

does not necessarily reflecting the truth.......not just the plain eye-sighted fact

Re:Bad analogy

[daem0n1x]

I don't think the remaining decades I have to live will be enough for widespread acceptance or rejection of AGW.

It's not widely accepted in your country. In mine, is pretty much common sense.

One better.

[gillbates]

Look, I really appreciate your making a valid point. The things you have said were true. 10 years ago.

I've actually run statistics on the data. It's available for free download, you know. I made sure to use a low-pass filter to account for the 11 year solar cycle. I didn't do any massaging of the data at all, no special selection, or anything else like that. I used the dataset which had been "doctored".

And it shows that, for all of the global warming that man supposedly caused, we couldn't keep it from returning to its 1900 - 1910 levels.

Ten years ago, we really were on an upswing. But the past decade has experienced a cooling trend, which - according to the leaked emails, "we can't explain".

Now, I'll admit climate change is complex stuff; there's a lot going on, and a lot of potential interactions, feedback loops, etc. But we now know that the claims made by the politicians were overstated and sensationalized. Granted, some scientists did behave badly, but anyone who actually read the IPCC report or followed the science as it developed would not have made such grand doom-and-gloom, unsupported claims.

It's not the science to which people objected. Very few people want to destroy the environment. But when it comes down to making changes whose known cost is in the trillions of dollars, versus inaction, you need to have a degree of certainty that just wasn't in the data we had at the time. To make matters worse, politicians and pundits exaggerated the situation, making an honest assessment of climate change nearly impossible. Scientists had to choose sides based on political considerations, or risk losing funding. People objected to the political railroading going on much more than the temperature record.

Re:One better.

[tbannist]

This is one of the reasons, I don't like climate change deniers, you keep repeating the same tired old falsehoods as if they are facts because you happen to like them.

The planet is still warming, there is no cooling trend, just an unusually cool year. We are at a solar minimum at the moment so when you reduce one factor that warms the planet you slow the rate of increase, but it is still increasing. According to NASA, 2009 was the second hottest year on record. The "earth is cooling" meme is just a stupid graph trick. You pick the highest point on the graph and draw a line towards some subsequent point and say "look things are decreasing", but that's not real statistics. You're suppose to fit your slope line to the entire graph, not two arbitrary points. When you properly fit the graph, temperature is still rising, though at a pace that is slightly below the predicted level per decade (0.18C for the last decade versus 0.2C). Mind you the predicted number is the average per decade, and will be both higher and lower on individual decades. If the solar minimum ends soon, we will likely experience more than 0.2C warming over the next decade.

According the the leaked emails "we can't explain" why tree aren't growing at the rate they're supposed to be growing. As it turns out, particulate pollution has darkened the world so less sunlight is reaching the ground levels, for example, which may be a contributing factor for the discrepancy. That particulate has also had a cooling effect on the world which has lessened the amount of warming that has occurred.

zealotry???

[The Grim Reefer2]

I wonder how many of those 255 decry Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism. If they are among the fanatics who totally refuse to even consider the possibility then I'm not sure they have a leg to stand on in regards to being open minded. And by ID I don't necessarily mean Creationism. Personally I'm not sure which is right and can even except the possibility that both are correct. My thoughts on global warming are pretty fluid as well as I can see compelling arguments on either side. When people become so sure they are right that they can no longer even consider the possibility that they could be wrong they enter more into the realm of a religious fanaticism than that of good science IMHO. Frankly I think they way people on either side of the argument have been targeted by the opposition is truly shameful.

Uhm, no. They can't have it this way.

[WheelDweller]

The Big Bang is documented. It was the creation of this reality, see also: Einstein's theory of relativity. The Bible was the only ancient document that got this one right.

Evolution's a little weak; based mostly on a theory of a guy who couldn't see INTO a cell, and assumed the animals and man took the same track. His work doesn't even define important concepts such as "species".

But then we get to ManMadeGlobalWarming(TM) and we find a whole different idea: science for cash. Look around: how much of this is being funded, since Margret Thatcher used it for the first time in the late 70's?

And the things we've been told to BELIEVE!

- Cold winter AND hot winters both mean man is changing the climate.

- Mankind can exude so much CO2 that it actually matters.

- The hot-times before industry didn't really happen, no matter what the fossil record says.

    These three items should be enough to spark a recursion of theories and check one another for accuracy, but no: WE'RE SELLING PIECES OF PAPER THAT SAYS WE'LL PLANT A TREE SO YOU CAN TAKE THAT CAR TRIP IN YOUR SUV.

    Please, guys; just think for yourself a minute: when money dries up for almost *all* science, then opens up for climate science that says we're in danger, isn't that a clue?

    You guys are foolish when it comes to religion, but you're all so SMART in details. When a washed-up congressman and has-been starts showing you charts and telling you "the debate is over, send me money" DOES THAT NOT STRIKE YOU AS EVANGELISM?

    Have you guys NOT made fun of a number of evangelists for less?

    When religion and science disagree, we have bad science or bad theology. It's why I believe firmly in an old (14B year) Earth, cavemen, all this stuff. But to believe Al Gore has a clue...I mean, THAT TAKES SOME FAITH!

(And let's not forget: the two charts he uses, rolling them around on wheels, asking "Is there anything these have in common?" are the evidence you need. CO2 is exuded 800 years AFTER the ocean gets "hot", and spews it to COOL the atmo. Read closer.)

He's such a tool!

The white elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pro Climate Change Alarmists" want to stop the earth from warming. Why? The earth is a big place, and likely to correct on it's own. Also, in a much longer time span than we've had recorded history, climate temps have fluctuated drastically.

I would assume they want to stop the climate to preserve their own way of life. Especially if we look at agnostic or atheistic climate alarmists. There is no real moral code to stop the climate from warming (yes, they might make one up for themselves, but they can't claim it's objective, so why listen to them).

On the flip side, the "Climate Change Deniers" want to ignore the evidence. Why? So their way of life can continue for as long as possible in it's current state?

Isn't the real issue the number of people on the earth? Don't both sides want to preserve their way of life (though perhaps not others'), but in the end, at the rate of population growth, their way of life will have to change. Either because the climate is changing, or just because things will get very, very crowded around here. The only alternative is to reduce the human population. Isn't that the real answer in conservative environmentalism? (the idea that we must preserve the eco system exactly as it is now, or even roll it back several hundred years).

My guess is, the climate warms up, some bad things happen (NYC under water, anyone), and we adapt. Stinks for the individual, but we'll adapt as a species and a planet. If climate change theorists are right -- what switch do you think you can switch to stop it now? It would certainly involve convincing China and India to reduce their populations and halt their economic progress. Good luck with that. And if they are wrong, well then, why waste your time on them?

There are bigger issues in life than lifestyle. Open your mind and heart to those issues, and learn to adapt to the changes around you. We're on this planet for, what, 80 years or so? There's a larger life than just that.

Or continue shouting and screaming at each other over something you can't control, and don't really have a moral footing to justify controlling.

Re:The white elephant in the room

[maxwell demon]

"Pro Climate Change Alarmists" want to stop the earth from warming. Why? The earth is a big place, and likely to correct on it's own. Also, in a much longer time span than we've had recorded history, climate temps have fluctuated drastically.

Well, the problem may be that the "correction on its own" may lead to consequences that we humans wouldn't enjoy. On the large scale of things it doesn't even matter if half of the humans die, or even if humanity is completely extinguished.
Forget about the question what is good for earth. Ask: What is good for us (but please, include all of humanity in "us", not just those few who have the advantage to live at places which might profit from warmer temperatures).

Not comparing apples to apple, Messrs. Wizard

[RogueWarrior65]

There's a very big difference between the theories of the Big Bang, Evolution, the origin of the Earth and the theory of climate change. The former don't have the potential to destroy economies around the world and redistribute wealth to poor countries from rich ones. Suppose that were to take place and a few years from now they discover that they were dead wrong. Are all those recipients of the billions of dollars (dare I say trillions) going to give all that money back to the people from whom it was stolen? If climate change is for real and is so important to the future of the entire planet, then everyone, yes even the dirt-poor countries, has to suck it up in the same way. No progressivism allowed.

Re:Not comparing apples to apple, Messrs. Wizard

[21mhz]

There's a very big difference between the theories of the Big Bang, Evolution, the origin of the Earth and the theory of climate change. The former don't have the potential to destroy economies around the world and redistribute wealth to poor countries from rich ones.

Neither has the scientific finding of anthropogenic climate change. You must be confusing it with some policies proposed in reaction to it.

Re:Not comparing apples to apple, Messrs. Wizard

[RogueWarrior65]

At best "anthropogenic climate change" is akin to an ant coming out of its nest and concluding that all the rocks in the world are the size of grains of sand. These scientists are drawing the conclusion that industrialized modern man is the cause yet they fail to explain why global temperatures were higher than they are today before the 14th century and why they were higher when dinosaurs dominated the planet. These are not the droids you're looking for...move along.

A lot of people are usurping dubious conclusions for their own personal gain by inventing a currency around carbon and creating an hysteria around something that the average person can't see or understand. It's not different than the category of people who can't wrap their brain around time on a scale of hundreds of millions to billions of years necessary to create the Grand Canyon. Their emotions take over at the beauty of it and conclude that only some deity could create it in 6 days.

Re:Not comparing apples to apple, Messrs. Wizard

[21mhz]

These scientists are drawing the conclusion that industrialized modern man is the cause yet they fail to explain why global temperatures were higher than they are today before the 14th century.

Because it's not something that the anthropogenic climate change theory seeks to disprove. What it does assert is, in some hundred years, the medieval warm period (as felt in places where it was indeed observed) will seem like a fucking cool time to live in, and the global temperature will continue to rise if we don't drastically curtail our CO2 emissions.

why they were higher when dinosaurs dominated the planet.

Why, there is a lot of research about that. But why does it feel like some kind of triumph to point at this and say: see, dinosaurs could live with those temperatures (which rose gradually over millenia)? Does it mean a damn thing for our potential troubles in adapting to an abrupt raise of temperature at a scale that humans have never experienced?

It is simple, really

[cdrguru]

According to some, we are right now on the brink of a long-term change that will potentially make the planet far less hospitable to humans. If we do not do something soon, we may reach a "tipping point" after which nothing can be done. If no changes are made right now, millions if not billions of people may die.

OK, fine. What I want to see is the dedicated individuals that believe this taking action. There hasn't been any. There has been a lot of talk about plans which will enrich a few and make life a lot more expensive in the US and Western Europe. But so far nobody has done anything.

Every day millions of cars spew more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. It is easily within the power of a few dedicated individuals to make it far more difficult to drive into NYC, Chicago or Los Angeles. This would have an immediate effect on CO2 emissions. Nobody has done this. Sure, such actions would be labelled as "terrorism" but they would be in the interest of decreasing the likelyhood that millions if not billions of poeple will die soon. Would it not be justified?

Similarly, destroying one airliner would have an effect. 10 people destroying 10 airliners (empty, on the ground) would not only have an immediate effect but it would send a message to the world. Yes, all 10 might go to jail for a while, but action always has its risks.

Instead what we see is a lot of talk about how we must enact plans which will make certain people - Al Gore being one of them - extremely wealthy and increase the cost of virtually every product on store shelves today. If there is an impending catastrophe we need to DO SOMETHING rather than sitting around talking. If there isn't such a catastrophe pending then maybe we need to not change the economy of every first-world nation in favor of a few carbon moguls.

Colloquially known as

[Anonymous Coward]

"Social Darwinism."

I laugh so I won't cry.

You missed something important

[microbox]

We've all been painted with the brush of religion because some Scientists forgot their place and their core principles in pursuit of Being Right(tm).

We've been painted with the brush of religion because market research shows the people are more comfortable talking about people's motives than they are about the actual issues. That was probably determined very scientifically.

I presume this means...

[glitch23]

those who are proponents of those theories will stop calling those who disagree with them "idiots", "crazy", "ignorant" and any adjective or noun they feel like using to denigrate those with differing opinions?

Take a deep breath and calm down

[Anonymous Coward]

Try picking random comments on this article, and see if you can guess which side they're on: whether it's from somebody who accepts climate change or who accepts climategate. It's fascinating how hard it is to tell with a lot of these comments! An awful lot of these comments are from people whose emotion has so overpowered their reasoning ability that you can't even tell which side they're ranting about.

Sorry

[jav1231]

Scientists lusted after U.N. money and got burned. I don't take anything the U.N. says seriously and the email-gate proved scientists were willing to skew the data and suppress dissenting opinion. Well, you got paid. Now you want to pretend it was all about the data!? Back to the lab!

Onward and Upward

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm old enough to have grown up believing in the inevitable "ascent of man" and a continuous, rationalist march into the "broad, sunlit uplands" of scientific truth.
I feel physically sick to find myself living in a Tulipomanian bubble.
Shame on you damn hippies.
It's a bit like tatoos really: I regard them as beyond the pale, you see them as getting in tune with your reiki (or some similar new age crap).
Now get off my lawn.

Re:The big bang theory isn't going to cost trillio

[sl149q]

Well it depends, there are some scenarios where the Large Hadron Collider could prove some physicists wrong but we wouldn't be around to note their embarrassment. :-)

Fortunately this appears have a close to zero probability with a lot of reproducible experimental proof behind it.

Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[mosb1000]

The second link you posted there clearly refutes your claim (but you do have to actually read it to realize that). How you got modded to +5 is beyond me. You moderators need to actually click and read stuff before you endorse it like this.

Also, these graphs show what we (by that I mean people actually involved in computer modeling, since you obviously have no knowledge of it) call a calibration period. When you are constructing a model, you have a number of theoretically justified, but generally unmeasurable variables. So what you do is you take past data and you start with reasonable values and you adjust the variables until you you get a result that fits your data as closely as possible. Of course, the calibration should be a good fit, if it's not that means that either your model is totally wrong, or you've botched the calibration.

You can't claim that calibration confirms your model is correct, as a clever person can surely come up with an equation to fit any data by this method. Only time will tell how accurate these models are. Even if the model is correct, models like this are not rigorous, they tell you where the trends are headed, they do not predict the future. Think about it like this: if you read your speedometer and it says you are going 60mph that doesn't mean you will be 60 miles away in an hour, even though x = v*t is a perfectly valid model for your position over time.

Re:Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[tgibbs]

Climate models are fairly tightly constrained, because they are not fits to arbitrary equations with lots of free parameters, but rather simulations of physical processes for which most of the critical parameters are fairly well known from other data. So the capacity to improve the fit by adjusting the variables is limited. A climate model also has to be consistent with historical (and what is known of prehistorical) climate data, as well as the climate response to "natural experiments" like volcanic eruptions. See here and here for explanation. Further information about the uncertainties in model projections can be found here (PDF)

Re:Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[khallow]

but rather simulations of physical processes for which most of the critical parameters are fairly well known from other data.

Like cloud formation, small scale weather like hurricanes, carbon accounting, economics of the next century, etc. Highly constrained. That's sarcasm BTW.

Re:Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[riverat1]

You have no idea how climate modeling works, at least for the GCM's (General Circulation Models aka Global Climate Models). The models are independent of the data not calibrated by it. The models are built by combining the physical calculations of the various factors known to affect climate and if a discrepancy with the historical data is found they try to determine why and improve the physics of that particular issue which they then put back in to the model. It's not calibrating like zeroing a meter or something.

Re:Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea how climate modeling works, at least for the GCM's (General Circulation Models aka Global Climate Models). The models are independent of the data not calibrated by it. The models are built by combining the physical calculations of the various factors known to affect climate and if a discrepancy with the historical data is found they try to determine why and improve the physics of that particular issue which they then put back in to the model. It's not calibrating like zeroing a meter or something.

You might want to look at the history of Millikan's experiment before saying things like that. That particular experiment was designed to measure the charge on an electron, and was, for a long time, the standard way of doing so. The problem is that if you plot measured charge against time, using all of the repeats of the experiment, you find a definite positive trend. The electron charge presumably wasn't changing during that time, so what happened?

The standard explanation is that Millikan made a mistake in his original measurement, and produced a value which was far too low. The experiment is moderately fiddly to do well, and so most people who tried to repeat it needed several attempts to do so. The problem is that they followed an algorithm like this:

1) Run the experiment.
2) Check whether the results ``look right''.
3) If so, stop and publish.
4) If not, try to figure out what went wrong. Fix it and repeat from 1.

``Look right'' turns out to mean, somewhat unsurprisingly, ``is consistent with the results of previous experiments''. In this case, the previous experiments produced a value which was too low, and so the algorithm iterates until the current experiment also produces a value which is too low, albeit towards the upper end of the available range. The result was that the values converged on the correct data, rather than just jumping to it.

How does this apply to climate change? Well, suppose I'm trying to build a model of the global climate. My algorithm is going to look something like this:

1) Make up a model which looks plausible to me, based on existing knowledge of physics, geology, ecology, ...
2) Test whether the model matches with the data which is available.
3) If it does, stop and publish.
4) If it doesn't, repeat from step 1.

This is pretty much the only way of doing it. Climate models are essentially large, complicated computer programs, and anyone who's ever written such a thing will tell you that they pretty much never work first time; even if you get all the theory precisely right first time, there will be some implementation bugs, and the only way of fixing them is to do this kind of iteration.

So that's where climate models come from. Now, this being science, someone will, sooner or later, come along and try to test the model. To do so, they grab some data, run the model from some starting condition, and check whether the model produces values which are consistent with the data. If it does, the model is confirmed (to the extent that anything ever is), and if it doesn't, the model is refuted.

The tricky part comes if the data used to test the model is the same as the data used to design it in step 2 of the model generation algorithm. In that case, the test will show that the model is confirmed regardless of how good it actually is, simply because it was designed to pass that test. Or, to put it slightly differently, the only reason the model was tested at all was that we already knew that it was going to pass. More formally, the person doing the test will have very great difficulty performing any kind of statistical significance test, because the model design process effectively ``uses up'' some of their degrees of freedom, and they don't know how many, and so can't correct for that. The page linked to by the

Re:Mod Parrent Down, wrong.

[mosb1000]

I'm sorry, but that simply is not true. I am talking about parametrization, which is done in all climate models (and pretty much all computer models in general, really).

The point is, they generate and validate these parameters by calibrating the model. If you used the data to generate the model, you can't then go back and say that you "predicted" the past data with it. The only way to know how accurate these models are is watching how closely they predict the climate over the next couple decades.

Of course, when the climate varies from the model, we will amend the model to more accurately explain the data. Do you see what I mean when I say it's more like a speedometer than a schedule?

Re:Bad analogy

[MadUndergrad]

What, are you questioning the quality of the instruments? Do you think they're all being misread? I'm guessing that you're not questioning the integrity of the instruments, but the integrity of the scientists.

Holocene optimum

[symbolset]

About 10K years ago the Earth was in an ice age and had been for about 100,000 years. Then in about 1000 years temperatures rose from about 8C below the present average to what they are today. This increase in temperature allowed for all of the expansion of mankind that is present history - all of it. It hit the "holocene optimum" or maximum temperature and had been declining since, until about 1800. We were getting occasional warnings of the impending ice age as the temperatures declined. The ice core records seem to indicate that when this cooling cycle switch happens, it happens very quickly and drops to about 8C below present and then fluctuates a little around that "new normal".

There were not enough Men present on the Earth 9000 years ago to create an 8C increase in temperature so something else caused it and we aren't sure what but orbital variations are a popular theory. The Earth has these temperate periods of 10-20 thousand years, roughly every hundred thousand years - and then they end. That was 8C. The AGW claimed here is about 1.5C, and it seems to have stopped for now.

There seems to be a point on the temperature graph that represents a complete lack of resistance to change. When temperatures in the record dip below about 2.5C less than they are now they tend to drop to ice age temps and stay there for a very long time. Obviously for us that would be very bad.

Warm, though? We can deal with warm. The Earth has been much warmer in the past and it didn't self destruct. Some people will have to move, but they won't have to run - the change happens very slowly.

We live in an interglacial age. It will go for a while and then it will end and most of humanity will die off at that time. We'd best enjoy it while it lasts. As for making a cause of halting climage change, well that's hubris there. We could no more prevent climate change than we could stop time or travel faster than the speed of light. The climate changed before mankind appeared on this planet and it will be changing long after we're gone.

You guys enjoy your flamewar. I'm gonna go grill some steaks.

Re:Holocene optimum

[zz5555]

"There were not enough Men present on the Earth 9000 years ago to create an 8C increase in temperature so something else caused it and we aren't sure what but orbital variations are a popular theory. The Earth has these temperate periods of 10-20 thousand years, roughly every hundred thousand years - and then they end. That was 8C. The AGW claimed here is about 1.5C, and it seems to have stopped for now."

No, it's still warming. And as for the cause of the Holocene optimum, it's known to be orbital and we know that's not what's causing the current warming.

"Warm, though? We can deal with warm. The Earth has been much warmer in the past and it didn't self destruct. Some people will have to move, but they won't have to run - the change happens very slowly."

Before it happened slowly. The current change is actually quite rapid. I think there have been similar situations when the climate changed very rapidly and the die-off was something over 90%. Personally, I don't think it'll get that bad, but with likely long-term drought in the internal regions of the continents, life could get very interesting.

Re:Holocene optimum

[symbolset]

The die-offs coincide not with warming periods, but with cooling ones - and those tend to coincide with known asteroid impacts. When you think about it, that too may be "orbital".

Regardless, when the temp rises by 8C in 1000 years and given the normal cycles it's perfectly normal for two spans of a hundred years to warm by 1.4C, bridged by a century gap of little or no warming at all. That the current cycle lines up with the centuries of our calendar may be nothing more than happenstance. This rate of warming is not "unprecedented". It's not even unusual.

The normal climate of the Earth is inhospitable to humans. We've only come to dominate in a warm period that is not the norm. The ultimate outcome is inevitable. We need to get off this rock while we can.

Save the naughty humans from their sins?

[wasabu]

Come on slashdotters, read a bit of history, this is nothing new. "I cometh to save you from your sins". Burn 'climate deniers' at the stake if they could? I'll leave the science to Lord Christopher Monkton. I have code to debug! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTFUqhGkU3c

Re:The big bang theory isn't going to cost trillio

[Abcd1234]

If the big bang is wrong, some physicists will be embarrassed, if AWG theory is wrong, trillions of dollars will have been wasted.

I know! Think of all the money *wasted* on improved energy efficiency and investment in alternate forms of energy that will finally wean us off the finite resource that is oil. Man, what a fucking waste that would be! And I'm sure no one at all would win by decreasing energy costs or investing in new technologies. Nope, it's just a trillion dollars, straight down the drain. Man, why won't people understand what a huge disaster that would be?!?

Re:Bad analogy

[MightyMartian]

Point 1. A theory's veracity is not determined by how much it fucks with the economy.

Point 2. Similar methodologies are applied for climatology as for cosmology and biology. What you're exhibiting is a classic case of compartmentalization.

Point 3. Prediction in science doesn't mean "telling the future", it means predicting potential observations and then confirming those observations, or possibly even undermining the theory itself. In science, what matters is the methodology and the evidence. In particular, in cosmology, the fact that something happened in the past is irrelevant. Since the bulk of observations are on distant bodies, everything technically happened in the past, though predictions may be about what we should observe in the cosmos, even if the confirming observation is, say, 13.5 billion years old (like the CMBR).

Side Effects of Pro Cleanse

[moudcy]

Understanding and Responding to Climate Change," a free booklet designed to give the public a comprehensive and easy-to-read analysis of findings and recommendations from our reports on climate change. Pro Cleanse Gold

Re:Integrity

[riverat1]

When someones opinion on global warming is based on their ideology rather than sound science I'm okay with calling it denial. There are honest skeptics out there that I was not referring to but they're not the ones making most of the noise.

ITR inclusive, but melting ice is more evident

[pikine]

Why don't we consider this plot instead, since it goes beyond year 2000, and it is unsmoothed? You can see that the temperature was going up drastically as we approach year 2000, and it lowered again. Now, the reason why I find global warming inconclusive is because the anomaly still lies well within the sample variance. You shouldn't apply temporal smoothing (i.e. five year average) because that would be cheating; it certainly reduces the sample variance significantly, making the anomaly seem more statistically significant than it is.

Even if I find the instrumental temperature record to be inconclusive, I have to say the disappearing polar ice cap is a more conclusive evidence to global warming. That's because state change of water (from solid to liquid and vice versa) causes heat exchange while the temperature stays the same. This is basic high school science. That's why you can't really find evidence of global warming from measuring temperature. Disappearing ice cap suggests that ocean water now stores much more heat. These ice caps serve as temperature buffer, and without them, the ocean temperature will start rising rapidly. Last year we've come close. If we go past the point where ice caps melt completely, we'll start seeing much more evident temperature increase, perhaps starting this year.

Now, we don't want to go to that point. It might already be too late.

Re:ITR inclusive, but melting ice is more evident

[hkmwbz]

You are an idiot. Climate is not about the temperature each year, but about the actual trend. Fuck off with your ignorance nonsense.

Then, Darwinism isn't a theory

[geoffrobinson]

What, besides "survivors survive" does Darwinism predict? I would still classify it as a scientific theory.

Re:Then, Darwinism isn't a theory

[Some Bitch]

What, besides "survivors survive" does Darwinism predict? I would still classify it as a scientific theory.

Darwin didn't say that, he didn't even use the phrase survival of the fittest. Darwin's theory is known as natural selection and it states that the incidence of inheritable traits that increase the chance of an organism to survive and reproduce will increase over successive generations. There's falsifiability and there's a prediction, what else do you want?

CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cores

[hsthompson69]

You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?

Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years. Not sure exactly what the world looked like 800 years ago since we only have proxy data, but there you go.

Now, if CO2 actually LED temp increases, maybe you'd have a point (although not such a strong one if the lead was something like 800 years...that's a long time to adapt). In any case, despite the creative reasoning of some modelers (hard coding in scenarios where CO2 can lead and lag, based on some mythical "trigger" and an absence of any explanation of how the positive feedback loop of runaway warming is stopped), the statistical analysis of anything might lead to correlation, but not causality. For causality, you're going to have to build a falsifiable hypothesis, not a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.

and for the next act

[Goldsmith]

Now is when we discover that the scientific withdrawal from politics over the past century means no one cares what we say.

Scientists are incredibly behind in understanding how to use the media and influence the opinions of the general public. These letters are an anachronism, but we keep putting them out there.

We're stuck arguing over papers published more than 15 years ago instead of building support for the kind of work we should be doing because we allow ourselves to be totally subsumed into whatever political cause generates funding for us.

This climate change argument with politicians isn't worth having. Politics isn't about getting the absolute right answer. We'd never pass bills on things like health care reform or anti-terrorism if that was the case. The right thing to do for our country and economy is to figure out how to become energy self-sufficient. That's where the "clean coal" push came from politically, but we were too manipulated at that point to take advantage of it. The kicker is that before it was proposed by the political faction which didn't "believe in" global warming, coal related research was one of the main ideas put out by the (very small) fraction of the scientific community which was actually looking for solutions to the climate problem.

Peer review != peer agreed with

[hsthompson69]

Precisely that, is what peer-reviewed scientific journals are for. Have you been reading them?

Look, let's stop bandying about "peer review" as if it represents some sort of SCOTUS of science. Peer reviewers don't have to look at the actual data (as Phil Jones so graciously offered, they never asked him for it), don't have to agree with the conclusions, and aren't judging whether or not a paper is TRUE or not, they're simply deciding if it's worth publishing.

Straight from both ends of the horse

[517714]

Read the reports that are put out by the "experts".

http://www.ipcc.ch/

The IPCC Expert Meeting on Detection and Attribution Related to Anthropogenic Climate Change Report - September 2009: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/supporting-material/expert-meeting-detection-anthropogenic-2009-09.pdf

p21 - "Sea ice around Antarctica shows little change – a fact, which is still not fully understood." Yet the changes in sea ice in the Arctic apparently are since they match the authors' preconceptions.

p22 - "Especially mountain glaciers are considered to be 'unique demonstration objects' concerning ongoing climate change." Unique as in something different and non-representative of the truth. A Ginsu knife cutting through a soft drink can is quite impressive but has little to do with how well it will cut meat compared to another knife that may not cut the can.

p22 - "Glacier extent (length, area) may have reached 'warm' limits of pre-industrial (Holocene) variability ranges and is far out of equilibrium conditions at many mid- and low-latitude sites." Restated - glaciers are no smaller than they were in pre-industrial times; somehow it doesn't sound particularly ominous when stated in this equally

p22 - "Complex air/ocean/ice interactions make attribution to exact causes difficult but 'warming' as a general cause appears to be evident." Why the quotation marks around "warming"? Evident means that it looks that way to a casual observer, but not necessarily to an educated one. Note the lack of "anthropogenic", and that exact causes are not known.

p25 - "Global scale surface temperature is recorded by an instrumental record of 150 years and reconstructed from palaeo data over several centuries. Both compare well with climate model simulations if driven with estimates of external forcing ..." "If driven with estimates of external forcing" being the operable phrase. The estimates of the external forcing functions were developed in response to the model and not independently, so of course the models are "accurate". Anyone can "predict" a horse race after the fact, and tell you which horse was in the lead at any point; they can even make up rules to explain the lead changes, but if these models are so good, why aren't these great modelers making money at the track, could it be that there is more money to be made in "studying" climate change? You think I'm making this shit up? Here is the sentence that follows: "Information about the expected responses to external forcing, so called ‘fingerprints’, is usually derived from simulations by climate models ..." The hockey stick results from applying none of the corrections for volcanic eruptions and other temperature lowering events in predictions. Eyjafjallajökull and Mount St Helens could result in significant downward revisions to the predictions.

p26 - "Thus, concise, exact, and intuitively understandable language needs to be crafted that helps express this range of attribution results." Translation: "We need to use the same words that a marketing person would choose", too bad "new" and "improved" aren't suitable. The appropriate conclusion, one that a scientist would make, is that the models need to be improved before they are the basis for making policy decisions. I am not saying we should do nothing - just do things for other, more tangible and rational reasons. Reduce fossil fuel consumption because we should save our reserves since it is easier to make plastic out of oil than anything else, or because you hate sending money to Arab terrorists and Venezuelan revolutionaries.

p26 - On precipitation models: "... the magnitude of the observed change is larger (significantly so) than that of the multi-model mean fingerprint, raising questions about instrumental data and climate model realism." The models don't predict th

Now that's a comment which is informative

[Cochonou]

And should be modded up, so that people can make up their own mind about the subject.

Re:Now that's a comment which is informative

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Thats not a problem. There are countries with higher standard of living then the USA which accept the findings and also do something to fix it.

Given that countries can have a higher standard of living with a lot less carbon footprint shows that it should not be a problem for the USA to fix that too.

So the big problem are all climate deniers who cant accept the facts.

Re:Now that's a comment which is informative

[ShakaUVM]

>>Given that countries can have a higher standard of living with a lot less carbon footprint shows that it should not be a problem for the USA to fix that too.

It shouldn't be a problem, except environmentalists have been locking us into the status quo for the last 30 years. If you want to throw rocks at someone... take aim at a Green.

They've blocked nuclear power, solar plants, wind plants, tidal plants... given us the SUV, and discouraged rational thinking.

Re:First post

[ooshna]

mmm I love the G-milfs

Re:Creationist == Warmist

[TapeCutter]

"Seriously, if you believe AGW (and let's be specific here and call it out as Catastrophic AGW, because frankly, nobody gives a rats ass if human CO2 causes an increase in temps of 0.1C/century), give me your falsifiable hypothesis."

The warming trend is 0.14deg/decade, define "catastophic".

For AGW you can falsify it by showing Fourier's spectral analysis techniques don't work and therfore throw out much of astronomy, cosmology and quantum mechanics as a side effect. I imagine if you can manage such a feat your name will be immortalised in the history books.

For CO2 RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1), (Fourier 1824), where...
C2 & C1 are repectively the start and end concentrations of CO2.
RF is radiative flux in watts/m^2.

Here's a hint -> You don't need a supercomputer to calculate the forcing from CO2. A few hundred dollars worth of equipment is all you need to start your investigation.

Defining an ad hominem attack: plus, an example.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are to brutally honest, full of it.

Ad hominem has no place in this discussion.

I try to look past it, but there are plenty that you completely turn off with that line of attack.

"You're full of it" is not an ad hominem. Here's the definition, in fact, straight from the OED:

A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on abstract truth or logical cogency.

Someone who says that you're full of it isn't critiquing your character, the company you keep, your favorite sexual peccadillo, or anything of the sort. They're saying that your argument is bullshit. That's quite literally the opposite of an ad hom.

Now if you'd like an ad hom, I can certainly provide one. For instance:

Your post reminds me of countless whiny, petulant, holier-than-thou complaints I've heard in the past from people who claim to be neutral or agnostic on the issue of AGW. They haughtily demand that people arguing for the AGW model be absolutely impeccable in every aspect of their behavior, and seem perpetually on the lookout for any possible perceived example of arrogance that confirms their preconceptions about AGW proponents.

Yet you don't see them (for example) objecting when anti-AGW people make snide remarks about Al Gore, or float conspiracy theories about how AGW concerns are just a scam to make money off "green" technologies. (Which is the most insane crock of shit I've ever heard, BTW, because you can make a thousand times more money raping the environment than preserving it -- at least in the short term.) You don't see them demanding that people who froth at the mouth about "commie environmentalists" and "liberal elitists" rein themselves in.

In short, they claim that they want everyone to behave with respect and put forth cogent arguments, and yet all their criticisms are directed at one side of the argument. Though they claim to have no agenda, or to be interested solely in the truth, all their actions indicate otherwise. They are hypocrites at best, and border on being outright liars.

So in sum: not only do I think your argument sucks, I think you're a dishonest, condescending jackass (e.g. "I try to look past it") who needs to be taken down a few pegs.

Now that's an ad hom. :)

Re:Creationist == Warmist

[hsthompson69]

The warming trend is 0.14deg/decade, define "catastophic".

Well, the screaming from the greenies is usually 2C over a century...so 1.4C/century is probably worth ignoring for all practical purposes...unless you believe that 1.4C/century will cause 10m sea level rises, more hurricanes, the loss of all glaciers, etc, etc.

For AGW you can falsify it by showing Fourier's spectral analysis techniques don't work and therfore throw out much of astronomy, cosmology and quantum mechanics as a side effect.

What? How about something a little more directly related to AGW -> spectral analysis techniques don't mean that human created CO2 is causing catastrophic warming. Even though spectral analysis techniques may be necessary for AGW, they are not sufficient. Try a useful falsification.

Here's a hint -> You don't need a supercomputer to calculate the forcing from CO2.

Of course we don't -> we don't have a realistic model of forcing from CO2 that takes into account all of our known positive and negative feedbacks, but we can make a really naive model and calculate *something*. It just won't be true.

Fame?

[sjs132]

"fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong."

I thought the goal was to prove something right? You can not prove something wrong unless something is proven right first. So to say, Go ahead, prove me wrong and assuming that means your right would be a fallacy, right? or am I wrong?

My brain hurts... I need more caffeine.

Re:Fame?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong."

I thought the goal was to prove something right?

No, not at all. Science works by proposing hypothesis, which become theories and eventually well tested theories. The process by which this happens is experimentation that would falsify the theory. Every time an experiment fails to falsify the theory, the theory gains credibility. So science is all about conducting experiments designed to disprove theories (like the prevailing global warming theory).

You can not prove something wrong unless something is proven right first.

The scientific method never proves anything right. It implies a theory is right (inductive evidence if you took logic) based upon empirical tests (deductive).

...that means your right would be a fallacy, right? or am I wrong?

Nope, informal logic like science isn't about proofs it's about competing theories gathering support via a formalized logical methodology. Logic dictates that we should believe and act in accordance with the most supported theory at any given time, while still continuing to conduct additional experiments which could, at any point, change what that most supported theory is or require modification of it. The strength of a theory is based upon its ability to make useful predictions, that when tested don't "prove it wrong".

Re:Fame?

[medcalf]

No no, you have it backwards. You cannot ever prove a theory beyond doubt, because all it takes is one counterexample to upend the theory. For example, one of the most successful sets of laws ever devised was Newton's laws of mechanics. They succeeded, and still do for that matter, in accurately describing the motion of objects as we ordinarily observe them. There was just one niggling problem: when we observed Mercury closely enough, it was found that indeed the laws of Newton did not explain Mercury's motion. And thus the theory was disproved. There were actually a number of other things that were adding up against Newton's laws as well, but that was the last straw. But until Einstein was able to provide a replacement theory that better described the motion, and equally described the other observable motions, we didn't have a replacement that was better than Newton.

So the trick is to disprove the current theory, and then ideally to be able to offer a better in its place.

Re:Fame?

[ildon]

Science never proves anything right. It only proves things wrong or not yet wrong.

Re:Science is not 100% correct

[RebelWithoutAClue]

That's awesome. I'd mod you funny/insightful if I had any mod points.

The Knights Carbonic

[quokkaZ]

From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk Sent: 29th October 2009 To: The Knights Carbonic

Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called “the ordering of men’s affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man”, which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.

The early phases of the plan worked magnificently. First the Master’s initial thesis - that the release of infrared radiation is delayed by the atmosphere - had to be accepted by the scientific establishment. I will not bother you with details of the gold paid, the threats made and the blood spilt to achieve this end. But the result was the elimination of the naysayers and the disgrace or incarceration of the Master’s rivals. Within 35 years the 3rd Warden of the Grand Temple of the Knights Carbonic (our revered prophet John Tyndall) was able to “demonstrate” the Master’s thesis. Our control of physical science was by then so tight that no major objections were sustained.

More resistence was encountered (and swiftly despatched) when we sought to install the 6th Warden (Svante Arrhenius) first as professor of physics at Stockholm University, then as rector. From this position he was able to project the Master’s second grand law - that the infrared radiation trapped in a planet’s atmosphere increases in line with the quantity of carbon dioxide the atmosphere contains. He and his followers (led by the Junior Warden Max Planck) were then able to adapt the entire canon of physical and chemical science to sustain the second law.

Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.

The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the ten warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001(10). From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.

Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic Circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world’s glaciers.

Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world’s wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world’s biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, bird-watchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it.

The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The capture of George W. Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of footage filmed by a knight at Yale

Re:Bad analogy

[Chas]

I'm not questioning the instruments or anyone's integrity.

I'm merely telling you that what some of these people are questioning is NOT the scientific method.

Again, conflating one argument with another isn't productive and generates no useful dialog.

If you want to go rabid-attack-dog on someone, why not just join Scientology?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin do not require _me_ to pay up taxes to Al Gore and other big players who promote Man Made Global Warming. That's a huge difference.

So MMGW supportes, Christians and what not can declare as much as they can their religion as long as you they don't force me to pay for them just because of what they think.

TLDR;

[Anonymous Coward]

you're a nigger

The data and methods are not lost

[Anonymous Coward]

The data and methods are not lost. And that you continue to parrot the lie (denying the truth) is why you are a denier. Holocaust deniers are not called deniers because they are motivated by seeking the truth, but because no matter what they are told, they DENY the evidence.

DENY. DENIER.

We've gone waaay offtopic but here's something

[dbIII]

It truly amazes me how much misplaced hysteria about safety has arisen instead of just expecting to deal with dangerous things as if they are dangerous. The bulbs have traces of mercury in them - big deal - thermometers used to be full of the stuff. If one breaks you just make sure that nobody breaths in the vapour, you let its settle, and then you clean it up.
There is plenty of dangerous stuff around but the answer is to make sure it doesn't get into people systems - not stupid panic or outright lies about it being "clean" like the old school nuclear lobby. Most of the fear we have today was caused by utter bastards taking stupid shortcuts for profit which gave entire industries very bad names. That has left half the young population of the western world with a generalised fear of "chemicals" and "toxins" and the idea that any exposure in any form is potentially fatal.

I'd love a denialist on my jury

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love a denialist on my jury: there's no way to prove I'm a murderer until you SEE me commit another murder. After all, I may have gotten over it, even if it happened..!

Scare campaign, they are not going under

[dbIII]

you'll basicly wipe out the coal and oil industries

Some like to say that but it is really complete and utter bullshit. It would take decades to replace the infrastructure that depends on coal and oil, the natural gas industry is the same as the oil industry and coal gasification is taking off in a major way. Both forms of gas are seen as a "green" energy since less CO2 is produced so the oil and coal industries still win. It's not such a bad thing since coal seam gas means less dead miners if nothing else.
A carbon tax won't kill either industry but it will drive the cost of the stuff they sell up - more expensive fuel and more expensive electricity. It will hurt us but won't hurt the coal and oil industries much. Usage will go down a bit but we still need most of that transport and increasing amounts of electricity. None of those energy sources are going to be replaced overnight even if cheap fusion gets discovered tomorrow.

IPCC did major errors!

[GPLHost-Thomas]

and minor errors in the IPCC

This is enough to say that those scientists aren't serious. How can you call these errors "minor"?

Re:Bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all the big bang, evolution and earth's origin doesn't effect massive amounts of the world economy.

WTF? What the fuck does economic effect have to do with the validity of the science? Choosing to believe the science based on how much you think it will cost is beyond nuts.

Aliens Cause Global Warming

[FullBrain]

Long before climategate there was a excellent speach that Michael Crichton gave in 2003 that warned of this fraud. Titled "Aliens Cause Global Warming" he outlined and warned about the problems of scientists injecting themselves into science. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference, science and the nation will suffer." Oh and no one has died from global warming, but millions have from scientific consensus.

Re:Aliens Cause Global Warming

[maxwell demon]

Oh and no one has died from global warming,

There is no death which can be proved to be caused by global warming. But the victims of Kathrina are very likely victims of global warming.
It's just as if some strong smoker dies from lung cancer. You cannot prove that the lung cancer in his case was caused by his smoking, but it's very likely.

Bad Numbers, Good Point

[Geotopia]

Other than the stupid little fact that long term reflection measurements are ... nonexistent. Short term reflection measurements are scarce (and do not include a great many weather fenomena, nor are they anywhere near global measurements). So we don't know that. We could say that simple, initial measurements seem to indicate as much.

We don't need long term measurements. We just need to know how the mechanism works. Follow the logic... EM Radiation emitted from the sun hits the earth. A certain percentage is reflected away again, but the balance is absorbed and contributes to the (non-equilibrium) thermodynamic state which is ever increasing in kinetic energy (heat). So, even if there's variance in the ratio of absorption to reflection, until we light up like a sun ourselves and begin emitting EMR, we'll always be an open system with a positive caloric intake. That's the reality of any terrestrial body (until it becomes bursts in celestial glory or is consumed by a neighboring celestial body).

the fact that the earth remained between 10 and 25 degrees celcius for 2.8 billion years probably means that... did not kill all life on earth, nor did it kill all humans

Whoa, cowboy, where'd you get those numbers!? 2.8 Billion? Are you sure it's not 2.7 Billion? Maybe it's 2.9 Billion? Just because Congress spends that in dollars with a swipe of the pen, doesn't give credence or license to similar big number conclusions in science. I recently had my son go through his science text and white-out all the floating point decimals in the geology and astronomy sections. The nerve of any scientist who can't conform to the convention of least significant digits!

If you want to play with some math, here's an equation for you:

P(final) = P(initial) * e ^ (rate * time)

with a very low reproductive rate (less than 1/2%), homo sapien sapien haven't been on the planet for more than about 4,500 years (P(present) = 6.5B). It's unlikely that any species has been around more than 6,000 or 7,000 years or we'd be knee deep in whatever that species. Life isn't some billion year or even million year event, it tops out at about 8,000 years on a planet this size. Or (and this flies in the face of prevailing environmentalist efforts and ideology), prolonged life relies upon catastrophic global events to periodically wipe out life and we just happen to have no evidence that such abundance of life, let alone that many humans ever previously abode on this planet. Under that scenario, we'd be helping nature along by snuffing ourselves out through global warming or whatever the sky-is-falling catastrophe-of-the day is.

Next, ask how we derive the age of the earth and life thereon. It used to be carbon dating, but that was based on an assumption of a constant level and rate of absorption of Carbon 14 over eons, somewhat unlikely and unpredictable in an open system bombarded 24/7/365 with radiation, and equally unlikely to extrapolate on a linear basis (perhaps the short term/long term measurement problem is more applicable to this than earthly reflective measurements).

So, the dating methodology of choice is now based on a combination of Argon-Argon or Argon-Potassium Dating. Argon-Argon gets you a precise relative date (two samples in geographic proximity can be compared), Argon-Potasium gets you a good absolute date. But the problem is that Argon-Argon dating requires the sample have the Argon infused (AR is a gas and a noble gas at that) in the rock which only happens with igneous rock formations (like lava), and since lava flows generally consume (er, vaporize) living things in it's path, it's only good to fix the age of inanimate objects. But a bigger problem persists in that it also indicates re-constitution of rock formations, not necessarily the initial constitution. In fact, if I were to venture a guess, I'd put the age of the materials composing the earth at much more than 2.8B years old, while guessing the age of the planet a

It really is very well established

[nerdpocalypse]

It really is very well established. http://www.nerdpocalypse.net/climate.html There's oodles of supporting data. The deny'ers are not very credible. Frankly, you can see a lot of evidence outside my window. personally, I'm rather for reforestation, soil reclaimation as solution (which should have broad support), and I see carbon sequestration as a bit of a scam

Re:Integrety [sic]

[telomerewhythere]

And on top of that, they're starting now what they expect 'Daddy' to finish when he gets around to it. i.e. 'the earth and the works in it will be *burned up*'

Minority of NAS Membership signed??

[olafva]

Only 255/2450 NAS members signed this statement.
(NAS has 2100+350 foreign affiliates)
What are the views of the rest - not just this minority?

bad meeds cause lousy deeds ...

[noshellswill]

Of-course scientists need the threat of a liberal GUB'mnt gun-barrel to propel them along truths highway. Scientists are natural-born-power-pervos. Nobody is a natural-born-Stalinist like a scientist is a . Arrogant ... abstract ... proscriptive ... Unkil Joe coulda made every scientist a **general**. Common decency sez they should be privates.

Will reducing CO2 fix the problem?

[aggles]

Why can't we get past the question if and why - and on to the more important question, now what? There is little science that I've seen showing that anything we do will change things. Perhaps we are past the tipping point and just have to ride out the results. The economic costs of stopping CO2 emission are very high - and there is no guarantee it will do any good. Why not invest billions in fixing whatever climate change brings. Perhaps a carbon tax could go towards this, but my fear is global corruption will take control of this and we'll all get screwed.

Exxon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is funding it? Apparently Exxon: Exxon Mobil page on sourcewatch.org

Re:Exxon.

[Xonstantine]

And the CRU got funding from Shell and BP.

Re:Exxon.

[hkmwbz]

Source, please.

Re:Exxon.

[Xonstantine]

http://web.archive.org/web/20080627194858/http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

"Acknowledgements
This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):

        British Council, British Petroleum, Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF). "

Scary MWP

[tgibbs]

IF the MWP (and the other warm periods that we can see in ice core data) was global then that pretty much falsifies the current climate models. Thus, there's no "added" problem you describe we should be afraid of.

It suggests the possibility that the models might be incomplete. It certainly does offer any kind of evidence that an increase in CO2 does not create global warming, which is based upon well-established physics. If the MWP was indeed global, it suggests is that climate might be far more unstable than current models propose, and that there is some other mechanism besides CO2 that could produce a high degree of warming. This is very frightening, because add that to CO2 and who knows how much warming might result? Current climate models do not predict runaway global warming (the deadly Venus scenario) in response to anticipated rises in CO2. 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.

Re:Scary MWP

[budgenator]

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.

Re:Scary MWP

[tgibbs]

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

Weather seems to be chaotic, but there is little evidence that climate is. But if it would be very scary if true, because then a small perturbation--increasing CO2, for example--could initiate wild swings around that attractor, rather than the rather orderly and predictable behavior that current climate models exhibt. We certainly know that the planet has experienced temperature swings in the past that would be catastrophic if they happened today.

Re:Scary MWP

[budgenator]

Chaos is a property of a system that frequently transcends scale (Self-similarity), weather is an instance of climate, therefore if weather is chaotic, climate is chaotic. While in some chaotic systems a small perturbation yields wild swings, in others large pertrubations are quickly dampened out. Climatologist hate chaos because

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] Chaos Theory

it makes everything they are building their careers on pointless. Yet they can't seem to stay away from it, every time a climatologist says "forcings", "feedbacks" or "trip-points" they are talking about aspects of chaotic systems.

Re:Scary MWP

[Troed]

if climate is really as unstable as a global MWP would indicate

I'm sorry, but there's no scientific basis for your statements on MWP meaning "being unstable". Why do you claim there is?

Re:Scary MWP

[tgibbs]

Chaos is a property of a system that frequently transcends scale (Self-similarity [wikipedia.org]), weather is an instance of climate, therefore if weather is chaotic, climate is chaotic.

This does not follow, there are many examples of phenomena that exhibit chaotic behavior at one scale and regularity at another. Turbulent flow of fluid through a pipe is one example, in which the instantaneous flow can be chaotic, while the flow averaged over long periods of time is quite regular. You have to actually model the specific phenomena to know. Climate models similarly exhibit chaotic behavior a short time scales (what we know as weather) and regularity at longer time scales.

Re:Scary MWP

[tgibbs]

The claim is that there was a global warming period that was not do to any of the mechanisms of warming that have been identified by climate science. This implies a fundamental instability in global temperature. If global climate is really that unstable and unpredictable, then we should be even more concerned about the fact that we are currently involved in a massive perturbation of climate.

Re:Scary MWP

[budgenator]

Whether a flow is turbulent or laminar is irrelevant to whether the system is chaotic, the Navier–Stokes equations that model it remains the same. It's unfortunate that the word chaos is so ingrained because it's popular meaning and it's scientific meaning have so little in common, just like how greenhouse gases effect a planets temperature in a manner so different from how a greenhouse really works. The climates models assume regularity where it doesn't exist, for example they assume CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere, where in reality CO2 is not well mixed.

Re:Scary MWP

[Troed]

You do know that there are many mechanisms "climate science" readily admits to not being able to model?

There's no causative connection, whatsoever, between any one thing in "climate" (historic or current) that we're unable to model and the climate as a result of that being "unstable".

I completely fail to understand how you've come to believe there is :) It's not based in science anyway.

Re:Scary MWP

[tgibbs]

You do know that there are many mechanisms "climate science" readily admits to not being able to model?

While there are some phenomena that may not yet be modeled in detail, there is no reason to believe that there hides a "God of the gaps" waiting to leap out and save us at the last minute from CO2 induced global warming.

There's no causative connection, whatsoever, between any one thing in "climate" (historic or current) that we're unable to model and the climate as a result of that being "unstable".

The most likely explanation is of course that the MWP was local, not global, as current scientific opinion holds. But if in fact there are unknown factors that could warm the globe substantially, in addition to established ones such as CO2, then there is the risk that this unknown factor could unexpectedly kick in and add to CO2 induced warming perhaps making a difference between the dangerous but survivable warming that we now expect and a true disaster. This is certainly an argument for even greater efforts to control CO2

Re:Scary MWP

[Troed]

Again, sorry. Your opinion is not, in any way, based on the scientific principles.

There are indeed major gaps in our understanding of climate (that's how the whole CO2 argument began, and that's the source of the "travesty" statement) and when you don't know you cannot say how the thing you don't know about will affect the things you know little about.

As far as I know, the MWP was global - as detailed in numerous papers investigating climate from all parts of the world. I know there's an agenda driven argument trying to claim it was local (and then, I would assume, the same argument will be made for the other warm periods we know about) but those arguments don't stand up to scrutination.

You might want to ask yourself why you apparently WANT catastrophic future scenarious to be true.

So where are the models?

[tgibbs]

Yet nobody has managed to produce a climate model which is consistent with known physics, which is reasonably consistent with climate records, and which does not predict dangerous warming from the amount of CO2 humans are putting into the atmosphere. Considering that there are multiple wealthy interests that stand to lose financially from efforts to regulate CO2, and that would doubtless be willing to fund development of such a model, this seems kind of surprising, don't you think?

Hmmmm.... perhaps the notion that these models are poorly constrained and can be tweaked to do anything you want--an idea that seems to be widely held only by those who have never actually tried to create one--is a bit exaggerated?

Re:So where are the models?

[khallow]

Yet nobody has managed to produce a climate model which is consistent with known physics, which is reasonably consistent with climate records, and which does not predict dangerous warming from the amount of CO2 humans are putting into the atmosphere.

This statement is wrong. Almost all such models have a lower limit that does not predict "dangerous warming". I'm not saying that is the likely outcome, merely that being unable to rule out such an outcome is contrary evidence to your claim.

Re:So where are the models?

[tgibbs]

Actually, if you look at the statistical distribution of estimates from the models and other constraints on climate sensitivity, the lower limit is pretty well known, so the likelihood that anticipated increases in CO2 will not produce dangerous warming is quite small. What is not well established is the upper limit. This article gives the confidence limits on warming derived from various sources, and explains why the upper margin of error is so much wider than the lower one.

Moreover, there are a number of possible factors that could make the consequences of global warming much worse, but which are not understood well enough to model. These include possible destabilization of ocean methane clathrates to release massive quantities of additional greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and also destabilization of polar ice by mechanisms (e.g. ice sheet flow) other than melting (discussed here).

Re:So where are the models?

[mosb1000]

No, that's exactly what you'd expect. CO2 concentrations have been rising, and so have temperatures. Any model that will give you a result matching the data must show the two rising together. Any model that doesn't is immediately invalid because it fails to accurately reproduce historic temperatures.

What skeptics are saying is that the data shows a correlation, but that that doesn't necessarily mean causation. You can't point to a computer model to prove them wrong because the way computer models are generated and validated guarantees they will agree with the statistical result.

Re:So where are the models?

[khallow]

Actually, if you look at the statistical distribution of estimates from the models and other constraints on climate sensitivity, the lower limit is pretty well known

Well, here's a problem already. Last I checked, climate sensitivity wasn't well known. Instead they were extrapolating from typical interglacial sensitivity which would IMHO be considerably greater due to the presence of considerable ice fields in the Northern Hemisphere. The current environment has only two large land-based ice fields left. That means albedo changes from melting ice no longer will amplify the effects of greenhouse gasses. I don't see signs that they understand the new environment well enough to justify current estimates of sensitivity.

Moreover, there are a number of possible factors that could make the consequences of global warming much worse, but which are not understood well enough to model. These include possible destabilization of ocean methane clathrates to release massive quantities of additional greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and also destabilization of polar ice by mechanisms (e.g. ice sheet flow) other than melting (discussed here).

I agree with this part. But it's worth noting that current deposits of methane clathrates recently had another hundred meters or so of water poured on top (due to the recent end of the last ice age). I don't know what the phase curve looks like for clathrate stability, but this has to increase the temperature at which the clathrates remain stable. As to sea level rise from possible increased flow of ice, I don't consider that a serious issue. Most of what humanity makes in terms of buildings has a half life of something like a couple of decades. Just build the replacement buildings on higher ground (together with sensible changes in flood insurance in such places as the US), and most of the impact of sea level rise simply doesn't happen as people move away from flood-prone areas.

Re:So where are the models?

[tgibbs]

Well, here's a problem already. Last I checked, climate sensitivity wasn't well known. Instead they were extrapolating from typical interglacial sensitivity which would IMHO be considerably greater due to the presence of considerable ice fields in the Northern Hemisphere.

Check again. You clearly failed to read read the paper I cited, which lists multiple bases for estimating climate sensitivity and the error limits on each.

Here it is again (pdf).

Re:So where are the models?

[khallow]

Let's revisit your original claim in this area.

Actually, if you look at the statistical distribution of estimates from the models and other constraints on climate sensitivity, the lower limit is pretty well known, so the likelihood that anticipated increases in CO2 will not produce dangerous warming is quite small.

I don't see how that claim is supported by this paper. The paper doesn't provide hard limits, but merely repeats that there are a lot of estimates of CO2 climate sensitivity of 1.5C to somewhere above 5C (for some estimates) for a doubling of CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels. There is no point in the paper where they say something along the lines of "this observation or data implies a hard limit on CO2 climate sensitivity". Rather, when they do uncover such data, they say something like:

Some recent analyses have used the well-observed forcing and response to major volcanic eruptions during the twentieth century, notably the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The constraint is fairly weak because the peak response to short-term volcanic forcing has a nonlinear dependence on equilibrium sensitivity, yielding only slightly enhanced peak cooling for higher values of S (refs 42, 50, 51). Nevertheless, models with climate sensitivity in the range 1.5-4.5 C generally perform well in simulating the climate response to individual volcanic eruptions and provide an opportunity to test the fast feedbacks in climate models5,52,53.

and

Requiring that climate models reproduce the observed present-day climatology (spatial structure of the mean climate and its variability) provides some constraint on model climate sensitivity. Starting in the 1960s (ref. 27), climate sensitivities in early GCMs were mostly in the range 1.5-4.5 C. That range has changed very little since then, with the current models covering the range 2.1-4.4 C (ref. 5), although higher values are possible34. This can be interpreted as disturbingly little progress or as a confirmation that model simulations of atmospheric feedbacks are quite robust to the details of the models. Three studies have calculated probability density functions (PDFs) of climate sensitivity by comparing different variables of the present-day climate against observations in a perturbed physics ensemble of an atmospheric GCM coupled to a slab ocean model35-37. These distributions reflect the uncertainty in our knowledge of sensitivity, not a distribution from which future climate change is sampled. The estimates are in good agreement with other estimates (Fig. 3). The main caveat is that all three studies are based on a version of the same climate model and may be similarly influenced by biases in the underlying model.

Or

Some studies of other, more distant palaeoclimate periods64,65 seem to be consistent with the estimates from the more recent past. For example, the relationship between temperature over the past 420 million years64 supports sensitivities that are larger than 1.5 C, but the upper tail is poorly constrained and uncertainties in the models that are used are significant and difficult to quantify.

I recognize that to even discuss the idea of climate sensitivity, you need to have some sort of basic climate model. But here, as it appears to me, we construct elaborate models, then look at the climate sensitivity of the models we happen to be using that seem to best fit the data in question. There is little attempt to directly calculate the CO2 climate sensitivity. That opens things to a great deal of subjective bias. Given that this process also dosn't actually shrink the range of climate sensitivity estimates, indicates to me that current efforts aren't sufficient. Stating that in addition, you're not really certain about the bounds of these models, doesn't strike me as useful.

Re:Creationist == Warmist

[budgenator]

Adding Catastrophic in front of Apocalyptic Global Warming is redundant.

Peer review corrupted by pro-AGW 'scientists'

[Anonymous Coward]

Where were you when the rest of us heard this news?

Falling back on "oh you guys weren't peer reviewed so your science is crap" means you didn't get the memo that the entire peer review process has been corrupted or you're the exact sort of propgandist that the GP is complaining about.

Argument from Authority is also in your post. Figured I'd shove that off the table while I was here since it is so easy to do. Scientific societies and professional bodies, indeed. Consenus is a political term, not a scientific one. The sooner you learn that the sooner you stand a chance of seeing the wool in front of your eyes.

Either way your point is heavily blunted by your ignorance and closed mindedness.

Honestly...

[gillbates]

You can do better than that if you're trying to troll. But seriously, your post shows a complete lack of critical analysis and reasoning skills. Even the article you linked to quotes, "If just looking at the southern hemisphere, however, 2009 proved the warmest yet recorded since record-taking began in 1880."

You can avoid much embarrassment by downloading the actual data and running the stats yourself. It's not a single-year thing, it's a decade-long trend. One which looks surprisingly similar to what happened in the 1900-1910 timeframe. And it doesn't look good for AGW proponents at this point, even if you use their adjusted data. But that's not my point.

The article to which you linked is a classic example of the blind leading the blind. The *second* sentence is qualified in such a way so that it is not false, but the conclusion drawn is deliberately misleading. Global warming, we are told, is not about *local* changes, but changes happening to the entire planet. Hence, a warmer Southern Hemisphere is not really a problem if the Northern Hemisphere is proportionately colder. Your case of chronic inability to apply critical reasoning to what you read is sadly, an epidemic now.

The problem is not so much the issue of global warming, but rather, that we have a public at large who are:

1. Generally ignorant of the principles of science, and
2. Unable to perform even rudimentary critical thinking, and
3. Conditioned to trust whatever someone in authority tells them.

Even if climate scientists found a perfect model for global climate tomorrow, one which predicted weather with 100% accuracy, you would still have global warming pundits. Even if the model predicted global cooling. The problem is that the average layperson can be manipulated by well-articulated, albeit factually false, statements. And they vote. Understanding AGW is more of a political science question than a question of the science - even though the science is questionable (at this point). At some point, though, we will know the definitive answer, but regardless of which way the political question is decided, it has about a 50% chance of being wrong and costing everyone a lot of money.

Re:Honestly...

[hkmwbz]

Look, you need to stop embarrassing yourself. You are obviously a denialist who will stop at nothing to lie and deceive in order to undermine science and replace it with your religion/ideology. Your comments are like reading standard creationist bullshit: A mix of lies and ignorance. Educate yourself. Stop spewing lies. Thanks.

Re:Honestly...

[tbannist]

Sorry, bub, but nothing you wrote makes any sense.

1) I'm not sure how the "second warmest year on record" and "record setting warmest year in the southern hemisphere" combine to make you think "hey, it was pretty cold actually". Obviously the second warmest year on record, is the second warmest year on record.

2) The second sentence is pointing out a remarkable fact about the year that supports the premise. Anyone with basic reading comprehension would understand that. And one half of the world hardly seems to be a "local temperature" as you imply.

3) Global climate models aren't used to predict weather, they're used to predict climate trends. Climate and weather are not the same thing, if you don't understand the different, you're not educated enough to be a useful participant in the debate.

4) There are very few things that you don't know that have a 50-50 chance of being right. If that were the case, then there'd be a hell of lot more lottery winners.

Re:Integrety (sic)

[517714]

Oh, do you want Michael Mann's (the hockey stick guy) data specifically? Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.

MatLab? Well it must be a conspiracy if he didn't use FOSS.

The eruption of the volcano in Iceland

[mschuyler]

just cancelled out ALL the 'carbon mitigation' efforts around the world for the last five years. That's right. The volcano's CO2 emissions are more than was saved by all the Priuses, all the 'green' efforts to reduce carbon, the whole enchilada. So unless you get Mother Neture to sign on to Cap n Trade it doesn't matter much what you do. Ironically, the eruption will likely result in an overall cooling trend the same way the volcano in the Phillipines did a few years ago.

Re:The eruption of the volcano in Iceland

[21mhz]

Just in case you've been subscribed to this particular myth, volcanoes do not emit more carbon dioxide than humans.

Re:The eruption of the volcano in Iceland

[riverat1]

What I heard about the CO2 emissions from the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull is that the flights that were canceled would have emitted twice as much CO2 as the eruption was emitting. This eruption isn't nearly big enough to cause any significant global cooling. However when this volcano erupts then another, Katla, located nearby usually erupts as well and it could be a big enough eruption to cause global cooling.

One other factor in the eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines was that it is located near the equator and had effects in both hemispheres. The Icelandic volcanoes might not have a lot of effect on the Southern Hemisphere regardless of what they do.

Re:CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cor

[Anonymous Coward]

"Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years."

No it isn't. In the past CO2 release was a function of increasing temperature (part of the feedback). In the present, we are directly releasing CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. This didn't occur 800 years ago. As a result the CO2 is driving the temperature increase. This isn't difficult to learn, IF you actually WANT to.

"You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?"

And your point is? At the present time adding more CO2 results in greater global temperatures. Even if it didn't, adding additional CO2 has other negative effects.

Look, if you feel that we should take no action to prevent or correct AGW then have some integrity and say so. Don't use crappy and misleading arguments to oppose the science. Make an economic case why doing nothing is better than something.

Re:Bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

"-2 Overrated".
Who is shouting down whom, exactly?

WRONG, you arrogant fool!

[fishexe]

What does it mean to be a "climate denier"? No one denies there is "climate".

*I* deny that there is such a thing as "climate"!

Re:The big bang theory isn't going to cost trillio

[fishexe]

It might, if it manages to go 1,000,000 or so seasons without getting cancelled.

Shame sells!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an old trick. At least as old as Christianity.

No free lunch

[tgibbs]

Better solutions would be "How can we rarefy carbon dioxide into elemental carbon and oxygen prior to sequestration?", because elemental carbon is inert, and stable over geological time periods.--- Yet I keep reading all these widely publicised "Lets bury it in a big tank in the ground!" proposals

The reason all of that carbon is oxidized to CO2 is that this reaction yields energy. There is no free lunch in thermodynamics. To reverse that reaction and convert it back to elemental carbon and oxygen, you have to take all of the energy that we get out of burning fossil fuels and pump every bit it right back into the waste products (plus some extra due to thermodynamic losses). So considering the full cycle, burning fossil fuels would not yield energy, it would cost energy.

It is thus understandable that there has not been much interest in exploring this strategy.

Crank magnetism

[tgibbs]

That's not surprising, it certainly seems like a lot of anti-evolutionists are also in the anti-AGW battle.

Yes, this has been called "crank magnetism". People who are credulous enough to buy into one implausible conspiracy theory are very likely to believe in others. Anybody who has read the evolution or moon landing denial literature is likely to experience deja vu with respect to the kinds of arguments being employed by deniers of AGW.

Re:CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cor

[tgibbs]

You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?

However, CO2 is not saturated. Moreover, as you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you increase CO2 at upper altitudes where CO2 is still below the saturation point.

Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years. Not sure exactly what the world looked like 800 years ago since we only have proxy data, but there you go.

Not sure why you see this as a problem, as this is what the models predict. If something like increased solar radiation increases temperature, then CO2 rises as a response (due to decreased solubility of CO2 in warm water) and amplifies the increase in temperature, so the temperature increase leads the CO2 rise. On the other hand, if CO2 is added directly to the atmosphere, then temperature rises as a response (and amplifies the increase in CO2). So in this case CO2 leads temperature.

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

But Blizzard just patched D2!

Re:CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cor

[hsthompson69]

Moreover, as you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you increase CO2 at upper altitudes where CO2 is still below the saturation point.

Perhaps you misunderstand saturation. Only specific frequencies are absorbed by CO2. Only a certain amount of those frequencies are sent out by the sun. Once those frequencies are completely absorbed, no further absorption is possible, because no further frequencies of that sort exist. It is not as if CO2 is a sponge that cannot hold any more water, it's that CO2 has a specific range of frequencies it can absorb, and after it's done blocking those frequencies, additional CO2 doesn't block anything additional.

Imagine sunlight coming into your room. You put up an opaque sheet 5cm thick, and it blocks out all visible light. Put up 5cm more, and you're not blocking any additional light - it was already blocked by the first 5cm. Granted, x-rays may pass right through, but the spectrum in question has been dealt with.

Not sure why you see this as a problem, as this is what the models predict.

That's not a prediction, that's an ad hoc rationalization. If you see CO2 lagging, you assume that there was no "CO2 added directly to the atmosphere" (even though, no matter what the source, human, ocean, plant or otherwise, it's still "added"). If you see CO2 leading, you assume that the CO2 as "added directly". You haven't built a falsifiable model because neither lead nor lag (heads or tails) can tell the difference between whether or not your model was right or wrong.

Put another way, we could simply state that CO2 lagging meant that plankton were having a massive die off, and CO2 leading meant that plankton were having a massive bloom -> you haven't made the case that plankton had anything to do with anything, you simply asserted that any observation must be explained in this arbitrary manner.

Re:CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cor

[hsthompson69]

In the present, we are directly releasing CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. This didn't occur 800 years ago.

First of all, let's stop using the term "fossil fuels". Petroleum products aren't made out of dead animals (just think about all the methane atmospheres on various moons in our solar system, and ponder how a "fossil fuel" got there without life).

Second, the fraction of CO2 that humans contribute through their activity is vanishingly small compared to natural sources. The argument being made is that somehow the climate system is so sensitive that even small changes can cause a "tipping point"...one, that you may be glad to know, never shows up in any of the proxy record.

Climate is generally insensitive to CO2 concentrations, and contains negative feedback loops ignored by the models which assert high sensitivity.

Even if it didn't, adding additional CO2 has other negative effects.

Like increasing plant growth. Yeah, real negative there if you like trees.

Make an economic case why doing nothing is better than something.

Sure, I'll grant you that -> a warm world is a better world for humans. The medieval warm period and other climate optimums in the past were times of prosperity for humans, and if we could increase the temperature of the higher latitudes, crop yields and arable land mass, we'd be better off.

So I've got two beefs with catastrophic AGW -> 1) they're overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2 and 2) they're completely wrong about the effects any warming would have on humanity.

If you want to harm humanity, reduce temperatures. Fear the coming ice age.

Highly respected theories...only in your own minds

[BitZtream]

I don't buy into the following theories 100% (explanation to follow):
Global Warming
The big bang theory
The earths origin

I do believe in evolution, because I and many others have witnessed it happening on multiple occasions in controlled environments.

No one saw The Big Bang. Its a theory, built on theories about things we've never witnessed or see and are only mathematical concepts, which are in turn build on things we've never witnessed or seen and are only mathematical concepts that we've not been able to disprove. Scientists have determined these things happened based on models we created, not based on reality. Models that are CONSTANTLY being refined to deal with the fact that they are full of unexplainable deviations from the real universe. Its nothing more than a fantasy really, made by through a whole bunch of guesses (I won't even call them educated at this point since the 'education' is likely wrong since we have no direct evidence).

No one saw the Earth form, at least no one thats willing to come show us the time lapse movie of it. The current running theory (pardon me if it changed again this week) is that our solar system formed when particles of matter were compressed by a shockwave from a nearby supernova. We have based this on models we created, based on observations of things we've seen and then extrapolated (more like made up via trial and error) the other bits until our model aligns with the current solar system. The problem is that this theory is pretty much destroyed by the fact that we think the Ort cloud exists, which fucks up the whole model. The reality is, our sun and solar system could be the second round of this solar system. It is entirely possible (admittedly very unlikely) that our star has went nova and recondensed into its current state. You can say 'it doesn't work that way' and I'll just laugh at you since you've got 0 proof and only unproven theories based on unproven theories based on unproven theories (continue this for about 80 iterations). 'How the solar system formed' or 'how the earth formed' is just a guess and nothing more until you show me the picture of it happening.

I've seen more proof of Jesus and God than I've seen of the Big Bang theory or the formation of our planet. It amazes me that so many people detest the idea of a god, but will buy into some of the bullshit that 'scientists' spit out. I can understand not believing in a god, I get that, it just amazes me that most people who don't believe in god will give their reasons why then completely ignore the fact that those same reasons apply to most scientific theories.

These two are examples of scientists being arrogant fucks and the general public just believing what they say as fact rather than just a guess (again, I wouldn't call it an educated one considering our understanding of astrophysics is absolutely shitty)

Global warming is a political scare tactic. I do believe its happening. I have no doubt actually. I just don't buy that we have any real influence on it since its happened before, plenty of times, on this nice pretty cycle ... which guess what ... we're right in the middle of the hotter part of the cycle ... According to science (real science, not this morons who can't keep their data straight and have what I'd argue is the worst fucking record keeping practices on the planet) this 'heat' is part of a perfectly normal cycle that we have no real part in, yet another group, who became much more vocal once this issue got some political mention, thinks the end is near and demands we put effort into furthering their political agenda.

When you have data that contradicts your statements, and your models are models you made up to suit the outcome that you wanted to get, then it becomes very hard for me to give a shit about what you're saying.

I have models showing the Windows never crashes and that Linux crashes every 1.4 seconds after the kernel starts regardless of

Re:Integrity

[arcticinfantry]

Oh. You were talking about *those* people. Good thing there aren't any of them on our side which is lily white ethically speaking. I'm glad that the ideologues at the IPCC can do my thinking for me and I don't have to worry about them doing anything unethical. They're scientists for gosh sakes!! That means we can trust them.

An important question to ask:

[Anonymous Coward]

If a person or organization were trying to promote a centrally-planned worldwide political economy through incremental means, how would that person's or organization's proposed policies differ from the policies being promoted as a "solution" to the "crisis" of AGW?

For as long as there have been human societies, there has been the ambition of a worldwide empire. Always, that ambition has run up against local opposition - from competing rulers or competing political units. In our modern world, a strategy besides brute military force is being used to try to create a world empire. That strategy is to try to create a panic about an issue that transcends national borders and, thus, requires solutions which trump national sovereignty. The two most popular issues in use for this purpose are "the environment" and "public health".

By-the-way, there is nothing about welfare-queens-in-lab coats, i.e. government funded "scientists", that makes them immune from corruption. If arguing that the planet is about to turn into a boiling infernal unless everyone surrenders all control of their lives to politicians who will protect them from "evil corporations" making "obscene profits" will grant fame and fortune, then some of those welfare-queens will be only too happy to assist in creating the Big Lie.

Slashdot reflecting the outside world:

[beachdog]

The letter reported is a very serious sign of great trouble in the social fabric. The letter is partly driven by the Virginia elected official launching a fraud investigation of a climate scientist.

Another recent sign of great trouble was the Chinese led blocking of global CO2 emission goals. That was a national political decision to ignore the science and seek a few more years of national economic advantage.

Right here at home, I did a spreadsheet working out the energy savings of 1/3 to 1/7th if we bought a new refrigerator.

The significant other vetoed all energy considerations, saying "It has to be a stainless steel household refrigerator that will increase the resale value of the house. If you buy anything else, you will have to take it back."

So we have this enormous problem; science pointing one way, and a lot of forces pulling the other way saying "Not yet... not yet..."

Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

What skeptics are saying is that the data shows a correlation, but that that doesn't necessarily mean causation. You can't point to a computer model to prove them wrong because the way computer models are generated and validated guarantees they will agree with the statistical result

It sounds as if you imagine that global climate models are statistical models that fit historical correlations and extrapolate them forward into the future. This is not correct.

Rather, they are physical models. They model causal links, not statistical correlations. So if the model exhibits a correlation between two measures, such as e.g. temperature and CO2, it is because the fundamental physics--the spectral properties of CO2, the temperature dependence of CO2 solubility in water, etc. predicts a causal link which will result in a correlation. So to come up with a model that does not predict that increased CO2 will result in increased temperatures, one would need to hypothesize and model additional physical mechanisms that would limit or compensate for the warming effect of CO2, thereby reducing the magnitude of the correlation. However, to be credible, your model would have to remain consistent with the observed correlations seen in current and historical data, as well as the climate response to "natural experiments" such as volcanic eruptions.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I meant what I said. No one would put forth a model that disagres with the data, therefore an agreement with the stastical result is a foregone conclusion.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[mosb1000]

At the risk of repeating myself: the problem is that all computer models are validated against real world data. That means they will will always agree with historical data when using the computer model to "predict" past behavior. Since this is true, you can not silence criticism with computer models.

Perhaps if, as you claim, a computer model was derived only from observable and measurable physical phenomena, an undiscerning man might accept it as proof. However, that is not true. While climate models do incorporate those things, they also incorporate "parameterizations" to allow for variables too complex to simulate.

This truth about climate models should be obvious. If we can't accurately simulate fluid dynamics in general (much less in a two-phase system) how could we presume to simulate the climate, which is made up of fluids? All computer models of such phenomena must be validated against real world data. Hence the problem with claiming climate models predict the past. You can not claim to have predicted data that you used to validate your prediction, because an agreement is a foregone conclusion.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

No, I meant what I said. No one would put forth a model that disagres with the data, therefore an agreement with the stastical result is a foregone conclusion.

If you are saying that every model that is consistent with the data necessarily predicts global warming as a result of CO2 released by man, then aren't you affirming that global warming must occur?

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

Perhaps if, as you claim, a computer model was derived only from observable and measurable physical phenomena, an undiscerning man might accept it as proof. However, that is not true. While climate models do incorporate those things, they also incorporate "parameterizations" [wikipedia.org] to allow for variables too complex to simulate.

So all somebody has to do to refute predictions of global warming is come up with a model using whatever parameterizations you like that remains consistent with historical data but does not exhibit substantial global warming in response to the amounts of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans.

Yet oddly, nobody has managed to do this. Perhaps those parameterizations are not in fact as arbitrary as you contend, but rather tightly constrained by the physics and the historical climate record, such that every model that is consistent with the data ends up predicting global warming.

This truth about climate models should be obvious. If we can't accurately simulate fluid dynamics in general (much less in a two-phase system) how could we presume to simulate the climate, which is made up of fluids?

One might just as well argue that we should give up trying to pump fluids through pipes to deliver water to our homes and ship fuels across the world, because these involve fluid dynamics. Similarly, we should give up trying to design machines that fly through the air or move through the water, because these involve simulations of fluid dynamics. Or perhaps the task of making predictions about the behavior of fluids is not quite as hopeless as you imagine?

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[mosb1000]

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to model the climate, I am saying that we don't currently know how to model the climate from first principles. You were the one who said models didn't use parameterizations. You were wrong.

A tightly constrained parameter is something we know with certainty through direct measurement, such as the absorption spectrum of CO2, or the equation of state for water, or the amount of radiation emitted by the sun, or the global temperature of the atmosphere. Other things, like the weather patterns or the way clouds form are not tightly constrained.

I don't know whether or not it's possible to create another plausible model that is not dependent on CO2, I'd have to try it. I don't know if anyone else has, if they did they didn't publicize the result. I am not really arguing with you about whether or not CO2 is likely to cause global warming. In my opinion it is. But I really do have a problem with people who don't know what they're talking about claiming that global climate models "predict" the past. That's not true, and it doesn't make any sense. You can't predict the past.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to model the climate, I am saying that we don't currently know how to model the climate from first principles. You were the one who said models didn't use parameterizations. You were wrong.

Please cite where I supposedly said that models didn't use parameterizations (actually, I cited to you an article that described the parameterizations and how they are done). But parameterizations are still constrained because they have to be consistent with observations. Nobody to date has been come up with a parameterization that alters the overall conclusions of climate models. And considering how many wealthy interests stand to lose from efforts to limit emissions, it is a safe bet that it is not from want of trying.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[Anonymous Coward]

You said most critical parameters are well known from other data, that is not true (using qualifiers for your words is no defense for making false statmentes, even one free parameter is too many if it's an important one like cloud formation). You claimed models predict the past. That is not only false, it doesn't make sense.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

You said most critical parameters are well known from other data, that is not true

So show some evidence that crititcal parameters are not well constrained from other data. It should be easy if they are as unconstrained as you imagine. Just take one of the publicly available climate models and show that you can alter the conclusions by changing one of the parameterizations without losing consistency with established physics or historical data.

Considering all of the effort that has gone into attacking the theory of climate change, isn't it surprising that nobody has yet succeeded in doing this?

But perhaps you will be the first.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[mosb1000]

Just take one of the publicly available climate models and show that you can alter the conclusions by changing one of the parameterizations without losing consistency with...historical data.

But I've just spent this entire time trying to explain to you that establishing a parameter based on historical data precludes the notion that you are "predicting" the historical data. All I am saying is that if you use the historical data to validate the parameter you can not then go and claim the model predicts the historical data, it is a forgone conclusion that it will match the data because that was a condition for establishing the parameter's value in the first place. So the purposes of predicting the past (that doesn't even make any sense!) you can not claim that a parameter, established by fitting historical data, is well constrained.

Either you can use the historical data to validate the parameter, or you can use the parameter to validate the historical data. You can not do both. Again, I am not saying that computer models do not have value in predicting things, what I'm saying is that they haven't been around long enough for us to really know whether the models' predictions are accurate.

Re:Causality vs correlation in climate models

[tgibbs]

But I've just spent this entire time trying to explain to you that establishing a parameter based on historical data precludes the notion that you are "predicting" the historical data.

Any valid model must be consistent with historical data, so historical data offers a critical "sanity check" on climate models.

Either you can use the historical data to validate the parameter, or you can use the parameter to validate the historical data.

It is validation in the sense that it demonstrates that the model's equations are consistent that data. This is not necessarily the case for a physical model. Physical models are not infinitely malleable. For example, you cannot fit historical data on planetary orbits if you assume that the Law of gravity obeys an inverse-cube relationship, even if you allow G to be a free parameter. Moreover, one does not necessarily need to use all of the historical data for parameter estimation; you could use one subset for parameter estimation and another subset for testing.

So it is meaningful that nobody so far has been able to come up with a physical climate model that manages to retain consistency with historical and experimental data, yet does not predict serious warming in response to CO2 released by humans.

AGW is terrible science fueling a scam

[induhvidual]

People who believe not only that CO2 is the primary cause of warming, but that the man-made component of CO2 in the atmosphere is the primary cause of warming are simply gullible beyond belief. They have fallen for a scam, plain and simple.

The only way to believe such foolishness is to never have studied the millions of years of temperature fluctuations throughout the Earth's recent history. True believers in AGW have to deny the existence of the two Holocene optimums, the Minoan warm period, the Roman warm period, the Medieval warm period, plus the cooling phases in between them such as the Little Ice Age, etc. Then they base their entire belief system on an increase in CO2 during the warming from the LIA back to temperatures that are normal for the current interglacial climate (the Holocene). They mistakenly assume the increase in CO2 is the cause of the warming that occurred due to other factors, and presto: AGW is born.

The terrible science behind AGW does serve one "useful" purpose: it has become the basis for a variety of scams to regulate, tax and trade CO2, and that is why it is still being hyped in spite of disasters such as Climategate. There is too much money at stake for the AGW scammers to simply give up and walk away. Governments want the tax revenue from regulating CO2. Congress recently submitted budget projections to the CBO (used to estimate the size of future deficits) which included $873 Billion in tax revenue from regulating CO2 over a 10 year period. That is 873 billion reasons for them to want AGW to be believed to be true. It is not only governments. Some businesses want the transaction fees and profits from trading CO2 permits. Estimates of the size of those markets vary, but they are all measured in TRILLIONS of dollars. Other businesses want the handouts and competitive advantages they have been promised in return for their support for cap-and-trade schemes.

Better hypotheses to explain Earth's constantly changing climate exist, but they all have to do with mechanisms that affect the Earth's albedo (reflectivity) and/or the amount of radiation reaching the Earth. These include variations in the amount of radiation from the Sun, the combined magnetic field strength of the Sun and the Earth with respect to cosmic rays forming aerosol particles in the Earth's atmosphere, variations in the Earth's orbit and axial tilt, and so on. Other important forcings include oceanic/atmospheric circulation patterns such as the PDO, NAO, etc. However, none of the causes from any of these competing hypotheses can be regulated or taxed or traded - which is the primary reason the failed AGW hypothesis is still being hyped.

Meanwhile, the current grand solar minimum of solar cycle 24 combined the PDO entering a cooling phase essentially guarantees that the next 30 years will have gradually cooling temperatures. This process has already begun (the transition from warming to cooling occurred during the 2000's), and the effects of the cooling are starting to be noticed by more and more people over time. Incredibly, the AGW scammers are now trying to convince people that global warming leads to global cooling. Fortunately, most people with an ounce of common sense are not buying that B.S. anymore. The scammers are also trying to shift their AGW scare tactics away from temperature trends (which are not cooperating) toward ocean acidification instead.

At this point, with the competing hypotheses finally being disseminated and published (after being successfully suppressed for so long), I don't believe they are going to have much luck with their AGW re-branding efforts. The only thing I can be sure of is that they will keep on trying.

Expecting reasoned discourse is silly

[minstrelmike]

I read a lot of comments here and elsewhere trying to inject reason into this debate.

Silly kids, reason is for geeks and scientists and thinkers.
Reason is NOT how we choose public policy. In monarchies and dictatorships, one person gets to choose the policy. In democracies, we choose policy the same way we choose Top 40 music hits--by popularity.

This rant has nothing to do with global warming or climate change or science and everything to do with how humanity operates itself.

Post your code/data please...

[mnewcomb]

As an open source software developer, until they post all their code and data, I will continue to be skeptical of their software models...

CO2 "saturation"

[tgibbs]

Perhaps you misunderstand saturation. Only specific frequencies are absorbed by CO2. Only a certain amount of those frequencies are sent out by the sun. Once those frequencies are completely absorbed, no further absorption is possible, because no further frequencies of that sort exist.

While scientific errors are eventually corrected in the scientific literature, it seems that within the denialosphere no error ever dies. You are repeating an early mistake--one that was recognized and corrected half a century ago. The source of the error was the failure to properly consider transfer of energy among layers in the atmosphere.

What turns out to be critical is the altitude from which energy is radiated into space. Adding CO2 at higher altitudes has the effect of moving the effective altitude of radiation emission up to higher altitudes from which radiation is emitted less effectively, because it is cooler. Even if CO2 is saturated at lower altitudes, it will not be at the highest, so it is possible to A more detailed explanation is provided here

That's not a prediction, that's an ad hoc rationalization. If you see CO2 lagging, you assume that there was no "CO2 added directly to the atmosphere" (even though, no matter what the source, human, ocean, plant or otherwise, it's still "added"). If you see CO2 leading, you assume that the CO2 as "added directly".

It's not an assumption, it is an unavoidable consequence of the physics of CO2 absorption and solubility. 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--and if CO2 is directly added to the system, then temperature will increase later on. Since global climate models are physical models that incorporate the radiation absorption/emission spectrum of CO2 and the temperature dependence of CO2 solubility, they necessarily exhibit this behavior.

Again the myth of the lost data

[tgibbs]

I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost.

Because they have actually looked into these claims and have discovered them to be false. The raw climate data is retained and archived by the various national meteorological services that obtained and owns it

Climate science is actually one of the more open fields of science, and a great deal of the data, methods, even code for computer models is publicly available.

A good index can be found here

The data is alive and well

[tgibbs]

timesonline got it wrong. CRU does not produce original data, and never even had the originals of the raw data in their possession. The original raw data is owned and retained by the various national meteorological services that obtained it. They don't send out their originals to anybody. Copies of the data were loaned to CRU for purposes of analysis. There is no particular reason for CRU to retain those copes after the study was completed and the results published. Scientific etiquette and common decency demands that raw data should be requested from the group that obtained it. Besides, any real scientist who wanted to check their conclusions would go to the source for the most authoritative, up-to-date data.

While some meteorological services charge a fee for access to the data, much of it is available to the public for free. A useful index to the available data, both raw and processed, is available here

Clear Climate Code

[tgibbs]

Some guys claim that the data cannot be reanalyzed and compiled.
Meanwhile other guys are simply doing it.
Clear Climate Code is an independent group that is analyzing the publicly available GISTEMP data set, and also reviewing their analysis software and rewriting it for greater clarity.

So far, their results have been in good agreement with published work.

Climate Scientists, NAS, and Al Gore

[tgibbs]

Unless folks here disagree with the statement. Then they are not climatologist and should be ignored.

Members of the National Academy of Science are not random folks--they are people who have a lifetime of experience evaluating scientific data, and major scientific accomplishments attesting to their skill.

So while the professional climatologists are doubtless the most qualified to evaluate scientific data and methods, if for some reason you doubt their ability or honesty, the NAS (and similar independent scientific societies of other nations) are the next most authoritative source.

As for Al Gore, he has no particular qualifications in climate science, he is just a skilled communicator who listens to and reports what the real scientists are saying. But climate scientists who have reviewed Mr. Gore's movie have concluded that while there were some minor errors, he got it mostly right.

Re:Climate Scientists, NAS, and Al Gore

[TheTurtlesMoves]

You are missing my point. So many here use the excuse to not listen to someone *regardless* if its not towing the AGW party line. I know plenty of National Academy of Science folks that don't tow the line, and if it was them claiming the sky is not failing. Many, if not most, would use the excuse they are not climatologists.

Big waves washing over cites like some high budget hollow flick is "mostly right". Perhaps you should read the peer reviewed stuff, where the scientists are required to back sweeping statements like "unprecedented" change. You get a different picture entirely, and they in fact don't use such language since the data doesn't really support it.

Previously it was asserted that "big oil" was the money behind the skeptics/deniers whatever. But hay the billions in carbon credits? Na Al Gore should be totally trusted.

Re:Climate Scientists, NAS, and Al Gore

[tgibbs]

You are missing my point. So many here use the excuse to not listen to someone *regardless* if its not towing the AGW party line. I know plenty of National Academy of Science folks that don't tow the line

I think that if the elite independent scientific academies had come out stating that there is reason for doubt about the reality of global warming, there would be substantial basis for doubt. But the reality is that virtually every major National Academy of Sciences has endorsed the view that CO2 induced global warming is a real problem.

Big waves washing over cites like some high budget hollow flick is "mostly right". Perhaps you should read the peer reviewed stuff, where the scientists are required to back sweeping statements like "unprecedented" change. You get a different picture entirely, and they in fact don't use such language since the data doesn't really support it.

I don't think that anybody has claimed that the projected temperatures are unprecedented if you include prehistoric times, although such a massive injection of CO2 probably is, since we know of no natural source capable of this.

Here's a statement from the US NAS investigation of the "hockey stick," one of the most eminent peer-review groups every constituted:

"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies."

"Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified."

Al Gore should be totally trusted

I don't think that anybody should act on the basis of trust in any politician. But in this case, it turns out that Al Gore is merely repeating what the most authoritative scientific sources worldwide have already concluded.

The magical unidirectional energy transfer

[hsthompson69]

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.

Re:The magical unidirectional energy transfer

[tgibbs]

Your proposed model defies basic physics. When CO2 "re-radiates", it does so in all directions, not just down towards the earth.

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're making an unfalsifiable assumption there. Any observation supports your theory without showing that it has made an accurate prediction.

What is unfalsifiable? The temperature dependence of CO2 solubility? Easily tested in the lab. The spectral absorbance and radiation characteristics of the CO2 molecule? Also testable in the lab. The prediction is a mathematical consequence of these falsifiable assumptions.

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).

Not true. All mathematical derivations are fundamentally tautological. Very often, the consequences of a tautological transformation of a theory will tell you how the theory can be tested.

However, it is not true that any lead time will be consistent with the model, because the kinetics of these processes are modeled and predicted also. 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.

Re:The magical unidirectional energy transfer

[hsthompson69]

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.

Re:Bad analogy

[riverat1]

It won't take a hundred years. It'll be too obvious for most people to ignore within 10-20 years.

Re:CO2 increases lag temp increases in the ice cor

[hkmwbz]

Stop fucking spewing the same tired old creationist/denialists talking points, already. All your drivel is answered ad skepticalscience.com. Read it and educate yourself instead of being a fucking ignorant moron.

Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

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."

Re:Defining an ad hominem attack: plus, an example

[osgeek]

An ad hominem is attacking the person rather than the argument.

Telling me I'm full of it is a personal attack.

On a personal note: I hope you learn to control your anger better and realize that all the verbal flailing about only makes you look bad, not me.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hkmwbz]

You just gave me a few links to right-wing political blogs with a history of lies and deception. They are useless. I don't give a shit about the politics behind all of this. Look at the science, not at right-wing political blogs that agree with your superstitious beliefs.

And your pathetic straw man is indeed worthy of a true creationist. Like creationists, you are misrepresenting the scientific position. You are saying that scientists are saying:

"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 naturalistic processes."

Well, duh! That's what science deals with. Not your religious delusions about science.

Re:Creationist == Warmist

[phlinn]

Unfortunately, that 5.35 value is NOT well sourced. It's only necessary to kill that equation. Your video shows the effect that yes, CO2 can act as a greenhouse gas. It does not demonstrate the size of the effect, nor even that this is the proper form of equation to calculate warming.

That .14deg/decade is only true with adjustments made to the instrumental record. Using UHCN v2 data, which is part of GISS, I checked the effect of adjustments on annual averages. Although my google docs skills make it trickier, when using excel to graph, I had it add trendlines and display the equation for them. The slope of the TOBS adjustments trendline alone is twice the slope of the raw data. The TOBS adjustments have a nice quadratic shape, which reduces the preveious warm anomaly of the 30's and increases the warming trend later. If you plot the adjustments for any given station at random, they appear chaotic, but seem to cancel out to fit a pretty smooth curve. Could be a spurious regression... but it's pretty damn suspicious. There is no reason to expect time of observation of any given station to vary as much as their adjustments do or to do so in a way that averaged out across all stations it creates a smooth curve.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

"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 naturalistic processes."

Let me finish this for you, so you understand where the real science is being done:

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

The default reason for something, when doing science, is as you say, "naturalistic processes". Attributing unknowns to some intelligent designer or actor (be it man or God), is what creationists do.

Think harder, it might help.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hkmwbz]

The default reason for something, when doing science, is as you say, "naturalistic processes".

I see. So you consider human beings to be supernatural. Not part of nature. I see now why you have such major problems with both AGW and the Theory of Evolution: You are deeply irrational, ignorant and superstitious.

Your argument is: "If anyone says that humans have done something, he's a creationist." LOL. News flash: Humans are observable, and naturalistic/part of the natural world.

But hey, keep misrepresenting the science and spreading your religious dogma!

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

I see. So you consider human beings to be supernatural. Not part of nature.

No, I consider human beings to be intelligent, and therefore naturally analogous to God in the intelligent design theory.

That being said, you bring up an interesting point -> why are things that humans do not considered part of nature? Why is a BMW considered any less natural than a spruce tree? Taken to the logical conclusion with catastrophic AGW, the religious statement becomes:

"After understanding all of the natural drivers that we know of, we cannot account for X degrees C of the observed global warming, therefore, changes must be due to man, even though "man" is just one of many possible natural drivers that we don't completely understand."

Your argument is: "If anyone says that humans have done something, he's a creationist."

No, my argument is that "If anyone says that because we are ignorant of certain factors, it must be due to some arbitrary actor, then they are acting like a creationist." Asserting certainty of a theory based upon ignorance is the hallmark of AGW and intelligent design.

Tell you what, offer me up your falsifiable hypothesis, and then we can talk science. Until then, feel free to worship at the Church of Global Warming.

That's more true than you know

[Benfea]

Both the global warming conspiracy theorists and the Talking Snake Theory of Creation proponents have been borrowing tactics from the tobacco industry. They create a series of fake labs that churn out laughably bad "science papers" that are full of big words that fool none of the scientists but are more than enough to fool the average joe on the street. Funding for the labs, the research, and the "science publications" are hidden behind a series of shell companies. Then they have the usual blowhards in the media throwing tantrums about how the "real science" is being suppressed by a communist conspiracy.

Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hsthompson69]

No data was destroyed. A small part of a local copy of some data was deleted. The original data still exists

Yes, the data was destroyed and the originals no longer exist. See:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

Now, whether or not this was incompetence or malfeasance could be an open question.

What makes you think the original data still exists when Phil Jones himself testified that they only had the "value-added" data, since losing the original data in the 80s?

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/

"We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added data."

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hkmwbz]

Yes, the data was destroyed and the originals no longer exist. See:

That article is 404, but it is wrong anyway. It doesn't matter if some dishonest journalist keeps repeating this lie. No data was lost. Only local data was deleted.

What makes you think the original data still exists when Phil Jones himself testified that they only had the "value-added" data, since losing the original data in the 80s?

Stop being a fucking moron, and pay attentiont. The original raw data is still around. The CRU licensed that data from elsewhere. When they deleted a tiny part of the raw data, that data was still available from where they licensed it from (and still is).

"We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added data."

Yes, you fucking moron, the CRU does not. But the data was not lost or deleted. The original licensors still have the raw data.

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hsthompson69]

No data was lost. Only local data was deleted.

Phil Jones admitted losing the original data. Repeating your lie does not make it true.

The CRU licensed that data from elsewhere. When they deleted a tiny part of the raw data, that data was still available from where they licensed it from (and still is).

Put on your clue-hat, you're missing it. The whole point of CRU was that it made all of these predictions and projections based on manipulating data that they now cannot account for. While certainly some of the raw data can be found in the original locations from whence it came, we can't tell from whence it came.

Imagine a pile of 100,000 sticks. CRU made its conclusions based on 100 of those sticks, but has no idea which 100 sticks it was now, since they deleted the data. Hell, Phil Jones couldn't even find his mythical data sharing agreements which kept him from releasing their data supposedly!

You really think you can defend this guy?

But the data was not lost or deleted. The original licensors still have the raw data.

But, thanks to shoddy work at the CRU, we have no idea which original licensors were used, or what subsets of data from them were used. This is the same sort of malarkey CRU was trying to pull when they said "oh, you can get our public data from other sites!", when in fact, understanding *which* station data they were using was the important part. You're missing the forest for the trees.

AGW denialism, creationism, and tobacco denialism. Same shit, new wrapping.

So sayeth the high muckity muck hkmwbz of the Church of Global Warming! Keep digging, you'll find your brains somewhere buried in the ground :)

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hkmwbz]

Phil Jones admitted losing the original data.

No he didn't. He said that they deleted a small part of a local copy of the data. How can he lose the original data when they licensed it from somewhere else, and the place they licensed it from still has the same data?

The whole point of CRU was that it made all of these predictions and projections based on manipulating data that they now cannot account for.

On the contrary, the findings of the CRU have been independently verified by scientists from all over the world. Indeed, several investigations into manipulation and other wrongdoings found no such thing.

You are indeed a typical dishonest and ignorant creationist/denialist.

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hsthompson69]

How can he lose the original data when they licensed it from somewhere else, and the place they licensed it from still has the same data?

Still looking for your clue-hat? The problem is that not knowing which original data was licensed from where is a loss of information. Ever hear of traceability? CRU lost it.

On the contrary, the findings of the CRU have been independently verified by scientists from all over the world.

Verified? ROTFLMAO! Did you hear the part when Phil Jones admitted that not a single person who ever peer-reviewed their stuff EVER asked for the data?

CRU findings have certainly been contemporaneously parroted by other warmists, but that's a long cry from verification.

You are indeed a typical dishonest and ignorant creationist/denialist.

Again, dear lady, you protest too much, and obviously hate in yourself what you purport to hate in others.

Remember, it's creationist/warmist :)

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hkmwbz]

The problem is that not knowing which original data was licensed from where is a loss of information. Ever hear of traceability? CRU lost it.

Nope. The findings have been independently verified by scientists from across the world.

Verified? ROTFLMAO! Did you hear the part when Phil Jones admitted that not a single person who ever peer-reviewed their stuff EVER asked for the data?

You are aware that different researchers do their own research, right? And that research matches up.

Remember, it's creationist/warmist :)

The denialists are the ones acting like creationists. In fact, creationists make up a significant portion of the denialist industry.

Re:Ah, mindless parroting from a warmist.

[hsthompson69]

The findings have been independently verified by scientists from across the world.

Doesn't it bother you when the CRU is found to have shoddy code with artificial adjustments inserted to create warming trends when none exist, and your supposedly independent scientists elsewhere get the same result? It seems much more likely that all of them are wrong, rather than to imagine that CRU cheated in just the right way to get the right answer :)

And again, you did hear Phil Jones admit that none of the people who ever peer reviewed his work EVER asked for his data, right? How could they possibly verify his results without his data?

You are aware that different researchers do their own research, right? And that research matches up.

Look, if I had three people weigh a rock, and they all figured it was 10 pounds, then I found out that one of them had been putting his thumb on the scale, and that without that thumb it would have weighed 5 pounds, should I believe that 10 pounds is the right answer, or 5 pounds?

I'll give you a hint, the answer isn't what you think it is.

In fact, creationists make up a significant portion of the denialist industry.

Which is the funniest thing since Family Guy. Who would've imagined that the supposedly godless liberal socialists would create a world religion based upon CO2 worship, and it would be the bible thumping creationists that were advocating for and defending the scientific method! It is incredible to me that this kind of hypocrisy is even possible -> it's like people who are anti-abortion but pro-death penalty (catholics being the one example of consistency on that issue).

Did you just pick your side on this issue because of who was on the other side? Or did you really think this one through?

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hkmwbz]

No, I consider human beings to be intelligent, and therefore naturally analogous to God in the intelligent design theory.

That's a fallacy, because we know for a fact that humans exist, and we know that humans are able to create things. Your argument only makes sense if you consider humans to be supernatural, like God.

That being said, you bring up an interesting point -> why are things that humans do not considered part of nature? Why is a BMW considered any less natural than a spruce tree? Taken to the logical conclusion with catastrophic AGW, the religious statement becomes:

The religious statements here are yours alone. You consistently lie, deceive, and misrepresent the scientific position. Quite pathetic.

No, my argument is that "If anyone says that because we are ignorant of certain factors, it must be due to some arbitrary actor, then they are acting like a creationist." Asserting certainty of a theory based upon ignorance is the hallmark of AGW and intelligent design.

No one is saying "it must be due to some arbitrary actor". You are clearly both deeply dishonest and deeply ignorant.

Tell you what, offer me up your falsifiable hypothesis, and then we can talk science.

You wouldn't know science if it punched you in the face.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

That's a fallacy, because we know for a fact that humans exist, and we know that humans are able to create things. Your argument only makes sense if you consider humans to be supernatural, like God.

You see, now you've got the essence of the Church of Global Warming -> humans are supernatural beings that can affect the global climate in significant ways by altering a trace atmospheric gas measured in parts PER MILLION!

Your God of the gaps argument simply holds no weight.

The religious statements here are yours alone.

Oh, don't be modest, your blind faith and emotional instability are a wonder for all to see! :)

No one is saying "it must be due to some arbitrary actor".

Sure you are. You've identified evil humanity and the trace gas and plant food CO2 as the cause of the world's woes in the most arbitrary and capricious manner. The thought that it is even possible for you to be wrong is but a fantasy, since you make no predictions that can be falsified by observations. If that isn't arbitrary, then nothing is.

You wouldn't know science if it punched you in the face.

Well, I can certainly tell when it's punching you in the face, and you're looking pretty beat up right about now :) Say a couple of Hail-Gore's at your Church of Global Warming, and you'll get over it though :)

AGW denialism, creationism, and tobacco denialism. Same shit, new wrapping.

Ah, the lady doth protest too much! You hate in others what you hate in yourself, and it must drive you nuts to be the same sort of believer that a creationist is with your AGW faith :)

Still waiting for your falsifiable hypothesis, if you can even think of one :)

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hkmwbz]

You see, now you've got the essence of the Church of Global Warming -> humans are supernatural beings that can affect the global climate in significant ways by altering a trace atmospheric gas measured in parts PER MILLION!

You are the one who is saying that humans are supernatural. Also, your amazing ignorance is really something. The "humans are too insignificant to affect global climate" lie keeps being repeated by dishonest and ignorant denialists. That's because you and other denialists are religious, and willfully reject the science.

Sure you are. You've identified evil humanity and the trace gas and plant food CO2 as the cause of the world's woes in the most arbitrary and capricious manner.

What on earth are you rambling about? Oh yes, yet another dishonest straw man and red herring from a denialist. Who'd have thought!

The thought that it is even possible for you to be wrong is but a fantasy, since you make no predictions that can be falsified by observations. If that isn't arbitrary, then nothing is.

Actually, I used to be an AGW skeptic myself. That was before I actually bothered to educate myself. So I have indeed been wrong in the past, and accepted that I had been wrong. You, on the other hand, are religious. And AGW is indeed falsifiable. The problem is that it hasn't been falsified.

Say a couple of Hail-Gore's at your Church of Global Warming, and you'll get over it though :)

Ah yes, the Al Gore references. I don't give a crap about Al Gore. He is not a scientist. But it is obvious that you don't give a crap about science, since all you do is to push your political agenda.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

You are the one who is saying that humans are supernatural.

No, I'm the one saying that humans are natural, and can't possibly be affecting global climate by adding trace amounts of plant food into the atmosphere measured in parts per million. You're the one attributing superhuman powers to people :)

That's because you and other denialists are religious, and willfully reject the science.

HA! Sorry, the Church of Global Warming is religion -> I'm a card carrying member of Atheists United, and you're the Southern Baptist here :)

And AGW is indeed falsifiable.

Okay, give my your falsifiable prediction. What observations in the temperature record, past or present, would falsify your theory?

Oh, wait, you're gonna do that whole "more snow == global warming" and "less snow == global warming" dance, right? :)

But it is obvious that you don't give a crap about science, since all you do is to push your political agenda.

Political agenda? Hey man, I just asked you hard questions, and you couldn't answer them without acting like a radical environmentalist libtard so convinced of their righteousness that they can't see their own religious beliefs for what they are.

Actually, I used to be an AGW skeptic myself. That was before I actually bothered to educate myself.

Really? What happened, did you see a screening of "An Inconvenient Truth"? :)

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hkmwbz]

No, I'm the one saying that humans are natural,

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

and can't possibly be affecting global climate

Already refuted. Please read the link I gave you.

by adding trace amounts of plant food into the atmosphere measured in parts per million.

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

You're the one attributing superhuman powers to people :)

Nope. 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. However, we know for a fact that the climate can be affected by things that are not supernatural.

HA! Sorry, the Church of Global Warming is religion

See above. You are the one claiming that humans are supernatural (because your religion compels you to believe that anything that can affect the climate must be supernatural).

Really? What happened, did you see a screening of "An Inconvenient Truth"? :)

I already told you what happened. I educated myself. I have not watched "An Inconvenient Truth", and that is a political movie anyway.

Re:Creationist == warmist

[hsthompson69]

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?