Climate change deniers are just the latest version of the people who've been pretending that ecological and resource problems just don't exist, and doing so for as long as I can remember. Declining biodiversity? No big deal.
The only way in which it's likely to be an issue is if human activity an ecosystem being able to move as it could in the past. Climate change is nothing new for Earth's plants and animals, including humans. "Carbon trading" probably won't help here since it's unlikely to result in human built structures being moved out of the way. Is it going to stop the destruction of entire ecosystems.
Running out of oil? Hey, they've been saying that for years; it's just a scam to pump up the price.
The oil industry's involvement in bio-fuels may well be. If anything the whole AGW fuss draws attention away from the simple fact that petroleum is a limited resource and being so relient on such a thing isn't a good idea.
However when he makes the massive leap of logic, that as temperature changes happen naturally, they cannot happen artificially,
It's just as much a "leap of logic" to arbitarily state that one thing is "natural" and another is "artificial", if not more so. Without being able to fully understand and explain the natural processes which warm and cool the Earth how can you have any baseline? Has there even been an attempt to exclude natural causes. e.g. Is there a period of high sunspot activity which corresponds with a cool Earth or one of low sunspot activity which corresponds with a warm Earth?
A pan of water can warm up if left in the sun. If I then put the pan on the cooker, is it a hoax to suggest the flames are making it boil?
If all you have is the hot water from two pans (or the same pan at two different times) how do you tell how they were heated? (Discounting that the examples are artifical, since pans are artifacts.)
But you do realize there clearly ISN'T proof of the hypothesis? Do you realize that there clearly was malfeasance? Several times in fact. IPCC released it's spreadsheet of the data only to be hosed by the fact that it deliberately tossed out the Medieval Warm period?
Or you get people claiming that the MWP, together with the "Little Ice Age", wasn't global enough... Then call people who disagree "deniers".
Even so, simple historical knowledge should convince you AGW can't be true. Greenland used to be GREEN with vegetation. It is presently covered in ice. What does that tell you?
Most of Greenland has been covered in ice for a long time. What is telling is that where there were Norse settlements is now permafrost. Had that been the case when these people arrived there they would have left cursing the name of "Erik the Red".
England, during the Roman Empire, was a major exporter of WINE.
If you use viticulture as a measure of climate then England is cooler than it was in Roman times.
Even so, KNOWN data from other fields, like ice cores, shows conclusively that CO2 is rising AFTER the temps.
As well as falling after temperatures have fallen. When ice cores were first looked at it appeared that there was a good corallation, thus it was reasonable to conclude that this showed the theory of CO2 concentration driving temperature was valid. Later, and more accurate, analysis showed that whilst temperature could affect the CO2 concentration it simply cannot be the case that CO2 concentration affects temperature. If an increase in C02 in the atmosphere caused any significent warming then together with warmer temperatures increasing CO2 in the atmosphere then you'd have a positive feedback loop of increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2. If this had ever happened we probably wouldn't be around to discuss it.
If like me, you did satellite stuff, you KNOW that CO2 represents a miniscule IR component. It's water vapor (and thus clouds) that are much more important.
Water vapor, as clear steam, is a significent "greenhouse gas". However clouds, where the water is more likely to be in liquid or solid form, shade the surface and reflect solar radiation. They do still trap some heat, but possibly less than the same amount of water as a gas.
And last but not least, just a microscopic percentage change in the output of the sun will warm the Earth, as will precession and nutation of the Earth/Earth orbit will.
There's also the sunspot theory. Which actually relates to the solar magnetic field. The more active the field the more it shields the solar system from cosmic rays (as well as producing more sunspots). Cosmic rays help produce clouds in the Earth's atmosphere (effectivly a huge "cloud chamber"). Note that the Spörer, Maunder & Dalton Minima were periods when the Earth cooled. (The Dalton Minimum being after the start of the industrial revolution.) We are currently in what is know as the "Modern Maximum". Thus by this theory we'd expect to be in a "warm period". Indeed sunspot activity appears to be a reasonable match for temperatures, at least over the last thousand years or so. Thing is that there is nothing we can do about it. No amount of "carbon trading" is going to make the slightest difference to the Sun (or any other star).
A rationalistic approach is the only hope we have for determining the actual reality of climate change, and so I don't like to see "delete that data", or "hide that trend".I don't care if the scientists in question believe they need to do this for the "greater good".
Possibly you should, since people motivated to do things for the "greater good" (at least in their opinion) are more of less capable of anything. Including paving the "road to hell" with their "good intentions". Faith mixed with politics tends to be a very dangerous combination, the faith need not be religious either.
From where I sit, it's the people putting arbitrary "corrections" into the programs to make them come out the way they want
This is after this sort have thing being discovered before, the so called "hockey stick". How much of the output of such a program is due to the data and how much is due to the program itself?
Remember, boys and girls, if the facts don't support your theory, a scientist changes the theory,
Regardless of the theory; how much it needs to be changed or how many previous facts appear to support the original theory.
while an activist conceals the inconvenient facts.
As wall as attempting to shout down anyone noticing inconvenient facts. By such methods as ad hominum attacks or making unreasonable demands on them, when they would not do so with someone who agreed with them.
So its unreasonable to ask for the original data and the methodology before impoverishing everyone and refactoring the world economy?
It shouldn't be unreasonable to ask for those when considerably less extreme "solution" are advocated. It might also not be a bad idea to look at the proposed response to see if it's the best solution (even if it's a solution at all) regardless of if the data, methodology and whatever assumptions are being made all check out.
I have actually. I realized one thing about IPCC reports. They're political not scientific, see here's the problem with groups like the IPCC. They're supposed to put on a diplomatic face on the science, presenting unbiased information to the public and government.
Really? I though that the point of any political group was to produce and distribute propaganda.
Here's an idea: if you believe the GP and the majority of people who believe as he does are irrational, haul out your global climate data sets and indicate why they're irrational.
All climate data can do is show that things are changing. It says nothing about why. It's also a big "problem" that ice core data shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows temperature. You can make a case from this data for warming "causing" more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But this data also shows that varying atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration does not affect temperature to any significent degree. The whole AGW theory thus appears to be without any foundation.
Let's play Devil's Advocate: Are you the irrational one? How do you know? Because you believe what White-Coated High Holy Scientists (in consultation with other White-Coated High Holy Scientists, i.e. peer reviewed journals) proclaim is The Truth Which Requires Immediate, Massive Globe-Wrenching Economic Changes?
Is this anyway not an extraordinary claim? i.e. one requiring extraordinary evidence. Instead we have weak and highly manipulated evidence, stuff which isn't evidence at all and even some which appears to disprove the claim being made. On top of this have ad hominum attacks from those who believe. Why call someone a "denier" if you have clear evidence that they are wrong? IME this tends to be the behaviour of those who have no evidence to refute their critics but can't be wrong for political reasons. They may even suspect their critics of being right.
Take another example - 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Yes, some of them can be deprogrammed and brought back into mainstream society. I've done it a few times myself.
So what, exactly is your non conspiracy theory to explain what happened? It would also be somewhat difficult to reconcile with "...brought back into mainstream society." Considering the version pushed by the US government and broadcast media is a conspiracy theory anyway.
For some reason I don't think going, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you" instead of refuting the points they bring up is going to engender somebody to change their viewpoint, rather the opposite.
Sounds like you are talking about the "warmies", except that they are usually considerably ruder. When it comes to anything which does not fit with their claims.
In this case, we have a situation where some scientists did statistical interpolation and averaging of some thermometer data using standard mathematical techniques. You don't need specialized knowledge to average temperatures around the globe, anyone with reasonable statistics ability should be able to understand it. Frankly I would be surprised if there weren't mistakes, given the size of the data set, so I'm not willing to call one weather-station a smoking gun.
Since the data for this weather station shows some strange manipulations and "corrections" whilst the choice to examine it was effectivly made at random it would appear to be reasonable to not accept the data set until proper independent analysis has been done.
The problem is, perhaps ironically, that prosecutors and judges often know each other much better than people expect simply because prosecutors come before the same judges on a regular, continuous basis.
Shouldn't the same apply with public defenders too?
There's nothing you can do about that unless you'd like to ensure judges and prosecutors never serve terms of any reasonable duration.
How about having "public lawyers" who were "prosecutors" or "defenders" on a random case by case basis?
Except that its not clear that this was a global event, or even that it actually happened!
That sounds very much like "denial".
(Nice to have a change from the MWP though). We also have a "Roman Warm Period", within fairly recent history. Interestingly the Medieval Warm Period is also known as the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" which rather avoids having to explain it. Though ignoring/denying the "Little Ice Age" is even more significent since this is a change to climate which preceded the temperature rise which the AGW people are making so much fuss about. Even though there are indications that it's actually not as warm now as it was in Roman times.
How would replacing the energy infrastructure with another more earth-friendly one destroy jobs?
Do we know what actually is "Earth friendly"? Even if we did would we actually do it or would we end up with something as daft as using maize to produce ethanol fuel?
No, tree rings won't do. Nor will ice cores. Because we have less than 100 years of temperature measurements to calibrate them with.
The interesting thing is that ice cores actually show that warming causes increased levels of carbon dixoide in the atmosphere. Rather than increased levels of carbon dioxide causes warming. In other words one piece of supposed evidence towards AGW is at best irrelevent to the issue, at worst shows that the theory is wrong at a fairly basic level.
I have been to Antarctica and I have seen the effects of global warming. The glacier in the bay where Shakeleton left his men is a good 100 yard further from the sea than it was in his time.
At best all this demonstrates is that this glacier is a little further away from the sea than it was almost a century ago. What is this as a proportion of the total length of the glacier?
We made it far enough south in a non-icebreaker to see Emperor penguins.
Whilst this might be an indicator that the Earth has become warmer it dosn't tell you anything about why? That the temperature of the Earth has varied over time is not news at all.
That shouldn't be happening.
How do you know that this shouldn't be happening? How do you find out what the "correct" global temperature is? What would you expect to observe in the mid 17th century or the mid 10th century?
The reasoning becomes "if we tell an honest story, no one will do anything, so let's tell a story more conducive to what needs to be done". Taking paternal responsibility for the inaction of crowds is far, far away from science as hard boiled authority,
It has more in common with politics, religion, even "conspiracy nuts". How long does it take before what matters most is "getting the message out"? Regardless of what is truth and what is fiction. In addition a meme of "this must be done urgently", isn't going to be conducive to critical examination of a) what is the most effective approach. Decisions made in haste often turn out to be poor ones. b) if there actually is a crisis in the first place. Even if there is panicing about it rarely helps.
This is the critical part. Efforts should be spent on understanding it better rather than on trying to reverse something we have an incomplete understanding of.
As well as an incomplete understanding of what it is we are trying to change. e.g. reduce the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air, reduce the global temperature, something else. Such fundermental questions like "How warm should the Earth be right now?" tend to be brushed aside.
Start recording temperatures in 1850, and in 1950 look at the trend. Do the same from 1950 onwards. Notice that CO2 increases IR absorption and is increasing in the atmosphere. Create a GCM and run it with and without the anthropogenic forcing.
You'd also need data for carbon dixoide concentration in the atmosphere and carbon dixoide due to human activities.
Download the program and the data from http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ and run it at home if you want to check.
Where's the source code for this?
Oh, don't believe that data? Use this, or this new one.
I see only temperature data here. Where is the corresponding carbon dixoide data.
Give me a direct test for the existence of anthropogenic global warming.
Evidence from ice cores appears to show that atmospheric carbon dioxide follows changes in temperature by several hundred years. The warmer the temperature the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If atmospheric carbon dioxide caused warming then positive feedback would lead to ever increasing temperatures. This, rather obviously, hasn't happened. The obvious conclusion is that on a planetary scale there is negative feedback to keep the temperature fairly stable. When you try to look at temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide over a longer time period no obvious corallation can be found.
Until you can predict the weather with the same reasonably unerring accuracy with which we predict projectile trajectories, the science isn't good enough. Which is a little bit scary, when you consider the potential problems if global warming is real and we realize that too late!
There are also some rather big risks if it isn't "real" either in the sense that the planet isn't going to keep warming or that human activity is not a major factor in how the temperature of the Earth varies. The risks involve trashing the already weakened economies of the "developed" world and polluting the environment with an attitude of "if it dosn't emit carbon dioxide from fossil fuels then it must be ok". Even if carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is a problem, it's only one of a huge number of things humans can do to damage the environment. A mistake we need to avoid making again is banning X, then replacing it with Y. Only to discover that Y is a worst problem, including for reqasons such as needing to use it in vastly greater quantities.
Except the FOI request was from other scientist in the same field. It is one thing to be annoyed by an FOI request by someone outside the field but this was not the case.
Given that these people are claiming that their data proves that huge changes will be required of the entire human population. Dosn't "outside the field" equate to "aliens"...
It is quite disturbing when you have scientist "20+ years" in the filed refusing to share data because???
Maybe someone might draw a completly different conclusion from the data. Including "the data has been altered so much that it proves nothing" or "Nothing remarkable has been happening to Earth's temperature recently".
No, as a scientist, something is very wrong with the way these professors acted and it should not be simply overlooked as anger and annoyance. The emails and the way they have acted all suggest they wanted to hide something.
This questionably behaviour didn't stop with the "leak". If anything ad hominum attacks from the AGW/MMCC have increased since.
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Climate change deniers are just the latest version of the people who've been pretending that ecological and resource problems just don't exist, and doing so for as long as I can remember. Declining biodiversity? No big deal.
The only way in which it's likely to be an issue is if human activity an ecosystem being able to move as it could in the past. Climate change is nothing new for Earth's plants and animals, including humans. "Carbon trading" probably won't help here since it's unlikely to result in human built structures being moved out of the way. Is it going to stop the destruction of entire ecosystems.
Running out of oil? Hey, they've been saying that for years; it's just a scam to pump up the price.
The oil industry's involvement in bio-fuels may well be. If anything the whole AGW fuss draws attention away from the simple fact that petroleum is a limited resource and being so relient on such a thing isn't a good idea.
However when he makes the massive leap of logic, that as temperature changes happen naturally, they cannot happen artificially,
It's just as much a "leap of logic" to arbitarily state that one thing is "natural" and another is "artificial", if not more so. Without being able to fully understand and explain the natural processes which warm and cool the Earth how can you have any baseline? Has there even been an attempt to exclude natural causes. e.g. Is there a period of high sunspot activity which corresponds with a cool Earth or one of low sunspot activity which corresponds with a warm Earth?
A pan of water can warm up if left in the sun. If I then put the pan on the cooker, is it a hoax to suggest the flames are making it boil?
If all you have is the hot water from two pans (or the same pan at two different times) how do you tell how they were heated? (Discounting that the examples are artifical, since pans are artifacts.)
But you do realize there clearly ISN'T proof of the hypothesis? Do you realize that there clearly was malfeasance? Several times in fact. IPCC released it's spreadsheet of the data only to be hosed by the fact that it deliberately tossed out the Medieval Warm period?
Or you get people claiming that the MWP, together with the "Little Ice Age", wasn't global enough... Then call people who disagree "deniers".
Even so, simple historical knowledge should convince you AGW can't be true. Greenland used to be GREEN with vegetation. It is presently covered in ice. What does that tell you?
Most of Greenland has been covered in ice for a long time. What is telling is that where there were Norse settlements is now permafrost. Had that been the case when these people arrived there they would have left cursing the name of "Erik the Red".
England, during the Roman Empire, was a major exporter of WINE.
If you use viticulture as a measure of climate then England is cooler than it was in Roman times.
Even so, KNOWN data from other fields, like ice cores, shows conclusively that CO2 is rising AFTER the temps.
As well as falling after temperatures have fallen. When ice cores were first looked at it appeared that there was a good corallation, thus it was reasonable to conclude that this showed the theory of CO2 concentration driving temperature was valid. Later, and more accurate, analysis showed that whilst temperature could affect the CO2 concentration it simply cannot be the case that CO2 concentration affects temperature. If an increase in C02 in the atmosphere caused any significent warming then together with warmer temperatures increasing CO2 in the atmosphere then you'd have a positive feedback loop of increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2. If this had ever happened we probably wouldn't be around to discuss it.
If like me, you did satellite stuff, you KNOW that CO2 represents a miniscule IR component. It's water vapor (and thus clouds) that are much more important.
Water vapor, as clear steam, is a significent "greenhouse gas". However clouds, where the water is more likely to be in liquid or solid form, shade the surface and reflect solar radiation. They do still trap some heat, but possibly less than the same amount of water as a gas.
And last but not least, just a microscopic percentage change in the output of the sun will warm the Earth, as will precession and nutation of the Earth/Earth orbit will.
There's also the sunspot theory. Which actually relates to the solar magnetic field. The more active the field the more it shields the solar system from cosmic rays (as well as producing more sunspots). Cosmic rays help produce clouds in the Earth's atmosphere (effectivly a huge "cloud chamber"). Note that the Spörer, Maunder & Dalton Minima were periods when the Earth cooled. (The Dalton Minimum being after the start of the industrial revolution.) We are currently in what is know as the "Modern Maximum". Thus by this theory we'd expect to be in a "warm period". Indeed sunspot activity appears to be a reasonable match for temperatures, at least over the last thousand years or so.
Thing is that there is nothing we can do about it. No amount of "carbon trading" is going to make the slightest difference to the Sun (or any other star).
A rationalistic approach is the only hope we have for determining the actual reality of climate change, and so I don't like to see "delete that data", or "hide that trend".I don't care if the scientists in question believe they need to do this for the "greater good".
Possibly you should, since people motivated to do things for the "greater good" (at least in their opinion) are more of less capable of anything. Including paving the "road to hell" with their "good intentions". Faith mixed with politics tends to be a very dangerous combination, the faith need not be religious either.
From where I sit, it's the people putting arbitrary "corrections" into the programs to make them come out the way they want
This is after this sort have thing being discovered before, the so called "hockey stick". How much of the output of such a program is due to the data and how much is due to the program itself?
Remember, boys and girls, if the facts don't support your theory, a scientist changes the theory,
Regardless of the theory; how much it needs to be changed or how many previous facts appear to support the original theory.
while an activist conceals the inconvenient facts.
As wall as attempting to shout down anyone noticing inconvenient facts. By such methods as ad hominum attacks or making unreasonable demands on them, when they would not do so with someone who agreed with them.
So its unreasonable to ask for the original data and the methodology before impoverishing everyone and refactoring the world economy?
It shouldn't be unreasonable to ask for those when considerably less extreme "solution" are advocated. It might also not be a bad idea to look at the proposed response to see if it's the best solution (even if it's a solution at all) regardless of if the data, methodology and whatever assumptions are being made all check out.
I have actually. I realized one thing about IPCC reports. They're political not scientific, see here's the problem with groups like the IPCC. They're supposed to put on a diplomatic face on the science, presenting unbiased information to the public and government.
Really? I though that the point of any political group was to produce and distribute propaganda.
Here's an idea: if you believe the GP and the majority of people who believe as he does are irrational, haul out your global climate data sets and indicate why they're irrational.
All climate data can do is show that things are changing. It says nothing about why.
It's also a big "problem" that ice core data shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows temperature. You can make a case from this data for warming "causing" more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But this data also shows that varying atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration does not affect temperature to any significent degree. The whole AGW theory thus appears to be without any foundation.
Let's play Devil's Advocate: Are you the irrational one? How do you know? Because you believe what White-Coated High Holy Scientists (in consultation with other White-Coated High Holy Scientists, i.e. peer reviewed journals) proclaim is The Truth Which Requires Immediate, Massive Globe-Wrenching Economic Changes?
Is this anyway not an extraordinary claim? i.e. one requiring extraordinary evidence. Instead we have weak and highly manipulated evidence, stuff which isn't evidence at all and even some which appears to disprove the claim being made.
On top of this have ad hominum attacks from those who believe. Why call someone a "denier" if you have clear evidence that they are wrong? IME this tends to be the behaviour of those who have no evidence to refute their critics but can't be wrong for political reasons. They may even suspect their critics of being right.
Take another example - 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Yes, some of them can be deprogrammed and brought back into mainstream society. I've done it a few times myself.
So what, exactly is your non conspiracy theory to explain what happened? It would also be somewhat difficult to reconcile with "...brought back into mainstream society." Considering the version pushed by the US government and broadcast media is a conspiracy theory anyway.
For some reason I don't think going, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you" instead of refuting the points they bring up is going to engender somebody to change their viewpoint, rather the opposite.
Sounds like you are talking about the "warmies", except that they are usually considerably ruder. When it comes to anything which does not fit with their claims.
In this case, we have a situation where some scientists did statistical interpolation and averaging of some thermometer data using standard mathematical techniques. You don't need specialized knowledge to average temperatures around the globe, anyone with reasonable statistics ability should be able to understand it. Frankly I would be surprised if there weren't mistakes, given the size of the data set, so I'm not willing to call one weather-station a smoking gun.
Since the data for this weather station shows some strange manipulations and "corrections" whilst the choice to examine it was effectivly made at random it would appear to be reasonable to not accept the data set until proper independent analysis has been done.
The problem is, perhaps ironically, that prosecutors and judges often know each other much better than people expect simply because prosecutors come before the same judges on a regular, continuous basis.
Shouldn't the same apply with public defenders too?
There's nothing you can do about that unless you'd like to ensure judges and prosecutors never serve terms of any reasonable duration.
How about having "public lawyers" who were "prosecutors" or "defenders" on a random case by case basis?
Except that its not clear that this was a global event, or even that it actually happened!
That sounds very much like "denial".
(Nice to have a change from the MWP though). We also have a "Roman Warm Period", within fairly recent history. Interestingly the Medieval Warm Period is also known as the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" which rather avoids having to explain it. Though ignoring/denying the "Little Ice Age" is even more significent since this is a change to climate which preceded the temperature rise which the AGW people are making so much fuss about. Even though there are indications that it's actually not as warm now as it was in Roman times.
How would replacing the energy infrastructure with another more earth-friendly one destroy jobs?
Do we know what actually is "Earth friendly"? Even if we did would we actually do it or would we end up with something as daft as using maize to produce ethanol fuel?
Considering that CO2 levels will continue to rise for 1000 years afterwards
The current models being used don't appear to be reliable even over a decade, never mind 100 times as long.
we really will have missed a chance to build a sustainable economy.
How will "carbon trading" build a sustainable economy?
No, tree rings won't do. Nor will ice cores. Because we have less than 100 years of temperature measurements to calibrate them with.
The interesting thing is that ice cores actually show that warming causes increased levels of carbon dixoide in the atmosphere. Rather than increased levels of carbon dioxide causes warming. In other words one piece of supposed evidence towards AGW is at best irrelevent to the issue, at worst shows that the theory is wrong at a fairly basic level.
They usually mean anthrocentric global warming and they usually mean "sufficient additional CO2 to tip our climate irretrievably out-of-balance."
Has this every actually happened?
I have been to Antarctica and I have seen the effects of global warming. The glacier in the bay where Shakeleton left his men is a good 100 yard further from the sea than it was in his time.
At best all this demonstrates is that this glacier is a little further away from the sea than it was almost a century ago. What is this as a proportion of the total length of the glacier?
We made it far enough south in a non-icebreaker to see Emperor penguins.
Whilst this might be an indicator that the Earth has become warmer it dosn't tell you anything about why? That the temperature of the Earth has varied over time is not news at all.
That shouldn't be happening.
How do you know that this shouldn't be happening? How do you find out what the "correct" global temperature is? What would you expect to observe in the mid 17th century or the mid 10th century?
The reasoning becomes "if we tell an honest story, no one will do anything, so let's tell a story more conducive to what needs to be done". Taking paternal responsibility for the inaction of crowds is far, far away from science as hard boiled authority,
It has more in common with politics, religion, even "conspiracy nuts". How long does it take before what matters most is "getting the message out"? Regardless of what is truth and what is fiction. In addition a meme of "this must be done urgently", isn't going to be conducive to critical examination of a) what is the most effective approach. Decisions made in haste often turn out to be poor ones. b) if there actually is a crisis in the first place. Even if there is panicing about it rarely helps.
This is the critical part. Efforts should be spent on understanding it better rather than on trying to reverse something we have an incomplete understanding of.
As well as an incomplete understanding of what it is we are trying to change. e.g. reduce the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air, reduce the global temperature, something else. Such fundermental questions like "How warm should the Earth be right now?" tend to be brushed aside.
Start recording temperatures in 1850, and in 1950 look at the trend. Do the same from 1950 onwards. Notice that CO2 increases IR absorption and is increasing in the atmosphere. Create a GCM and run it with and without the anthropogenic forcing.
You'd also need data for carbon dixoide concentration in the atmosphere and carbon dixoide due to human activities.
Download the program and the data from http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ and run it at home if you want to check.
Where's the source code for this?
Oh, don't believe that data? Use this, or this new one.
I see only temperature data here. Where is the corresponding carbon dixoide data.
Give me a direct test for the existence of anthropogenic global warming.
Evidence from ice cores appears to show that atmospheric carbon dioxide follows changes in temperature by several hundred years. The warmer the temperature the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If atmospheric carbon dioxide caused warming then positive feedback would lead to ever increasing temperatures. This, rather obviously, hasn't happened. The obvious conclusion is that on a planetary scale there is negative feedback to keep the temperature fairly stable.
When you try to look at temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide over a longer time period no obvious corallation can be found.
Until you can predict the weather with the same reasonably unerring accuracy with which we predict projectile trajectories, the science isn't good enough. Which is a little bit scary, when you consider the potential problems if global warming is real and we realize that too late!
There are also some rather big risks if it isn't "real" either in the sense that the planet isn't going to keep warming or that human activity is not a major factor in how the temperature of the Earth varies. The risks involve trashing the already weakened economies of the "developed" world and polluting the environment with an attitude of "if it dosn't emit carbon dioxide from fossil fuels then it must be ok". Even if carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is a problem, it's only one of a huge number of things humans can do to damage the environment. A mistake we need to avoid making again is banning X, then replacing it with Y. Only to discover that Y is a worst problem, including for reqasons such as needing to use it in vastly greater quantities.
Except the FOI request was from other scientist in the same field. It is one thing to be annoyed by an FOI request by someone outside the field but this was not the case.
Given that these people are claiming that their data proves that huge changes will be required of the entire human population. Dosn't "outside the field" equate to "aliens"...
It is quite disturbing when you have scientist "20+ years" in the filed refusing to share data because???
Maybe someone might draw a completly different conclusion from the data. Including "the data has been altered so much that it proves nothing" or "Nothing remarkable has been happening to Earth's temperature recently".
No, as a scientist, something is very wrong with the way these professors acted and it should not be simply overlooked as anger and annoyance. The emails and the way they have acted all suggest they wanted to hide something.
This questionably behaviour didn't stop with the "leak". If anything ad hominum attacks from the AGW/MMCC have increased since.