Has Kristen Uncovered More Inconvenient Truths?

[Andre]

Positive feedback has been demonstrated. I can only assume that you disagree. gees this time you referenced your own previous posts.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060522151248.htm

Most certainly I disagree. Whilst certain elements in the global warming arena constitute positive feedback like albedo changes due to snow cover, Olavi Karner showed in detail why the overall nett feedback effect is negative. Math included. I show the calculation model of feedback (not to be confused with prediction model) that refutes a nett positive feedback on the Antarctic ice core proxies. You'd show the math that this is not true.

 

[edward]

Most certainly I disagree. Whilst certain elements in the global warming arena constitute positive feedback like albedo changes due to snow cover, Olavi Karner showed in detail why the overall nett feedback effect is negative. Math included. I show the calculation model of feedback (not to be confused with prediction model) that refutes a nett positive feedback on the Antarctic ice core proxies. You'd show the math that this is not true.

I didn't show any math, and what do albedo changes due to snow cover have to do with anything other than seasonal changes?
You have already stated that all of the models, which I presume would include the math are not true! Am I to accept that only your selected models are true? Fluff from 2001 will not override fact from 2007.

Did you ever consider that your boy from Estonia is full of himself?

 

[Andre]

what do albedo changes due to snow cover have to do with anything other than seasonal changes?

Snow cover is a true example of positive feedback on temperature. But indeed, since the seasonal changes appear not to be affected too much, it's a very weak feedback. nevertheless it's used many times to illustrate positive feedback.

You have already stated that all of the models, which I presume would include the math are not true! Am I to accept that only your selected models are true?

You are confusing mahematical models with prediction models. mathematical models like Karner uses, are very useful to capture natural processes. Prediction models just do what the programmer thinks they should do. Claiming that prediction models proof something should be considered a criminal act.

Fluff from 2001 will not override fact from 2007.

There is no time limit on data processing. Karners calculations can be repeated to today and in 10 years or anytime. That's science, reproduceability. Don't you think that if Karners calculations were proven to be wrong that para 1a sub (1) of the summary of policy makers would state that positive feedback, the main issue of global warming, is proven? The fact that this study is carefully avoided, suggests otherwise.

Did you ever consider that your boy from Estonia is full of himself?

That statement is an ad hominem attack, which usually indicates that there are no genuine arguments. It could be noted that the ad hominem attack is the main element of the global warming hype. Anybody who is *against* global warming must necesarily be a crook, a denialist, etc. it's unthinkable of course that being sceptic has to do with the science behind global warming just being junk.

 

[edward]

Andre you are getting much too upset about this. The remark was not aimed at you.

A number of little known scientists have gained recognition by coming out against GW in the past few years. Can I not question their credibility? And yet you expect to call all other science junk.:rolleyes:

 

[Pythagorean]

You are confusing mahematical models with prediction models. mathematical models like Karner uses, are very useful to capture natural processes. Prediction models just do what the programmer thinks they should do. Claiming that prediction models proof something should be considered a criminal act.

Don't you think this is bias behavior? Discounting all prediction models? I am interested in the Global Warming Debate, and not Global Warming itself, I don't think I'm educated enough to make conclusions about GW, but I think it's interesting to watch the behavior of AGW extremists (yes, I'm commiting the middle-ground fallacy, I'm aware of that, but I find arguments like yours to be as extremist and bias as the millennial fever crowd.

That statement is an ad hominem attack, which usually indicates that there are no genuine arguments. It could be noted that the ad hominem attack is the main element of the global warming hype.

This is something I've seen you do before too, accuse those of us who are non-partial (who may or may not study GW, and are mildly curious, but haven't made a judgment. In my case, I'm studying a scientific debate, and not particularly the science) of having some sort of tactic. You pick your words carefully, but you imply we're AGW advocates attempting to convince everyone that the end is near.

I like the way this guy put it:

...Skepticism thus plays an essential role in scientific research, and, far from trying to silence skeptics, science invites their contributions. So too, the global warming debate benefits from traditional scientific skepticism.

I have argued in a recent book review that some "greenhouse skeptics" subvert the scientific process, ceasing to act as objective scientists, rather presenting only one side, as if they were lawyers hired to defend a particular viewpoint. But some of the topics focused on by the skeptics are recognized as legitimate research questions, and also it is fair to say that the injection of environmental, political and religious perspectives in midstream of the science research has occurred from both sides in the global warming debate.

from http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/"

and note this:

But when Pat Michaels testified to congress in 1998 and showed our 1988 predictions (Fig. 1) he erased the curves for scenarios B and C, and showed the result only for scenario A. He then argued that, since the real world temperature had not increased as fast as this model calculation, the climate model was faulty and there was no basis for concern about climate change, specifically concluding that the Kyoto Protocol was "a useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty".

 

[Andre]

Don't you think this is bias behavior? Discounting all prediction models?

Look again, I said: Claiming that prediction models proof something should be considered a criminal act.

I'm happy if you run a prediction model and declare that you expect / forecast such and such to happen. If you're right then you are still inbusiness. You have a white swan. The riskier the forecast, the bigger and the more beautiful white swan.

But the general gist is that there is a body of evidence that global warming is true. Models predict that the temperature will rise so much, etc etc., suggesting that the prediction models are proof.

This is something I've seen you do before too, accuse those of us who are non-partial

Please, show the case. This way it's a bit cheap.

 

[Andre]

Andre you are getting much too upset about this. The remark was not aimed at you.

It's not personal. It is just the mechanism. So somebody has reservation against global warming and immediately a herd of warriors character murder him.

For instance:
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://www.monbiot.com/

So the witch hunt continues. A very interesting study indeed.

 

[Pythagorean]

Please, show the case. This way it's a bit cheap.

https://www.physicsforums.com/search.php?searchid=717907

 

[Andre]

Okay the search didn't work for me. But please be a bit mild, whenever I show that things don't add up, I get kicked around immediately. There is a certain manager here with some issues. That makes a bit paranoid

 

[Pythagorean]

Okay the search didn't work for me. But please be a bit mild, whenever I show that things don't add up, I get kicked around immediately. There is a certain manager here with some issues. That makes a bit paranoid

Fair enough. I'm sure anal retentive online professionals don't like me either. I come here to learn and share knowledge if I can, but not to preach or listen to preaching or pretend I'm a great intellectual.

I simply entered Andre as the author and hominem as the subject. You have about two pages of using the ad hominem defense, and you tend to put fearmonger along side it (committing ad hominem while accusing someone of it)

I'm not disagreeing with you that things don't add up, but when you use words like fearmonger and ad hominem in the same sentence against someone like me (who could care less about whether people are afraid of global warming or whether it's anthropogenic), it casts doubt on your ability to actually study the subject without bias, even if you may be right about some of your biases.

In your other thread (in https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1340069#post1340069"), you said "We're using the scientific method here" and while you didn't explicitly say "I'm holier than thou", it sure came off that way to me.

I must say though, it was interesting to learn we had horses in Alaska, and I do think the Mammoth was killed off by human hunting. We used to be able to hunt whales too and that was genocide.

 

[Skyhunter]

No, it is not, as has been demonstrated here and https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=169202.

I think that I will go with the conclusions of the climate researchers at Cal. No offense Andre, but I am confident that they are more qualified to analyse the Vostoc ice cores than you.

As for your simple model "proving" that feedback doesn't exist...

Here is a simple model that demonstrates the opposite.

And here is the authors summary:

Summary

While this is just a simple model that is not really very Earth-like (no convection, no clouds, only a single layer etc.), it does illustrate some relevant points which are just as qualitatively true for GCMs and the real world. You should think of these kinds of exercises as simple flim-flam detectors - if someone tries to convince you that they can do a simple calculation and prove everyone else wrong, think about what the same calculation would be in this more straightforward system and see whether the idea holds up. If it does, it might work in the real world (no guarantee though) - but if it doesn't, then it's most probably garbage.

N.B. This is a more pedagogical and math-heavy article than most of the ones we post, and we aren't likely to switch over exclusively to this sort of thing. But let us know if you like it (or not) and we'll think about doing similar pieces on other key topics.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/learning-from-a-simple-model/

Oh, and my bad.

I thought Gore may have been intentionally misleading.

After reading this however I will withdraw such judgement.

Now, it there is a minor criticism one might level at Gore for his treatment of this subject in the film (as we previously pointed out in our review). As it turns out though, correcting this would actually further strengthen Gore's case, rather than weakening it. Here's why:

The record of temperature shown in the ice core is not a global record. It is a record of local Antarctic temperature change. The rest of the globe does indeed parallel the polar changes closely, but the global mean temperature changes are smaller. While we don't know precisely why the CO2 changes occur on long timescales, (the mechanisms are well understood; the details are not), we do know that explaining the magnitude of global temperature change requires including CO2. This is a critical point. We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2. But CO2 does not explain all of the change, and the relationship between temperature and CO2 is therefore by no means linear. That is, a given amount of CO2 increase as measured in the ice cores need not necessarily correspond with a certain amount of temperature increase. Gore shows the strong parallel relationship between the temperature and CO2 data from the ice cores, and then illustrates where the CO2 is now (384 ppm), leaving the viewer's eye to extrapolate the temperature curve upwards in parallel with the rising CO2. Gore doesn't actually make the mistake of drawing the temperature curve, but the implication is obvious: temperatures are going to go up a lot. But as illustrated in the figure below, simply extrapolating this correlation forward in time puts the Antarctic temperature in the near future somewhere upwards of 10 degrees Celsius warmer than present -- rather at the extreme end of the vast majority of projections (as we have discussed here).

<snip>

What Gore should have done is extrapolated the temperature curve according this the appropriate scaling -- with CO2 accounting for about 1/3 of the total change -- instead of letting the audience do it by eye. Had he done so, he would have drawn a line that went up only 1/3 of the distance implied by the simple correlation with CO2 shown by the ice core record. This would have left the impression that equilibrium warming of Antarctica due to doubled CO2 concentrations should be about 3 °C, in very good agreement with what is predicted by the state-of-the-art climate models. (It is to be noted that the same models predict a significant delay until equilibrium is reached, due to the large heat capacity of the Southern ocean. This is in very good agreement with the data, which show very modest warming over Antarctica in the last 100 years). Then, if you scale the Antarctic temperature change to a global temperature change, then the global climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 becomes 2-3 degrees C, perfectly in line with the climate sensitivity given by IPCC (and known from Arrhenius's calculations more than 100 years ago).

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

 

[Andre]

I simply entered Andre as the author and hominem as the subject. You have about two pages of using the ad hominem defense, and you tend to put fearmonger along side it (committing ad hominem while accusing someone of it)

There is a slight difference here. If chicken little proclaims that the sky is falling, calling that fear mongering is not an ad hominem. There difference is "being" versus "doing/making". The main verb in an ad hominem is "to be" in the form "you are a crook hence you are wrong". Chicken little is adorable but she is wrong making that statement - No ad hominem.

I must say though, it was interesting to learn we had horses in Alaska, and I do think the Mammoth was killed off by human hunting. We used to be able to hunt whales too and that was genocide.

In Europe men and mammoths have co-existed for 50-60,000 years, where the mammoths disappeared at the onset of the Bolling Allerod event 14,500 years ago.

At the transition of the Bolling Allerod event to the Younger Dryas (12,700 Cal years BP, 10,700 Radiocarbon years ago), both men (Clovis) and mammoths disappeared without a trace in North America. Men (Folsom) returned much later.

Shortly at the end of the Younger Dryas 11,600 Cal years ago, when the Mammoths thrived in Northern Siberia, (Taimyr peninsula) they disappeared suddenly without a trace and without any single piece of evidence that men were witnessing the tragedy. Men had disappeared already 30,000 years ago in that area.

Conclusion: Mammoths perished allways at a major climate transition, regardless if men were around or not. So whodunnit?

 

[Andre]

I think that I will go with the conclusions of the climate researchers at Cal. No offense Andre, but I am confident that they are more qualified to analyse the Vostoc ice cores than you.

I reckon you would. I guess I'm too old to play the kid that exclaimed that the emperor wears no clothes. Indeed I do not analyse ice cores. I analyse the reasoning of the analysers. It was better it the analysers sticked to analysing only.

As for your simple model "proving" that feedback doesn't exist...

Strawman, I said that the nett resulting feedback is not positive.

Here is a simple model that demonstrates the opposite.

Were are the data? I only see some expressions. The test is with the actual data. So why would a mere mathematical expression have the power to refute data testing?

Back later.

 

[edward]

Strawman, I said that the nett resulting feedback is not positive.

Andre, your lack of respect for others on this forum is getting to be annoying.
Strawman : Are you really that desperate.?

The strawmen are the scientist who took money from Exxon and the other big oil companies to attempt to discredit AGW.
This has given many of us good reason for keeping a watchful eye on global warming skeptics.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1876538,00.html

The largest single funder for AGW studies has been the Untied States Govenment., not some strawman or corporation who has a vested interest.


Karner's overall nett negative feed back assumption was based on doing an statistical analysis of satellite tropospheric data over time. This proves nothing except that he has convinced himself that two older studies were possibly inaccurate.

It is easy to weight a statistical analysis of anything to get a desired result. It happens all of the time in the pharmaceutical industry.

Karner states: “The revealed antipersistence in the lower tropospheric temperature increments does not support the science of global warming developed by IPCC [1996]. Negative long-range correlation of the increments during last 22 years means that negative feedback has been dominating in the Earth climate system during that period. The result is opposite to suggestion of Mitchell [1989] about domination of a positive cumulative feedback after a forced temperature change. Dominating negative feedback also shows that the period for CO2 induced climate change has not started during the last 22 years. Increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth atmosphere appeared to produce too weak forcing in order to dominate in the Earth climate system.”

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/allfeedbacks.htm

 

[Andre]

Andre, your lack of respect for others on this forum is getting to be annoying.

Well, as usual there is the tendency to shoot the messenger.

Strawman : Are you really that desperate.?

Why, thank you for your concern. it has improved significantly after reading your post

The strawmen are...

From your following statement I infer that we do not have a common definition of a straw man fallacy. Please do click the link to understand why I could not let an alleged statement stand.

...the scientist who took money from Exxon and the other big oil companies to attempt to discredit AGW.
This has given many of us good reason for keeping a watchful eye on global warming skeptics.

Thank you for giving the opportunity to address this complicated fallacy.

Firstly: It basically says: If you don't believe in global warming then you are a crook. If you're not a crook, we'll make you one. After all, there is always money. However, I know most of the climate sceptics. I also know that this Exxon thing is a fiction. Certainly Exxon is funding a huge amount of institutes as do all large coorporations. Exxon has even made top priority of saving the tiger from extinction, which is logical of course. A lot of institutes get funding from a multitude of corporations, among which, Exxon. Some associates from those institutes are working on climate issues with competing ideas, without the global warming bias. That's the real story of the massive bribery tales. Finally, there may be climate skeptics on the pay roll of Exxon, I don't know them, but it could be. Those that I know are not funded by anybody or get paid independed of their visions. If honest people have an opinion, would it change anything if some crooks had the same opinion?

Secondly: as said numerous times before. Bribery ad hominems do not change the truth. Whenever **fill in your own favorite worst enemy of manking here** says: water boils at 100 degrees celsius; you cannot say that this is wrong because he is a crook.

Thirdly: Science is about attempting to proof theories to be right, by the failure of attemps to proof that they are wrong. That's Popperian philosophy. Whenever I have some weird ideas, like planet Venus having converted the rotational energy to heat due to internal mechanical failure, or the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum being caused by a empty Arctic ocean bassin filling in, or the Ice ages being caused by pulsating poles, I ask the experts to proof us wrong. If they can't, we may be on to something. Therefore, the scientific method demands global warming to be subject to rigourous fail safe testing since so much depends on it.

But the problem is that this testing may reveal that global warming is wrong. How to handle that?:

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1876538,00.html

Thanks for the link. So if global warming is not robust to withstand falsification, you either accept failure or you attempt to prevent falsification by shutting up the opposition, because so much is at stake?

Karner's overall nett negative feed back assumption was based on doing an statistical analysis of satellite tropospheric data over time. This proves nothing except that he has convinced himself that two older studies were possibly inaccurate.

It is easy to weight a statistical analysis of anything to get a desired result. It happens all of the time in the pharmaceutical industry.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/allfeedbacks.htm

Brilliant link. thanks.

But what kind of fallacy is that? I guess the fallacy of the accident. "Karner uses statistics to falsify global warming. With statistics you can weight a statistical analysis of anything to get a desired result. So proving anything you like, proves nothing."

What Karner did with satelite data was essentially the same what I did with ice core data, investigate persistency of noisy data. There is no way to predict the next data point from previous data points. It's a random walk, but feedback, always having inertial delay when processed again in the system, does influence the direction of the next datapoint. Negative feedback resists change and tends to reduce step size away from the average (non persistent). Positive feedback propagates change and tends to increase the step size away from the average value (persistent). This is something you can observe. Even if it's statistics, it's rather a impossible position to hold of seeing negative feedback behavior but nevertheless claiming that it must be positive feedback otherwise global warming won't work.

 

[Kirsten-B]

This thread was about my Gore critique and yet I do not see a single comment about the facts that it contains.

 

[Pythagorean]

You and Al Gore are competing for a sleep remedy? You're in the lead so far, but that's just because Al Gore told his personal stories with visuals and music and made me feel like I really knew him... before falling asleep.

 

[Kirsten-B]

You and Al Gore are competing for a sleep remedy? You're in the lead so far, but that's just because Al Gore told his personal stories with visuals and music and made me feel like I really knew him... before falling asleep.

So do you have something intelligent to offer or is it just your nature to insult people?

 

[edward]

Well, as usual there is the tendency to shoot the messenger.

No one is attempting to shoot the messenger, that is only your perception. As for your post and your long winded condescending self approved version of the world ; it is mostly smoke and mirrors. It is common knowledge that Exxon was funding AGW sceptics, denying it only discredits you. So let's just cut to the chase here.

Karner only proved to his own satisfaction that he might be correct. Others have not come to the same conclusion, nor obtained the same results.

When NASA attempted to replicate Lindzen's iris hypothesis they came up with data that essentially disproved it.

Given the current political and scientific concerns about global warming, Lindzen’s colleagues in the Earth system science community were very interested in his findings. One litmus test for whether or not a new hypothesis is true is whether other scientists can reproduce the same experiment and arrive at the same findings as the original experimenter. Two teams of scientists—one based at NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) and the other at the University of Washington—replicated Lindzen’s experiment and arrived at surprisingly different conclusions. (Only the LaRC team’s experiment is presented here in part 1.)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/

 

[Kirsten-B]

Edward,

In the posting above, you comment on oil companies funding sceptics. What about the funding of AGW research by extreme environmental groups like Greenpeace? What about the various projects that were funded by the US that were lobbied for by the same? It seems unfair to mention only one side.

As for the Iris hypothesis article you linked, that was a 5 year old article where the three scientific teams came to different conclusions (not surprising since there are three different locations being observed at three different times) and at least the two teams listed in the article stand by their findings. Both teams are very reputable. Is there an update? Surely there must be more by now.

 

[Skyhunter]

Edward,

In the posting above, you comment on oil companies funding sceptics. What about the funding of AGW research by extreme environmental groups like Greenpeace? What about the various projects that were funded by the US that were lobbied for by the same? It seems unfair to mention only one side.

As for the Iris hypothesis article you linked, that was a 5 year old article where the three scientific teams came to different conclusions (not surprising since there are three different locations being observed at three different times) and at least the two teams listed in the article stand by their findings. Both teams are very reputable. Is there an update? Surely there must be more by now.

An important distinction should be made here about funding.

Funding for research is how science is advanced.

Funding for propaganda is how agendas are advanced.

 

[Kirsten-B]

That's right Sky, and both the oil companies and the environmental groups are looking to get their agendas advanced. One usually uses their own money to do it. The other lobbys the government to get the money to do it.

 

[edward]

Edward,

In the posting above, you comment on oil companies funding sceptics. What about the funding of AGW research by extreme environmental groups like Greenpeace? What about the various projects that were funded by the US that were lobbied for by the same? It seems unfair to mention only one side.

I did mention the other side. The biggest contributor to AGW studies is the United States Government. Greenpeace, unlike Exxon has no ulterior profit motive involved in whatever financial contributions they may have made.

As for the Iris hypothesis article you linked, that was a 5 year old article where the three scientific teams came to different conclusions (not surprising since there are three different locations being observed at three different times) and at least the two teams listed in the article stand by their findings. Both teams are very reputable. Is there an update? Surely there must be more by now.

I would like to see an update on that myself. I am concerned that the acceptance of AGW by the majority may hamper further scientific studies on both sides of the issue. This would be totally wrong and I hope that it never happens.

In a way that is how we got ourselves into the fossil fuel predicament. It was cheap and plentiful, so for the most part, we just quit looking for cleaner energy sources.

 

[Skyhunter]

I reckon you would. I guess I'm too old to play the kid that exclaimed that the emperor wears no clothes. Indeed I do not analyse ice cores. I analyse the reasoning of the analysers. It was better it the analysers sticked to analysing only.

Strawman, I said that the nett resulting feedback is not positive.



Were are the data? I only see some expressions. The test is with the actual data. So why would a mere mathematical expression have the power to refute data testing?

Back later.

Not a strawman, a poor choice of words.

You are claiming that there is no net positive feedback evident in the ice core data. I don't believe you to be qualified to make that claim. I found your analysis of the date to be amateurish and biased. You start with an erroneous assumption as to how the feedback should look, and then when it doesn't meet your false assumption you declare it evidence that AGW is a hoax.

By your own words it is based on analyzing the reasoning of a person or persons you do not even know. Not very scientific. I think the term you would use for that is "ad hominem".

Andre you accuse the scientific community and the worlds governments of a grand conspiracy to plunge the world into a totalitarian state. And yet, when someone questions your questionable sources, you accuse them of fallacy.

See any contradiction there?

I'll make it easy for you.

You show me a peer reviewed study that explains the warming and cooling trends contained in the data without CO₂ and then we have something to talk about. You cannot do this because there is no way to explain past and present climate without CO₂!

I am not saying that CO₂ explains everything, it does not. There is an ocean of ignorance about climate and how the planet will react to the AGHG forcings.

I have seen experiments go badly wrong with disastrous effects. We only have one planet. I suggest we stop this experiment now. The projected results are not looking favorable for the subject.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Edward,

Money and power. Oil = money, Greenpeace = power. Both are just as bad and neither should be involved in furthering their agendas by corrupting science, yet both try to do it.

As for the "fossil fuel predicament," I read that the problem was conservation and pollution. Pollution was reduced by adding pollution equipment in cars. Conservation was a problem because certain politicians could not get campaign contributions from oil companies. So they started yelling conservation, we are going to run out next year. Back in the 70's there was little geologic data to refute this claim. They gave tax breaks to people for solar and etc. That changed along with the oil lobby getting the tax breaks reversed. The story is different now because we are using so much more, especially China and India are stressing the supply so much that it made a large contribution to the price increases of recent years. (mid east instability being the other) Thats just oil prices, the gas prices in the US went up more because environmentalists stopped independent refiners from opening up (i bet the oil companies did not lobby against this, all they did was upgrade their existing refineries). So now what do you have? Oil companies sell more gas for 3 times the price. Exxon/Mobile in the first 3 months of this year had record profits of 9.8 billion. That will not change until a whole lot of people change to electric cars that are charged by, for instance, a solar charger in their driveway at home.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Comment from Sky,

"You show me a peer reviewed study that explains the warming and cooling trends contained in the data without CO2 and then we have something to talk about. You cannot do this because there is no way to explain past and present climate without CO2!"

You do not need one, NOAA data sets are available on line. Compare the world temp and the ENSO and see where it comes from. But do not make the same mistake that the rest did by using a basis temp (ocean) from 20 years before. You have to use the ocean temp from the year before. You cannot forget the 11,000 year solar high that we have experienced in the last 70 years and the way it heated the oceans during this time.

CO2 in the vostoc ice cores lags temps. There is no evidence that even supports the claim that CO2 amplified temps in this time. Temperature increase in the last 100 years lead 80% of the CO2 rises. The global cooling from 1944 to 1975 correlates very well with ENSO, not the hypothesized and now disproven idea that global smog cooled the world during this time. And finally, there is no way, using AGW theory, to explain the leveling out of temps in the last 5 years.

 

[Skyhunter]

IIn a way that is how we got ourselves into the fossil fuel predicament. It was cheap and plentiful, so for the most part, we just quit looking for cleaner energy sources.

Jimmy Carter foresaw the problem 30 years ago. The policy he set in motion was changed by Ronald Reagan.

It wasn't because it was cheap, it was because it was profitable.

I don't think that we run the risk of not studying the AGW enough. There is so much that is still unexplained that there will be no shortage of funding for research.

There is a problem for the denialist think tank funding however. Murdoch has quit funding them, and I believe that Exxon has approached the Union of Concerned Scientists, to come to an agreement where they will stop funding think tanks to spread "uncertainty."

The problem with the denialists, is they are not being objective. I don't see any evidence of "warmers" being convinced of AGW as gospel truth.

I do see plenty evidence of denial from the skeptics, without any real evidence, or with cherry picked and distorted evidence. The most vocal of the climate deniers are not scientists. Nor are they propagating scientific findings.

When I read the scientific papers I see little bias, whether it be Lindzen or Mann. I will say that Lindzen has written some op-ed pieces that I found to be somewhat ludicrous. But on the whole climate scientists are in agreement about GHG's and there contribution to GW.

To claim that there is little or no evidence to support the current conclusions of the scientific community, using questionable sources and then ignoring evidence and the work of 10's of 1000's of real scientists is IMO ludicrous.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Sky's comment,

"Jimmy Carter foresaw the problem 30 years ago. The policy he set in motion was changed by Ronald Reagan." If I recall correctly, Carter was the guy who could not get money from the oil companies and Reagan was the one who did.

As for the rest of the comments, can you show me a measurment of AGW? To this point it has all been calculated and the observations do not support it.

 

[Skyhunter]

That's right Sky, and both the oil companies and the environmental groups are looking to get their agendas advanced. One usually uses their own money to do it. The other lobbys the government to get the money to do it.

Neither Greenpeace nor Exxon fund research into global warming. Greenpeace lobbies congress and has some access to the media, as well as lots of members to raise awareness of issues it is concerned with.

The Exxon agenda as outlined in this http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3860_GlobalClimateSciencePlanMemo.pdf is quite specific about the strategy and funding. Exxon funds think tanks to promote their agenda.

I would not consider Greenpeace to be an extreme environmental group. ALF and ELF are extreme environmental groups.

But I digress.

Let us look at the motives of the two groups.

Greenpeace motive:

Save the whales.

Exxon motive:

Profit.

So I contribute to Greenpeace and live a low carbon lifestyle.

 

[Moridin]

Greenpeace is a political organization with many goals. One of which happens to be a raving assault of globalization. It has also shown that they are not afraid to use unorthodox methods, as well as not being able to separate a harmful pollutant from water.

For an interesting look at their past.

http://web.archive.org/web/ INSERT Asterix /http://www.greenpeace.org/

Sorry for the strange formatting, but the correct one broke the forum design.