I'm not worried about Global Warming

[wittgenstein]

There is no doubt that humans have contributed to global warming. Unless you believe that 98% of the world's scientists and all of the organizations listed below are part of a vast conspiracy. But then again I guess anythings possible. Big foot might even exist!

The following illustrates the growing consensus of scientific experts that believe climate change over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

Organizations that concur:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
InterAcademy Council
Joint science academies’ statement 2007
Joint science academies’ statement 2005
Joint science academies’ statement 2001
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Network of African Science Academies
International Council for Science
European Science Foundation
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Federation of American Scientists
World Meteorological Organization
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
American Physical Society
American Chemical Society
National Research Council (US)
Federal Climate Change Science Program (US)
American Quaternary Association
Geological Society of America
Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
European Geosciences Union
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
International Union of Geological Sciences

Organizations with noncommittal statements:
American Association of State Climatologists
American Association of Petroleum Geologists

Dissenting opinion:
Michael Savage
(With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate)

 

[thomasxc]

Tho to be fair, industry and special interest groups have been devoting resources to a disinformation campaign with individual scientists being payed to take an anti-global warming position. I can see why some people are confused as to what the facts actually are.

definitely.too much confusion. to start, the average joe is not a scientist. the confusion you speak of just adds to it, in a way.

 

[junglebeast]

Fair enough, but wasn't the scientific method about testing predictions against reality? How would the old predictions, that triggered the alarms, do nowadays?

Well the B and C predictions look pretty darn good to me...although it seems silly to even bother trying to predict the exact curve, like trying to predict the stock market exactly. I would rather see a monte carlo analysis. But I don't know, are these predictions even based on global fluid dynamics? If not, if they are just "charting" predictions, then I would not give them a second thought...

 

[lisab]

Erm you do know where the US gets most of it's oil from?

ps - please don't spread it around - we don't want to be invaded.
pps - well if you stuck to bringing freedom and democracy to Alberta we wouldn't care too much

Wow, did you just give us Alberta?!? We're reciprocate by giving you Alabama...we'll throw in Mississippi too, just since your're such good neighbors !

 

[kldickson]

Oh man. Canada can have Alberta. While you're at it, we'll give you everything east of New Mexico and south of Northern Virginia. It's rich plantin' country down there. Never mind the hicks.

 

[kldickson]

Not that all Southerners are hicks; I have been privileged to know some well-educated, intelligent Southerners. But they are clearly not in the majority.

 

[Evo]

Unless you believe that 98% of the world's scientists and all of the organizations listed below are part of a vast conspiracy.

Do you always blindly buy into the politically correct "consensus" of the day? Just because people throw their hat into the ring doesn't mean they aren't wrong.

No different from the completely wrong scientific consensus in 1989 vehemently endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences and the Surgeon General that trans fatty acids posed no danger to Americans, that "the levels of trans fatty acids found in a balanced diet are safe". and that the Dutch study claiming that trans fats were harmful was rubish.

Well, we know now that the consensus was wrong.

I don't get sucked in by politically correct "consensus".

 

[mgb_phys]

Wow, did you just give us Alberta?!? We're reciprocate by giving you Alabama...we'll throw in Mississippi too, just since your're such good neighbors !

I have been informed that I don't have permission to give away provinces (although if you wanted to take Quebec off our hands I'm sure people wouldn't mind too much)

Not sure about Alabama, is Alaska available?

Have you tried giving California back to Mexico? They might not get the WSJ down there and don't know about the deficit

 

[kldickson]

Evo, the data on the non-AGW side of things seems awfully deficient compared to the pro-AGW side of things.

 

[wittgenstein]

"Do you always blindly buy into the politically correct "consensus" of the day?"
Evo

I never claimed that every scientific organization in the world is 100% correct 100% of the time. However, when the entire world's scientific community agrees on something, I would say that that something is very very likely.
Your examples only prove that with a vast scientific community, an error or two may occur.

 

[mheslep]

The IPCC? I thought it was agreed that most of the people that created these reports were not actually scientists.

...

Amusingly, the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, started out as a Locomotive engineer. He's certainly not a climate scientist.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/bios/pachauri.htm

 

[wittgenstein]

Evo what guidelines have I violated.
Perhaps you should read them.
"Do you always blindly buy into the politically correct "consensus" of the day?"
Evo
Personal attacks are allowed? Anyway, let's not get petty.

 

[Evo]

Evo, the data on the non-AGW side of things seems awfully deficient compared to the pro-AGW side of things.

That's not what I'm sayiing. It's the fact that scientists have decided that the public is too stupid to understand the real problems of pollution and instead throws out "facts" that aren't facts. They're models, and they are, as has been repeatedly shown, flawed models. That is why we have people driving around in cars all day passing out flyers about polar bears.

Evo what guidelines have I violated.

You didn't receive a warning.

Perhaps you should read them.
"Do you always blindly buy into the politically correct "consensus" of the day?"
Evo
Personal attacks are allowed? Anyway, let's not get petty.

Blindly, as in ''without question".

 

[mheslep]

Well the B and C predictions look pretty darn good to me...

The Hansen paper shows the results of his '88 model. The model had an input A,B,C and an output A,B,C as models do. The inputs were guesses at the future of man made emissions which has nothing to do with climate physics. B and C were small and no growth emissions scenarios. That didn't happen (even though Hansen though B emissions would). What undeniably happened was A, a large growth in emissions, so Hansen's model predicts outcome A, and as you can see that prediction was substantially wrong.

 

[wittgenstein]

"That is why we have people driving around in cars all day passing out flyers about polar bears."
Evo
I'm confused. So you are saying that the polar bear environment is not diminishing?

"Amusingly, the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, started out as a Locomotive engineer. He's certainly not a climate scientist."
First of all the chairman does not decide a consensus. It would be like saying," Bush is incompetent and in charge of the military. The military says that missiles can shoot down planes. Therefore it is questionable if missiles can shoot down planes." However, I will provisionally accept that Rajendra Pachauri is incompetent to decide about global warming and has the power to make that the position of the IPCC.
So you are saying that the following organizations are part of a conspiracy? Or are you saying that all the scientists that belong to these organizations are incompetent?World Meteorological Organization
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
American Institute of Physics
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics

 

[wittgenstein]

"You didn't receive a warning."
Evo
whether I did or not has nothing to do with this thread. Years ago I drank while in High School. Are you going to warn me not to drink while posting? ( I haven't had a drink in decades). This all seems very petty and a red herring that is used when losing an argument. Besides in this thread you have violated far more guidelines then I. But as I said, let's not get petty. The only reason that I mentioned it is to defend myself.

 

[mheslep]

...
It's also very misleading to say that the planet has been cooling since 2005. Three years have passed since 2005 ended: 2006, 2007, and 2008. 2008 was the tenth warmest year on record, exceeded only by years that are within the 1998-2008 period. And you can't do meaningful statistics on the remaining 2 data points.

And each of those years were cooler than 2005.

Yes, that's called doing statistics on small numbers. Once you actually plot the data, you get something like this: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

Uhm, do you see what your data is doing at the end of your graph?

It's fallacious to draw conclusions based upon two or three data points!

For some reason I cannot find any global warming graphs / charts that show data up to 2009. They all stop at around 2000...what's with that? I want to see the trend...

Also here you can see that 2008 has dropped back near 1997 levels globally. The year 2005 was an unusual spike, as you can see from the list.

(Jan-Dec) Anomaly °C Anomaly °F
2005 0.61 1.10
1998 0.58 1.04
2002 0.56 1.01
2003 0.56 1.01
2006 0.55 0.99
2007 0.55 0.99
2004 0.53 0.95
2001 0.49 0.88
2008 0.49 0.88
1997 0.46 0.83

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/ann/global.html[/URL][/QUOTE]

If one does a linear regression on the temperature (satellite) for only the last eight years the slope is slightly negative. That's simply a fact, just as it is a fact that the linear slope was positive for the several decades prior. The words being used around the climate literature now are 'pause', 'lull', or 'interrupted', 'slightly cooling'. The discussion now is about natural variability and background cycles, and how likely the latest temperature lull(?) is likely to be explained by such.
[URL]http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/pdf/nature06921.pdf[/URL]

 

[lisab]

wittgenstein, could you use the Quote button when you quote someone, please?

 

[Evo]

I have always wondered what the average temperatures would look like if we removed all of the temperature readings from locations that weren't recorded 100 years ago. Let's go back and only show readings from the same locations during this time period in order to get an accurate picture of temperature changes. We now include temperatures from thousands of locations including over oceans, and much more accurate than ever. Has anyone created a graph to correct for this?

 

[ideasrule]

Well, we know now that the consensus was wrong.

I don't get sucked in by politically correct "consensus".

The politically correct consensus--and the popular consensus--is that global warming is still not proven yet. I don't get sucked in by political consensus, but when all scientists in a given field say that A is true and I know nothing about that field, I don't go around saying the experts are wrong and that I'm right. If I do happen to know something about the field--as is the case for planetary science and evolutionary biology--I tend to become boiling mad at the people who do that.

Global warming is not the only reason to worry about fossil fuels. Most of our oil comes from the Carboniferous era some 300 million years ago, when oxygen levels and temperatures were high and ecosystems were extremely productive. Once the existing oil reserves run out, I don't think many people will want to wait for another carboniferous era, then for another 300 million years, before getting more. As we--meaning humans--become more dependent on oil due to the improving economies of China, India, and other developing countries, it will be harder to switch to alternative energy sources, and the economy will be more heavily affected when existing oil runs out.

 

[ideasrule]

If one does a linear regression on the temperature (satellite) for only the last eight years the slope is slightly negative. That's simply a fact, just as it is a fact that the linear slope was positive for the several decades prior. The words being used around the climate literature now are 'pause', 'lull', or 'interrupted', 'slightly cooling'. The discussion now is about natural variability and background cycles, and how likely the latest temperature lull(?) is likely to be explained by such.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/pdf/nature06921.pdf

By "doing statistics on small numbers", I didn't mean that the temperature measurements for 2006-2008 were wrong; I was implying that it's fallacious to conclude global warming has stopped and we must therefore pump in more CO2 to prevent an ice age.

 

[ideasrule]

World Meteorological Organization
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
American Institute of Physics
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics

Good start! But add in the national academies of science of all major industrialized countries, and we'll have a list that's less remotely far away from completion.

 

[Argentum Vulpes]

Well once we get all of our CO2 production down, we should go help out our solar neighbors with their global warming problem. Unless you want us to believe that our CO2 is traveling across the vast distance of space to warm up mars.

And yes I do have proof to back up my claim that Mars is also experiencing a warming trend.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html"

 

[Evo]

The politically correct consensus--and the popular consensus--is that global warming is still not proven yet. I don't get sucked in by political consensus, but when all scientists in a given field say that A is true and I know nothing about that field, I don't go around saying the experts are wrong and that I'm right.

It was the climate scientist I dated a few years ago, an expert that testified before congress every year, that alerted me to the fact that he was '"forced' by his superiors to slant all of his reports and requests for grants to be pro-AGW. He was infuriated. I didn't have any interest in the debate before then, and I learned that a lot of the hype on AGW is misleading. There are problems with the computer modules, there are problems with data being cherry picked. This is why an increasing number of scientists are risking their careers to come forward and raise these issues.

Someone earlier summed it up nicely that the real concern here is pollution, practises of agriculture, etc... and the need for alternative fuels. I don't like the excuse that the majority of humans are too stupid to grasp the real issues, so scare tactics need to be used, and it's ok to exaggerate because it's for a good cause.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Well once we get all of our CO2 production down, we should go help out our solar neighbors with their global warming problem. Unless you want us to believe that our CO2 is traveling across the vast distance of space to warm up mars.

And yes I do have proof to back up my claim that Mars is also experiencing a warming trend.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html"

The Martian atmosphere is thinner than Earth's, about 95% carbondioxide, and has a far lesser amount of ozone. I believe the Earth's atmosphere is supposed to be much better at deflecting heat and radiation from the sun. And if AGW is correct then the martian atmosphere would quite easily trap a lot of heat with all of that CO2 yes?

 

[Blenton]

The following illustrates the growing consensus of scientific experts that believe climate change over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.
...
Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
...

I used to receive Engineers Australia magazine every month, and with it every month were debates against global warming. I hardly think that all the 'engineers of australia' agree with GW (in fact I think most think its false).

 

[Andre]

There are some problems with that "consensus". The latest http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2282/Consensus-Takes-Another-Hit-More-than-60-German-Scientists-Dissent-Over-Global-Warming-Claims-Call-Climate-Fears-Pseudo-Religion-Urge-Chancellor-to-reconsider-views .

 

[Blenton]

Its great to see scientists waking up from the carbon dioxide wool that's been thrown over their eyes, I hope more will change their minds in the future.

And I hope that the damage Al Gore has wrought on this world with his movie (which seemed to be the final tipping point) is minimal. Sadly if it were up to him and other global warming twits they would attempt nuke those goddamn carbon dioxide bastards out of the atmosphere at any cost...

 

[ideasrule]

There are some problems with that "consensus". The latest http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2282/Consensus-Takes-Another-Hit-More-than-60-German-Scientists-Dissent-Over-Global-Warming-Claims-Call-Climate-Fears-Pseudo-Religion-Urge-Chancellor-to-reconsider-views .

Careful where you get your information from. That website's home page features this oversized headline:

"CO2 is 'Plant Food': Skeptical Physicist Declares 'those who want to reduce use of fossil fuels are mortal enemies of the biosphere' -- 'This is a profoundly evil act'"

I don't think even Evo would agree with that.

 

[ideasrule]

Well once we get all of our CO2 production down, we should go help out our solar neighbors with their global warming problem. Unless you want us to believe that our CO2 is traveling across the vast distance of space to warm up mars.

And yes I do have proof to back up my claim that Mars is also experiencing a warming trend.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html"

See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070527101114.htm for another report of the same warm-up. It's due to a change in albedo resulting from dust storms, not radiative forcing. Note that on Mars, dust storms are a very different creature from the "serious" ones you sometimes hear about on Earth; they often become global and obscure the entire planet's surface, turning it into featureless. (Such was the case during the 2001 Mars opposition. Amateur astronomers who waited for closest approach to observe the planet got http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast11oct_2.htm . Who knew that extraterrestrial weather can be more frustrating than Earth's?)

 

[Andre]

Careful where you get your information from. That website's home page features this oversized headline:

"CO2 is 'Plant Food': Skeptical Physicist Declares 'those who want to reduce use of fossil fuels are mortal enemies of the biosphere' -- 'This is a profoundly evil act'"

I don't think even Evo would agree with that.

thanks for giving another nice example of creating folk devils and moral panic.

Some references to think about

http://www.worldofteaching.com/powerpoints/english/Folk Devils and Moral Panics' -.ppt

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mannheim/publications/cohen2.htm

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

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

It appears that the creation of folks devils for anyone who dared to challenge global warming was initiated here:

...But what's not run-of -the-sty is a 1998 letter, signed by Enron's then-CEO Ken Lay (and a few other bigwigs), asking President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue. Apparently they were standing in Enron's way.

The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to "moderate the political aspects" of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan "Blue Ribbon Commission."

The purpose of this commission was clear: high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this is simple -- just look at the latest issue of Scientific American, where four attack dogs were called out to chew up poor Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish a book demonstrating global warming is overblown.

Because of the arcane nature of science, it's easy to trash scientists. Imagine a 1940 congressional hearing to discredit Einstein. "This man actually believes the faster you drive, the slower your watch runs. Mr. Einstein, then why weren't you here yesterday?" The public, listening on radio, immediately concludes this Princeton weirdo is just another academic egghead. End of reputation.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/30/lawrence-solomon-enron-s-other-secret.aspx

Oh and it doesn't make that dissent less real, does it? Would it be less true if ***fill in your worst enemy here*** declared that water boils at 100C or 212F or 373K?

Now about that headline, wouldn't it be worthwile to investigate the complete carbon cycle over the geologic past first to see if there may be some rationality in there or not?

 

[thomasxc]

Not that all Southerners are hicks; I have been privileged to know some well-educated, intelligent Southerners. But they are clearly not in the majority.

i was born, raised, and live in north central florida. that is so true.

 

[ideasrule]

thanks for giving another nice example of creating folk devils and moral panic.

It's called requesting reliable sources. A propaganda website that looks like the Time Cube and sounds like creationist ******** is clearly not a reliable source. Its arguments are similar to creationist ones, too: "Oh look, I found these couple of scientists who doesn't believe in A. Scientists are doubting A! The consensus is faltering!"

 

[Andre]

No it's called moral panic, but now I can thank you for demonstrating how something that orginally started as science has become something else, name it dogma, pseudo religion, politics or pseudo science, etc, whatever you like. Why? Because you declare it true by consensus and deny its falsifiability by declaring anybody who challenges it, to be a folk devil.

Science is fallacy free. But there are three major fallacies governing global warming, the argument at populum for the false consensus claim, the argumentum ad hominem (alleged oil company bribery and such) for all who oppose (and prove the non-consensus that way) and guilt by association by the comparison with young Earth creationists and/or flat eartheners and even suggestions of the holocaust (deniers).

 

[Andre]

Now maybe there is a misunderstanding here. We have climate issues and energy issues. Most certainly a carbon based economy will run into sustainability problems sooner or later and it we want to preserve Earth for our children, we need to put sustainability priority one on the list. Let there be no doubt about it.

On the other hand we have climate, which has done only one thing in the last 4.6 billion years, change and change again, all the time, always.

Furthermore there are physical properties to CO2, making it radiative in the Infra Red frequency bands in which Earth is emitting energy, which is likely to affect weather and climate, together with a bunch of other factors.

So obviously combining the two, it would be very convenient if it was to be made reasonable that more CO2 might ruin the climate and persuade humanity to behave better and stop emitting. There is only one problem. That can't be proven, on the contrary.

Even if more CO2 would mean a considerable warming of the climate, there is no way to predict if it is negative or positive. For instance the major warming event in the beginning of the Holocene, aka Holocene Thermal Maximum (~9000-5000 years ago) brought very favorable conditions in Siberia and in the Arctic, as well as it brought the African Humid Period, which turned the Sahara into a lovely green place and many early cultures started to develop and bloom in that period. So why would a warming be catastrophic now?

So it is unsure how much warming more CO2 will bring and if that warming is disastrous or beneficial. The irrevocable tying of climate disaster to carbon dioxide is likely to backfire once it is clear that either there is no global warming coming or that it is only to the benefit of currently barely inhabitable areas, albeit in 10 or 20 or 100 years. People are going to be very angry when they start to realize that they had to ruin their economy for nothing, because science said so but science was wrong. Will science ever be trustworthy again?

Certainly we must minimize our carbon footprint and conserve energy, by all means but for a real reason. I ride a bike and you?