Is Global Warming a Swindle?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and its implications on the debate surrounding global warming. Participants explore various perspectives on the causes of climate change, the credibility of arguments presented in the film, and the broader scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express skepticism about the mainstream CO2 model, labeling it as unfounded and comparing belief in it to religious fanaticism.
  • Others find the film interesting and suggest it raises valid points about the influence of the sun on climate and the financial motivations behind climate change narratives.
  • Several participants challenge the credibility of the film's arguments, noting that many of the scientists featured are not climatologists and that the film relies on discredited ideas.
  • One participant issues a challenge to find recent peer-reviewed papers that dispute anthropogenic global warming, implying a lack of credible opposition in the scientific community.
  • Another participant reflects on their own lack of formal education in the field, questioning why they can see through the film's arguments while others cannot.
  • Some participants assert that there is a scientific consensus on climate change, while others argue that there is significant disagreement among climate scientists, with some suggesting that natural cycles may play a role in global warming.
  • A participant mentions their educational background and expresses a desire to understand the complexities of the debate before forming conclusions, acknowledging the challenges of adapting assumptions in scientific inquiry.
  • Another participant compares the disagreement over global warming to debates in other scientific fields, suggesting that the level of consensus is not as strong as some claim.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants exhibit a range of views, with no clear consensus on the validity of the film's arguments or the state of scientific agreement regarding global warming. Some assert a strong consensus exists, while others highlight significant disagreement among scientists.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference the complexity of scientific methodology and the challenges of interpreting climate data, indicating that assumptions and interpretations may vary widely among individuals.

  • #91
Evo said:
I find it funny that you say that someone that is not an expert is not qualified to form an opinion, then proceed with your opinion. You are selecting what "you" want to believe and exclaiming your version of the truth is the "only, correct and true" version. Truth is, no one knows for sure what effect man made pollution is having, they can only guess.

What opinion? I'm not stating my opinion on AGW. I'm stating the consensus view.

I want to think that AGW isn't correct. What I want however, is irrelevant.

And... not all guesses are created equal.
 
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  • #92
Astronuc said:
Barbeque! :biggrin:

Do you have a wind-powered BBQ? You'd better not be burning coal!
 
  • #93
StuMyers said:
What opinion? I'm not stating my opinion on AGW. I'm stating the consensus view.
What does the "consensus" view have to do with anything? The fact that a lot of scientists have caught onto the fact that they can get more grant money and secure their jobs by "jumping on the bandwagon" does not mean they even actually believe in it. It takes a LOT more guts for a scientist to speak against the popular consensus.

I'm all for doing something about pollution, but I am not for "chicken little" scare tactics that are heading off down the wrong path in the name of popularity. People need to look at what is REALLY happening.

Emmisions from cattle are well documented, but ignored by politicians. Why?
 
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  • #94
out of whack said:
Do you have a wind-powered BBQ? You'd better not be burning coal!
I'm doing my part by eating it rare.

Astronuc said:
Barbeque! :biggrin:

I'll bring the beer and picante (habanero) BBQ sauce!
I know turbo will be more than happy to help. I KNOW that Ivan and Integral routinely do their part in reducing the cow population.

Seriously, a level headed look into what is causing the most pollution and how it can be curtailed is what we should be doing. THAT is why I am against all this political hype.
 
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  • #95
Evo said:
What does the "consensus" view have to do with anything? The fact that a lot of scientists have caught onto the fact that they can get more grant money and secure their jobs by "jumping on the bandwagon" does not mean they even actually believe in it. It takes a LOT more guts for a scientist to speak against the popular consensus.

Have you been reading Michael Crichton? He writes science fiction. :smile:
 
  • #96
I abhor fanaticism and tend to prefer to remain middle of the road, now PETA has gotten involved. I'm all for animal rights but again, moderation, moderation, moderation. Why do people have to go off the deep end? The following post I found actually sums things up nicely, and I have to link to the source (just found it through google), I am NOT endorsing this site.

"I'm sorry to be redundant about this, but I don't think people fully appreciate the logic. Meat eating is either the number one cause of GW or it is not. If it is the number one cause, then why are the GW people not talking about it? Even the skeptics are not focusing on meat as they should be. I think meat may be the Achilles Heel of GW, as it puts the lie to them. The skeptics should be pressing it. I think the logic is being blurred for several reasons. One is that lot of people think we should conserve (we should), and end our dependence on foreign oil (we should). This does not mean that CO2 is being released in sufficient quantities to cause climate change, though. People rationalize going along with the GW scare because we need to conserve, and they forget that conservation of oil is a different issue. (I think it's right to conserve oil and reduce dependency, but I think fudging the issue is manipulative.)

Another reason is that even the believers have a natural resistance to giving up meat, and they fear it will damage their movement. They want to keep it quiet, and for some strange reason, their opponents go along with keeping it quiet, probably because they think the less said about it the better. Big mistake IMO, especially if meat is in fact the Achilles Heel of the environmentalists. The American people are used to being scolded about oil, but if they're asked to give up meat, they'll begin to wise up, and start asking basic questions. It's this "leave well enough alone" mindset which prevents people from getting to the truth.

Finally, there's a natural inclination to think of oil as the culprit, not just because Big Oil is so widely demonized, but because we've all been conditioned from childhood to think of smokestacks and tailpipes as pouring out evil, filthy pollution. Never mind that we emit carbons and that they're organic. Oil companies are "bad." Farmers are "good."

Thus, it is counterintuitive to see meat as the problem. Frankly, I don't think man's oil consumption or meat consumption emits enough carbon to change the climate. But I believe in being fair."

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/004744.html
 
  • #97
Evo said:
Seriously, a level headed look into what is causing the most pollution and how it can be curtailed is what we should be doing.

And the number one, most significant cause of pollution is... drum roll... people.

Are politicians addressing world population? Nope. Not popular. Of course.
 
  • #98
Any time (like just now) I come upon something relevant to this list, I'll share. It is my opinion though, that the person most capable of debunking many points on this list is Andre.

Art said:
Perhaps from the knowledge you gleaned at these lectures you might be able to throw some light on the following?

The current average temperature rise of .13 C per decade is the same now as it was in 1910 when reliable records began.
From the 2007 IPCC report:
IPCC said:
The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.
This directly contradicts the assertion that the trend has been "constant" over the last century.

Art said:
The temperatures the UN uses to calculate average global temperatures are obtained from readings taken near expanding towns and cities which makes the data victim to the heat island effect which is potentially serious as it is possible that the Earth is actually cooling not warming.

The error bars due to the heat island effect are calculated and specified in the same report.

IPCC said:
Urban heat island effects are real but local, and have a negligible influence (less than 0.006°C per decade over land and zero over the oceans) on these values.

Both quotes are from here: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_PlenaryApproved.pdf - pg4
 
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  • #99
Gokul43201 said:
Any time (like just now) I come upon something relevant to this list, I'll share. It is my opinion though, that the person most capable of debunking many points on this list is Andre.

From the 2007 IPCC report:This directly contradicts the assertion that the trend has been "constant" over the last century.
That's a blatant strawman argument. I never said it was constant. I said it is the same now as in 1910.


Gokul43201 said:
The error bars due to the heat island effect are calculated and specified in the same report.

Both quotes are from here: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_PlenaryApproved.pdf - pg4

According to the U.S. EPA the heat island effect accounts for between 1 - 6 C differences between urban and rural areas. Hence as cities grow one would expect temperatures measured within these cities and in surrounding areas to rise. The fact that largely they haven't is why some think temperatures may actually be falling. http://www.epa.gov/heatislands/

btw Seeing as how it is the veracity and conclusions of the IPCC's report I am questioning quoting them as the authoratitive source seems somewhat pointless.
 
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  • #100
Art said:
That's a blatant strawman argument.
No, it's a desperate attempt at gleaning some kind of meaningful argument from your pointer.

I never said it was constant. I said it is the same now as in 1910.
Now that's a non-argument, and is the reason why I attempted to interpret it in some kind of meaningful manner. If your pointer (as you now assert) has nothing to do with trends in global temperature rise, why did you include it? Beats me! If there is an argument in there, it would have helped if you made it clear. Anyone knows that the existence of two points with the same slope says nothing about the trend of the curve.

Besides, if "reliable" records began only in 1910, how did you compute a moving average for 1910? (Note: I didn't see this claim in your two sources, hence all this trouble with trying to interpret it meaningfully. The trouble could have been avoided if each pointer was individually sourced.)
btw Seeing as how it is the veracity and conclusions of the IPCC's report I am questioning quoting them as the authoratitive source seems somewhat pointless.
I'm only pointing out that your pointer distorts what the study involves. Rather that saying there are people that predict a different magnitude for the heat island effect, you made it look like the data was used incorrectly because it didn't account for the heat island effect. I provided a link to the IPCC report to show that it DID account for the heat island effect.

This was part of my objection to the original list. By writing it imprecisely, you make it impossible to have a meaningful argument about it.
 
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  • #101
Evo said:
I'm doing my part by eating it rare.

I know turbo will be more than happy to help. I KNOW that Ivan and Integral routinely do their part in reducing the cow population.
Oh, yes! I don't know how much of an effect I have had on the cow population, personally, because farmers keep raising more, and that makes is hard to keep count. :-p Just doing a rough estimate, I figure that I've probably eaten at least 5000# of beef - that's only about 10 steers, lifetime. I guess, I'd better start ramping up the effort.

http://www.askthemeatman.com/yield_on_beef_carcass.htm
 
  • #102
Emmisions from cattle are well documented, but ignored by politicians. Why?
Because emissions from cattle don't matter. The carbon dumped into the atmosphere by cattle comes from the food they eat, which comes from plants, which comes from the atmosphere. It's already part of the carbon cycle. Carbon emissions from oil and coal is coming from deep underground, and hasn't been in the ecosystem for millions of years. That's why it's causing a problem.
 
  • #103
For a somewhat more rigorous analysis of the urban heat island effect (or rather, non-effect).

AMJ Journal of climate.

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/....1175/1520-0442(2003)016<2941:AOUVRI>2.0.CO;2

AMJ said:
Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found

Thomas C. Peterson

National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina

ABSTRACT

All analyses of the impact of urban heat islands (UHIs) on in situ temperature observations suffer from inhomogeneities or biases in the data. These inhomogeneities make urban heat island analyses difficult and can lead to erroneous conclusions. To remove the biases caused by differences in elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting, a variety of adjustments were applied to the data. The resultant data were the most thoroughly homogenized and the homogeneity adjustments were the most rigorously evaluated and thoroughly documented of any large-scale UHI analysis to date. Using satellite night-lights–derived urban/rural metadata, urban and rural temperatures from 289 stations in 40 clusters were compared using data from 1989 to 1991. Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures. It is postulated that this is due to micro- and local-scale impacts dominating over the mesoscale urban heat island. Industrial sections of towns may well be significantly warmer than rural sites, but urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions.
 
  • #105
Gokul43201 said:
No, it's a desperate attempt at gleaning some kind of meaningful argument from your pointer.

Now that's a non-argument, and is the reason why I attempted to interpret it in some kind of meaningful manner. If your pointer (as you now assert) has nothing to do with trends in global temperature rise, why did you include it? Beats me! If there is an argument in there, it would have helped if you made it clear. Anyone knows that the existence of two points with the same slope says nothing about the trend of the curve.

Besides, if "reliable" records began only in 1910, how did you compute a moving average for 1910? (Note: I didn't see this claim in your two sources, hence all this trouble with trying to interpret it meaningfully. The trouble could have been avoided if each pointer was individually sourced.)


I'm only pointing out that your pointer distorts what the study involves. Rather that saying there are people that predict a different magnitude for the heat island effect, you made it look like the data was used incorrectly because it didn't account for the heat island effect. I provided a link to the IPCC report to show that it DID account for the heat island effect.

This was part of my objection to the original list. By writing it imprecisely, you make it impossible to have a meaningful argument about it.
I'll post this again as you evidently missed it last time
The reason I didn't bother with detailed sources is because this is the political forum and my main point was that a lot of the hype around GW is being driven by a political agenda. My 'list' was simply to demonstrate the debate is far from over.
From 1910-1940 the temp rise per decade was as it is today. From the mid 40s to the mid 70s it plummeted leading all the 'chicken littles' to run around screaming 'the Earth is freezing, the Earth is freezing' then from the mid 70s to 1998 the temperature rose at the same rate as it did prior to the 'ice age' period leading the same 'chicken littles' to run around screaming ' the Earth is burning. the Earth is burning' since then it hasn't done a lot one way or the other.

As for the IPCC accounting for the heat island effect; well I suppose they did in a way, they said it was irrelevant :rolleyes:
 
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  • #106
Manchot said:
Because emissions from cattle don't matter. The carbon dumped into the atmosphere by cattle comes from the food they eat, which comes from plants, which comes from the atmosphere. It's already part of the carbon cycle. Carbon emissions from oil and coal is coming from deep underground, and hasn't been in the ecosystem for millions of years. That's why it's causing a problem.
It's the cows methane emissions that are the issue. Evo's post referred to CO2 equivalents not CO2 itself.

Plus to feed the cattle we fertilize land using man-made nitrates. We are depositing nitrates in N Europe at 100* the amount produced by nature.

80% of nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere are from human sources and nitrous oxide has >300* the GW potential of CO2 and produces real measurable bad effects such as acid rain.

As Evo pointed out if politicians and environmental scientists really believe their own propaganda their silence on this issue is puzzling.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/nitrogenthebadguyofglobalwarming1160583306/
 
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  • #107
Art said:
So the US EPA is wrong or the other possibility of course is this is a prime example of how numbers are fudged to get the 'right' answer.

No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.
 
  • #108
StuMyers said:
No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.
I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said
a variety of adjustments were applied to the data
To support the AGW theory the urban temps should have been higher but they are not so AGW advocates are trying to explain away this discrepancy by denying the HI effect.

Isn't the consensus amongst scientists that the heat island effect is real though?? :biggrin:
 
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  • #109
Art said:
It's the cows methane emissions that are the issue. Evo's post referred to CO2 equivalents not CO2 itself.

Plus to feed the cattle we fertilize land using man-made nitrates. We are depositing nitrates in N Europe at 100* the amount produced by nature.

80% of nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere are from human sources and nitrous oxide has >300* the GW potential of CO2 and produces real measurable bad effects such as acid rain.

As Evo pointed out if politicians and environmental scientists really believe their own propaganda their silence on this issue is puzzling.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/nitrogenthebadguyofglobalwarming1160583306/

Where exactly are you seeing silence on CH4 and N2O? IPCC cites both as significant contributors. 0.64Wm^-2 of 1.6Wm^-2 total.
 
  • #110
Art said:
I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said

So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.
 
  • #111
StuMyers said:
Where exactly are you seeing silence on CH4 and N2O? IPCC cites both as significant contributors. 0.64Wm^-2 of 1.6Wm^-2 total.
It's a question of emphasis. I haven't seen anyone demanding a cull of cattle or a ban on man-made nitrates. For instance have you heard anyone advocating imposing an environmental cow tax yet?
 
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  • #112
StuMyers said:
So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.
I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?.

The article you have requested is available via Journal Subscription

However I did quote exactly what they said in the abstract. If you have an issue with it take it up with the article's authors.
 
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  • #113
Art said:
I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?.

Yep. I'm posting from my lab. Go to a library.

It's a question of emphasis. I haven't seen anyone demanding a cull of cattle or a ban on man-made nitrates. For instance have you heard anyone advocating imposing an environmental cow tax yet?

You're kidding right? Read Kyoto. Methane and nitrous oxide are both inclued in cap and trade. :smile: Got anything else?
 
  • #114
StuMyers said:
You're kidding right? Read Kyoto. Methane and nitrous oxide are both inclued in cap and trade. :smile: Got anything else?
Please post the link and show the data you are referring to and show how it addresses the figures posted in the UN report. And can the attitude.

Kyoto promises are nothing but hot air

22 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

"MANY governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading.

Under Kyoto, each government calculates how much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide its country emits by adding together estimated emissions from individual sources. These so-called "bottom-up" estimates have long been accepted by atmospheric scientists, even though they have never been independently audited.

Now two teams that have monitored concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere say they have convincing evidence that the figures reported by many countries are wrong, especially for methane. Among the worst offenders are the UK, which may be emitting 92 per cent more methane than it declares under the Kyoto protocol, and France, which may be emitting 47 per cent more.

By measuring these differences and tracking air movements, the scientists say they can calculate a country's emissions independently of government estimates. Bergamaschi's calculations suggest that the UK emitted 4.21 million tonnes of methane in 2004 compared to the 2.19 million tonnes it declared, while France emitted 4.43 million tonnes compared to the 3.01 million tonnes it declared. Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. While it persists in the atmosphere for only one-tenth as long as CO2, its immediate warming effect, tonne for tonne, is around 100 times greater. According to some estimates, methane is responsible for a third of current global warming, and reductions in methane emissions may be the quickest and cheapest way of slowing climate change."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025574.000-kyoto-promises-are-nothing-but-hot-air.html
 
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  • #115
meanwhile the greenhouse effect of methane is usually overrated, like twenthy one times as strong as CO2.

http://www.epa.gov/methane/scientific.html

Indeed, it does have a considerable range of absorption bands but in the wrong frequency area.

Using the Modtran tool on David Archer site those equilibrium temperature increases can be calculated:


http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/cgimodels/radiation.html

it is possible to calculate equilibrium temperatures for thermal balance for any concentration of greenhouse gasses. Using this tool I constructed this sensitive for the US standard atmosphere, no clouds, etc:

result see also attachment:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtran-rad-bal.GIF

I used a logaritmic scale on which the sensitive approaches a straight line, showing the more or logaritmic relationship between concentration of greenhouse gasses and higher radiation balance temperatures, meaning that the sensitivity decreases fast with increasing concentrations. It also shows that CH4 is not really a player.

In the low ranges ~1 ppmv CO2 has about a 3-5 times stronger greenhouse effect than CH4 at equal values. The only thing that could be right is if you increase 0.5 ppmv CH4 with 1 ppmv to 1,5 ppmv CH4 that the effect is ~20 times stronger than the increase of 379 ppmv CO2 with 1 ppmv to 380 ppmv. But it's also highly irrelevant, it's just a lot of nothing and it proofs that slogans as: "Methane-21-times-more-powerful-than-CO2" appears to be misleading.
 

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  • #116
Art said:
StuMyers said:
No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.
I did read it
Art said:
StuMyers said:
So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.
I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?
So, when you say you did read the article, you really meant that you did not read the article?

Art said:
I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said
a variety of adjustments were applied to the data
In any other of the subforums, this would have counted as crackpottery. This is worse than misinterpreting the argument after reading the paper - you are misinterpreting the argument without reading the paper.

I guess, by your reasoning, 'inflation adjusted income' is just the scientific version of 'fudged up income data'?
 
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  • #117
Gokul43201 said:
So, when you say you did read the article, you really meant that you did not read the article?
Err no It means I read the article available on the link supplied which happens to be an abstract or if you prefer an executive summary which links to a further link. But you already know that - right! So really you're just trying to be smart - right!

The crux is the EPA measures heat island temperature rises whereas the IPCC says they don't exist as a factor in determing GW. Now I doubt the EPA has all it's thermometers in industrial hotspots whilst the IPCC's are in cool public parks next to fountains and so something doesn't add up. As the EPA doesn't have a vested interest (that I'm aware of) I'm inclined to go with their data which suggests global temperatures are possibly being overstated.


Gokul43201 said:
In any other of the subforums, this would have counted as crackpottery. This is worse than misinterpreting the argument after reading the paper - you are misinterpreting the argument without reading the paper.

I guess, by your reasoning, 'inflation adjusted income' is just a scientific version of fudged up numbers?
The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them? How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument? And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example :biggrin:
 
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  • #118
Art said:
The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them? How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument? And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example :biggrin:
Here's the actual report. I haven't had time to do more that scan through it to understand the adjustments made, I'm assuming they are fair. I'd have to see if I can find other papers that discuss this report. There is a difference between skewing data, data mining and trying to find a fair means at data representation to give a more realistic view. Adjusting data is not always bad if it is done consistently and in the right way, for the right reasons.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf

To members, please make sure that a report is not publicly available before you post nothing but an abstract requiring a subscription.
 
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  • #119
Art said:
Err no It means I read the article available on the link supplied which happens to be an abstract or if you prefer an executive summary which links to a further link. But you already know that - right! So really you're just trying to be smart - right!
Hardly! Anyone that's even the tinyest bit familiar with scientific literature knows the difference between the abstract to an article and the article itself. I guess I was wrong in assuming you belonged to this set.

The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them?
They did not "change the data" - you are continuing to misrepresent (ie: twist) that particular sentence fragment from the abstract.
How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument?
It doesn't. But you went beyond merely quoting (and heck, you didn't even quote a complete sentence - just a fragment of it).

And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example :biggrin:
No I didn't. Your argument was that adjusting for inflation is itself an act of fudging. This is nonsensical.
 

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