News No logic for inaction - Global Warming

[denverdoc]

lesson one, sub A, in fallacies, it is the message, not the man you shoot on. Even the biggest villain or the most stupid John Doe can be right. Whoever he is, it does not relate to the message. And being whatever Prof Dr Med, using this circumstantial argumentum ad hominem, whilst appealing to his autority, does not change that principle.

And how many small children are required to observe that Emperor wears no new clothes?[/url]

Lesson two, about Exxon...

Jeez, why can't I find that letter?

Andre,

Actually, that he is pedigreed and un-degreed wasn't why I looked into the Viscount. Tho it seems grandiose in the extreme for someone with apparently little formal training in the relevant sciences to take on such a mssion as arbiter of truth. No, what I began to wonder is what is his motive, background, and political leanings--in other words can we accept him as an unbiased referee. In other words, follow the $$.

The answer is a resounding NO. That Thatcher picked him tells you a lot, that he is a paid mouthpiece for corporations, even more. That doesn't exactly disqualify the man from self-appointed guardian of scientific truth, but it certainly heightens my suspicions re any supposed impartiality.
Cheers.

 

[Andre]

Andre,

Actually, that he is pedigreed and un-degreed wasn't why I looked into the Viscount. Tho it seems grandiose in the extreme for someone with apparently little formal training in the relevant sciences to take on such a mssion as arbiter of truth. No, what I began to wonder is what is his motive, background, and political leanings--in other words can we accept him as an unbiased referee. In other words, follow the $$.

The answer is a resounding NO. That Thatcher picked him tells you a lot, that he is a paid mouthpiece for corporations, even more. That doesn't exactly disqualify the man from self-appointed guardian of scientific truth, but it certainly heightens my suspicions re any supposed impartiality.
Cheers.

Incredible homework deep rooted the ad hominem is, let's see; if he is crook, then he is wrong. And if he isn't a crook we make him one by assumptions up tor good cause corruption by suggesting that there would be an Exxon letter and a $$-stream. After all, who is against global warming, must be mankinds worst enemy. Character murder. And it works spendidly since nobody cares about the message anymore, because that might pinch the balloon.

How about motives for the warmers, not that it proofs or disproofs anything but what is even more important than $$ ?

Power

I repeat:

The urge to safe humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it, H.L. Mencken

The other year I made this essay before I knew that quote.

Now is there proof for Menckens hypothesis? How about http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/page6333.asp :

...Let me turn now to the evidence itself. The scientific evidence of global warming and climate change: UK leadership in environmental science...

...I said earlier it needed global leadership (wow) to tackle the issue. But we cannot aspire to such leadership unless we are seen to be following our own advice...

...Tackling climate change will take leadership, dynamism and commitment - qualities that I know are abundantly represented in this room...

Why did Al Gore make "An inconvenient truth"?
He knows exactly how it works:

There will be a strong appeal for Gore for president. He can affort to laugh it away, perhaps saying that it's time to have a women for president but eventually he will "concede" under the pressure, and the election victory will be an all time record with such an eminent nobel price winning savior of the world. Such a great election campaign, "the inconvenient truth".

Unless the balloon pops.

 

[Andre]

Should change there name to Summary of Policy Advertising Makers IMO

j/k



No seriously most of this stuff is already accounted for in models and that which isn't is under review. I know or at least by assosciation know an environmental scientist.

Where did most of this come from? Science or scientists who would accept nothing at face value. It's in there. it's like the Newtonians vs the Einsteinians all over again

Ah, the models, finally popping up. So what has one of http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-60/iss-1/72_1.html to say about that?

Climate projections made with sophisticated computer codes have informed the world's policymakers about the potential dangers of anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate system. Those codes purport to model a large part of the system...

…The physics in climate models can be divided into three categories. The first includes fundamental principles such as the conservation of energy, momentum, and mass, and processes, such as those of orbital mechanics, that can be calculated from fundamental principles. The second includes physics that is well known in theory, but that in practice must be approximated due to discretization of continuous equations. Examples include the transfer of radiation through the atmosphere and the Navier–Stokes equations of fluid motion. The third category contains empirically known physics such as formulas for evaporation as a function of wind speed and humidity….

Given the nature of parameterizations among other features, a climate model depends on several expert judgment calls. Thus, each model will have its own unique details. ..

Remember the Phlogiston theory?

Suppose that there were supermodels in that time, the abstract of the study, proving that phlogiston exist, could go like:

Abstract
There has been serious scepticism about the existence of Phlogiston, (Greek for to-light-a-fire), discovered by Becker and Stahl around 1680. However there is an overwhelming consensus that the theory explains correctly how, during a fire, phlogiston escapes, whilst forming the flame. Recently it has been proven that the sum of ashes and gasses that remain after the fire, has a greater weight than the original fuel. But this is entire logical. As we see that the flames rise up, it is clear that phlogiston has a negative weight and as it escapes from the fuel, the remains need to get heavier. Nevertheless Lavoisier and Cavendish are still to be convinced.

To prove once and for all that phlogiston exist, projections are made here with sophisticated computer codes to inform world's policymakers about it. Those codes purport to model a large part of the system of burning a certain fuel. If we enter the right negative weight parameters for phlogiston, the model duplicates the real live world experiment exactly, which proofs that phlogiston exists

In other words, the models just give back what you put into it and if you put an oversensitivity of climate for CO2 and a non existent positive feedback, then the outcome is certain; global warming. Not much difference between phlogiston and CO2

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Ah, the models, finally popping up. So what has one of http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-60/iss-1/72_1.html to say about that?
Remember the Phlogiston theory?

Suppose that there were supermodels in that time, the abstract of the study, proving that phlogiston exist, could go like:
In other words, the models just give back what you put into it and if you put an oversensitivity of climate for CO2 and a non existent positive feedback, then the outcome is certain; global warming. Not much difference between phlogiston and CO2

Do these scientists claim there models are 100% accurate? Do they suggest a plus or minus value? Are they constantly being revised? I fail to see your point here, do you genuinely believe that the planet is not getting warmer due to mans influence?

I fail to see any of your arguments being convincing and I have yet to. The way you keep rattling on about this issue makes it sound like you believe there is some sort of conspiracy of miseducation or against big business. PM me I have a link to a website that an environmental scientist frequents, read his evidence and point of view, it at least should give you some perspective. Scientists are not in the habbit of believing something because it's popular, at least not the good ones. Some people will follow anything though, like string theory or MWI j/k

 

[Andre]

Perhaps you read the ISPM first

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=886

Overall conclusions

The following concluding statement is not in the Fourth Assessment Report, but was agreed upon by the ISPM writers based on their review of the current evidence. The Earth’s climate is an extremely complex system and we must not understate the difficulties involved in analyzing it. Despite the many data limitations and uncertainties, knowledge of the climate system continues to advance based on improved and expanding data sets and improved understanding of meteorological and oceanographic mechanisms. The climate in most places has undergone minor changes over the past 200 years, and the land-based surface temperature record of the past 100 years exhibits warming trends in many places. Measurement problems, including uneven sampling, missing data and local land-use changes, make interpretation of these trends difficult. Other, more stable data sets, such as satellite, radiosonde and ocean temperatures yield smaller warming trends. The actual climate change in many locations has been relatively small and within the range of known natural variability. There is no compelling evidence that dangerous or unprecedented changes are underway.

The available data over the past century can be interpreted within the framework of a variety of hypotheses as to cause and mechanisms for the measured changes. The hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions have produced or are capable of producing a significant warming of the Earth’s climate since the start of the industrial era is credible, and merits continued attention. However, the hypothesis cannot be proven by formal theoretical arguments, and the available data allow the hypothesis to be credibly disputed. Arguments for the hypothesis rely on computer simulations, which can never be decisive as supporting evidence. The computer models in use are not, by necessity, direct calculations of all basic physics but rely upon empirical approximations for many of the smaller scale processes of the oceans and atmosphere. They are tuned to produce a credible simulation of current global climate statistics, but this does not guarantee reliability in future climate regimes. And there are enough degrees of freedom in tunable models that simulations cannot serve as supporting evidence for anyone tuning scheme, such as that associated with a strong effect from greenhouse gases.

There is no evidence provided by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report that the uncertainty can be formally resolved from first principles, statistical hypothesis testing or modeling exercises. Consequently, there will remain an unavoidable element of uncertainty as to the extent that humans are contributing to future climate change, and indeed whether or not such change is a good or bad thing.

 

[denverdoc]

The Fraser Institute seems lopsided--every significant issue they look at seems to result in a policy statement that supports market forces without gov't interference. These places aren't think tanks, they are propoganda publishing houses. We have plenty here in the US.

This is an interesting vid, that one can watch and draw their own possibly erroneous conclusions from, versus having someone else do it for you.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/cryosphere.html

Sure just a bunch of wackos down at NASA pushing for a world gov't.

 

[Andre]

There you go again. Character murder. So, whatever they say it's wrong. What is wrong with you people that call themselfs scientists. Fallacysist would be better.


All they do is sow some other research results, conveniently ignored by the IPCC writers. But I guess even if the Frasier institute would state that water boils at 100 degrees C, it would be wrong because they are evil hoodlums because don't believe in global warming.

 

[denverdoc]

Its not about character murder, simply applying the wise old adage, "consider the source."

We all do this a hundred times a day, or should be doing it. It seems ironic to me that you seem to speak out of both sides of your mouth; criticism for too much reliance on organizations with a polititical agenda, either acknowledged as in the case of environmnental groups, or hidden as in the UN. Yet when your sources are critiqued for same, it's character assasination. This is a paranoid stance, pure and simple. Its not a posture that invites a reasonable exchange of ideas.

 

[Evo]

The Fraser Institute seems lopsided--every significant issue they look at seems to result in a policy statement that supports market forces without gov't interference. These places aren't think tanks, they are propoganda publishing houses. We have plenty here in the US.

We don't allow unsubstantiated remarks of this nature. If you have proof of actual incidents that back up your claims, please post them, otherwise don't disparage information provided based on your personal viewpoint.

What *is* appropriate is if you disagree with research posted then post research that backs up your viewpoint.

 

[denverdoc]

We don't allow unsubstantiated remarks of this nature. If you have proof of actual incidents that back up your claims, please post them, otherwise don't disparage information provided based on your personal viewpoint.

What *is* appropriate is if you disagree with research posted then post research that backs up your viewpoint.

I agree in principle, but in this case, not sure as how that might be accomplished--by citation of another authoritative source, (if so who?)or giving a dozen examples which might then be condemned on the basis of improper or insufficient sampling. The thinktank in question had at least 50 different policy papers spanning a range of topics so I looked at maybe 1/2 of them in areas where I was most familiar with the arguments--pharmaceutics, healthcare, intellectual property rights, etc.

So I need a little clarification as to how to treat such matters fairly. Are sources like this above critique even when they appear to possesses a strong bias?
Thanks,

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

There you go again. Character murder. So, whatever they say it's wrong. What is wrong with you people that call themselfs scientists. Fallacysist would be better.All they do is sow some other research results, conveniently ignored by the IPCC writers. But I guess even if the Frasier institute would state that water boils at 100 degrees C, it would be wrong because they are evil hoodlums because don't believe in global warming.

Personally I don't believe what they are presenting hasn't already been considered by the scientific community and adapted or allowed for or ignored if the difference is negligable? In fact I know that every time a new piece of science turns up, be it for or against, they refine their models, I've yet to talk to an environmental scientist who sits in a cupboard shouting lalalalalala I can't hear you it's as creditable as the researchers working on it. But if it is worthy of inclusion into models you can be sure that if it hasn't been included or it has there are scientific reasons and they are not just arbitrary, which is more than can be said for the American Business Mens assosciation for the promotion of wealth against environmental consideration.

I can honestly say I've seen articles in the NS magazine that cover every single point or paper, and that environmentalists have comented either way on them and revised their views accordinglly, I know of one person if not personally but through being on line who knows just about every nay sayers theories, in fact he spends a lot of time doing what I'm doing now, informing people on the progress in his field and correcting bias.

All those papers are covered I can tell you that much though, scientists have to keep their theories robust, so they no doubt spend much of their time either disproving or accepting when other theories come along that are better. Now whether there may be disagreement as to the extent of effects or if they have any effect at all that is the job of the experimentalists and modellers to interpret. The consensus amongst the scientists in the field is not random or because of fashion, scientists may have their fad theories but if they're not substantiated they're ditched.

For example recently it was thought that the suns output was much less influential than previously thought, but after analysing the dynamics in the upper atmosphere they found that it was more significant so they revised their models, this means that as the sun moves towards it's minima of solar output it should give us some breathing space, assuming that global warming is true though this could only be for about 50 years before the CO2 levels have acted to mitigate this.

http://environment.newscientist.com...-warming-will-the-sun-come-to-our-rescue.html

Sunspots and solar activity are driven by the strength of the sun's complex magnetic field. Although solar scientists are still debating the detail, most believe that the magnetic field is generated in a shell of hot gas 35,000 kilometres thick and buried some 200,000 kilometres deep inside the sun. Known as the tachocline, this layer is made of plasma - a gas so hot that the atoms break up into charged electrons and ions.

Material at different latitudes and depths of the tachocline rotates at different rates. This variability moves electric charges and generates the sun's magnetic field. Once created, the magnetic field is strong enough to influence the movement of the electrically charged gas that creates it, a feedback mechanism that can either strongly amplify or diminish the overall strength of the field. For the past 50 years the field has been building, and the sun has been experiencing a period of unusually high magnetic activity.

Predicting future solar activity is tricky because of this complexity. The best method in use today was formulated in the 1970s by Leif Svalgaard, then at Stanford University. He showed that the magnetic field at the sun's poles is the best predictor. "The polar field is the magnetic seed for solar activity," Svalgaard says.

The polar fields are the accumulation of dead sunspots, transient dark patches on the sun's surface that have immense magnetic fields. When a spot fades from view, its residual magnetic field is gradually swept polewards by a surface current of solar gas known as the meridional flow. At the poles, this flow turns down into the sun, where astronomers believe it sinks to the tachocline and begins a return journey towards the sun's equator. En route, the magnetic field is rejuvenated by the tachocline to produce new sunspots.
Cloud cover

In 1997, meteorologists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish Meteorology Institute in Copenhagen analysed weather satellite records from 1979 to 1992. This was long enough for the sun's activity to complete one of its regular 11-year cycles.

The researchers found that the Earth was 3 per cent cloudier when the sun's activity was at a minimum than when it was at its peak. They also noted the influx of cosmic rays at five experiments across the globe and found that it was as much as 25 per cent higher at the solar minimum. They called their discovery a "missing link in solar-climate relationships" and argued that cosmic rays were responsible for increasing cloud formation by electrically charging the lower atmosphere.

Intriguing as this link is, it is far from proof that solar activity and cloud cover are connected. "You have to demonstrate such an effect with an experiment, otherwise it is not physics," says Robert Bingham, a physicist at the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire.

Bingham is part of an international collaboration building an experiment called CLOUD to test the idea that cosmic rays seed clouds. CLOUD will start up in 2008 using a particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory near Geneva as a source of simulated cosmic rays. The researchers will fire charged particles through a chamber holding a mixture of gases similar to the Earth's atmosphere to determine how often the particles trigger cloud formation. "CLOUD will go a long way towards understanding the microphysics of droplet formation," says Bingham.

So what does the sun's magnetic activity have to do with the climate on Earth? To pin down the connection, Solanki and his colleagues compared records of solar activity derived from tree rings with meteorological records from 1856 to the present day. They found that the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere changed in step with sunspot numbers until 1970. This is the evidence that has done more than anything else to convince climatologists to take the link seriously. What's more, the most recent calculations by Solanki's team suggest that the sunspot crash could lead to a cooling of the Earth's atmosphere by 0.2 °C. It might not sound much, but this temperature reversal would be as big as the most optimistic estimate of the results of restricting greenhouse-gas emissions until 2050 in line with the Kyoto protocol.

There is still a big puzzle, though. Astronomers and climate scientists have always struggled to understand exactly how solar activity could influence the temperature on Earth. Whatever the variations in the sun's magnetic activity, the total energy it emits changes by only 0.1 per cent - too small a change to have any direct effect. As a result, the sun's role in climate change is highly controversial. "People have been arguing over this for years," says Reimer.

What other factor is at work? Important clues have emerged recently from solar observatories, including the SOHO spacecraft operated by NASA and the European Space Agency for the past 10 years. Although the change in overall solar energy is small, measurements made by SOHO and other solar observatories have revealed much greater variation in the levels of ultraviolet radiation, which can peak at up to 100 times its minimum level. "This means that there is scope for ultraviolet to have a much larger effect on our atmosphere," says Haigh, who for the past decade has been studying the impact of the sun's variability on climate.

According to computer models she has developed, ultraviolet radiation heats the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere by energising atoms and molecules there. This drives chemical reactions involving ozone and other molecules, which can release still more heat. This heating changes the temperature structure of the atmosphere at all altitudes, although the details are unclear because of the sheer complexity of Haigh's model. "By varying the amount of ultraviolet radiation, solar activity changes the circulation of the whole atmosphere," she says. Change the circulation, and you change the weather.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225720.900-dont-rely-on-sunspots.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4321-sun-more-active-than-for-a-millennium.html

Sun more active than for a millennium

The Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. The realisation, which comes from a reconstruction of sunspots stretching back 1150 years, comes just as the Sun has thrown a tantrum. Over the last week, giant plumes of have material burst out from our star's surface and streamed into space, causing geomagnetic storms on Earth.

The dark patches on the surface of the Sun that we call sunspots are a symptom of fierce magnetic activity inside. Ilya Usoskin, a geophysicist who worked with colleagues from the University of Oulu in Finland and the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, has found that there have been more sunspots since the 1940s than for the past 1150 years.

Sunspot observations stretch back to the early 17th century, when the telescope was invented. To extend the data farther back in time, Usoskin's team used a physical model to calculate past sunspot numbers from levels of a radioactive isotope preserved in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica.
Global warming

Ice cores provide a record of the concentration of beryllium-10 in the atmosphere. This is produced when high-energy particles from space bombard the atmosphere, but when the Sun is active its magnetic field protects the Earth from these particles and levels of beryllium-10 are lower.

There was already tantalising evidence that beryllium-10 is scarcer now than for a very long time, says Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford.

But he told New Scientist that when he saw the data converted to sunspot numbers he thought, "why the hell didn't I do this?" It makes the conclusion very stark, he says. "We are living with a very unusual sun at the moment."

The findings may stoke the controversy over the contribution of the Sun to global warming. Usoskin and his team are reluctant to be dragged into the debate, but their work will probably be seized upon by those who claim that temperature rises over the past century are the result of changes in the Sun's output (New Scientist, print edition, 12 April 2003). The link between the Sun's magnetic activity and the Earth's climate is, however, unclear.

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters (in press)

I hope that the article on the effects of sunspots is not used incorrectly by those who are still complacent about global warming (16 September, p 32). The graph of sunspot activity over the past thousand years suggests that we will have above-average sunspot activity for the next 400 years or more, with only short periods near or below the average. We may have a few decades when low sunspot activity reduces the impact of man-made effects on climate, but this will certainly be followed by another peak, while man-made warming is still increasing. The last few paragraphs do warn us about complacency, but some readers may see good news at the start and not read to the end.
From Rod Elliot

reply in the letters page.

 

[Evo]

I agree in principle, but in this case, not sure as how that might be accomplished--by citation of another authoritative source, (if so who?)or giving a dozen examples which might then be condemned on the basis of improper or insufficient sampling. The thinktank in question had at least 50 different policy papers spanning a range of topics so I looked at maybe 1/2 of them in areas where I was most familiar with the arguments--pharmaceutics, healthcare, intellectual property rights, etc.

So I need a little clarification as to how to treat such matters fairly. Are sources like this above critique even when they appear to possesses a strong bias?
Thanks,

If you think that *data* presented is wrong, you should site the specific information or result that you are questioning and make an appropriate argument defending your position, preferably with valid research or articles that back you up.

We encourage members to question data that they believe is not correct. But we do ask you to back up your claims. If we didn't, we would be reduced to people throwing personal opinions back and forth all day with little or no facts behind any of it. This also helps everyone stay on the same page since everyone can see exactly what is being discussed.

If someone simply states an opinion, then you may counter with an opinion without having to post data, but be prepared if someone should ask you to back your opinion up. Discussions on this forum are held to a higher standard than forums where "anything goes".

 

[denverdoc]

Fair enough, think I'm getting the higher standard thing thru my thick skull...
J

 

[Evo]

Fair enough, think I'm getting the higher standard thing thru my thick skull...
J

Yes, instead of people throwing unsubstantiated ideas around and at the end of the day we have "I'm right, you're wrong", we have people throwing information at each other and at the end of the day we have "I'm right, you're wrong", but at least they had to do a bit of research in the process and hopefully someone learned something, which is our goal.

 

[Andre]

P In fact I know that every time a new piece of science turns up, be it for or against, they refine their models, I've yet to talk to an environmental scientist who sits in a cupboard shouting lalalalalala I can't hear you

On a previous post I issued a plethora of references about the correlation between sun spots, cloud cover and global temperatures. Read the Summary For Policy makers. Such a hot and obvious issue, not adressed at all. You'll find that it is only referring to the solar energy flux to be less than one W/m2 lower during sun spot minimums. End of story. Sun no factor. But that's a strawman. Nobody disputes the small variation in the energy output. It's about something completely different. The SPM could attempt to challenge the hypothesis but chose to ignore it.

Anyway here is a supporting document, used to substantiate the Independant Summary for Policy makers.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/FoS_bibliography_Jan_2007%5b1%5d.pdf

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

On a previous post I issued a plethora of references about the correlation between sun spots, cloud cover and global temperatures. Read the Summary For Policy makers. Such a hot and obvious issue, not adressed at all. You'll find that it is only referring to the solar energy flux to be less than one W/m2 lower during sun spot minimums. End of story. Sun no factor. But that's a strawman. Nobody disputes the small variation in the energy output. It's about something completely different. The SPM could attempt to challenge the hypothesis but chose to ignore it.

Anyway here is a supporting document, used to substantiate the Independant Summary for Policy makers.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/FoS_bibliography_Jan_2007%5b1%5d.pdf

The difference between the middle age period and todays warming is that the middle Age periods warming was not global, this is why the scientists do not take looking at past events as correlatory with modern events, where the effect is happening globally. You need to trust me that scientists aren't just ignoring theories because there not au fait in the community, there weighing them and adjusting accordingly, the point is if you allow for all these studies, the data shows for the first time in recorded history, or ice core samples etc, that this is a world wide phenomina, where as all the other records show effects differently, what they don't account for is this, which is why there is concern, because no other factor involved can be tallied into climate models and show the same overall results on a global scale.

No one questions whether these factors are having an effect, but what we do know, is that utilising them, we still will raise temperatures if we go on increasing CO2 output, so the point is well received accounted for and then they proceed with a more viable model.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Warming_Predictions.png

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

As you can see there is no consensus on the models which all use different data, some include everything you mentioned others allow for them but don't agree on how much of an effect this will have, some don't include things that they consider do not have an apreciable effect. but the consensus is +/-x anyway.

This is a wki article but it's well cited and is a good resource.

Global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans in recent decades, and its projected continuation. Models referenced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict that global temperatures are likely to increase by 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100. [1] The uncertainty in this range results from both the difficulty of predicting the volume of future greenhouse gas emissions and uncertainty about climate sensitivity.

Global average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 °Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." [1] The main cause of the human-induced component of warming is the increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which leads to warming of the surface and lower atmosphere by increasing the greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gases are released by activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, and agriculture.

An increase in global temperatures can in turn cause other changes, including a rising sea level and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. These changes may increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and tornados. Other consequences include higher or lower agricultural yields, glacier retreat, reduced summer streamflows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors. Warming is expected to affect the number and magnitude of these events; however, it is difficult to connect particular events to global warming. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, even if no further greenhouse gases were released after this date, warming (and sea level) would be expected to continue to rise for more than a millenium, since CO2 has a long average atmospheric lifetime.

Remaining scientific uncertainties include the exact degree of climate change expected in the future, and especially how changes will vary from region to region across the globe. A hotly contested political and public debate has yet to be resolved, regarding whether anything should be done, and what could be cost-effectively done to reduce or reverse future warming, or to deal with the expected consequences. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at combatting global warming. (See List of Kyoto Protocol signatories.)

 

[Andre]

The difference between the middle age period and todays warming is that the middle Age periods warming was not global

Which is not true, check this:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/medieval-warm-period.pdf

The main argument used by the assisinators of the Medieval Warm Period is that it's the sum of isolated events both in time and in place, which does not seem to add up to constitute a global event.

However looking at the warm period now, it's same, isolated hot spots, not connected to each other. Another thing, if you have simultaneous hot spots without balancing cool spots in between then the average must be higher and there are virtually no papers talking about cold. Well, there is one, pertaining the South west USA, but that's all. The assumtion that the period 900-950 AD was warmer than today on a global scale is very well defendable however this is simply denied by the Summary for Policy Makers.

Also a Medieval warm elaboration on papers here:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/l/summaries/littlemwp.jsp

also a compilation mix of the Holocene Thermal Optimum (also warmer without CO2) and the Medieval Warm Period here:

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5124&posts=60&start=1

Finally, the conspiracy against the Medieval Warm Period as a nasty objection against the strong role of CO2 is suggested here by David Deming.

http://www.epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

and sure enough in the same year:

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/dec98/noaa98-88.html

Overpeck also said that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, a period from the 9th to 14th centuries that is commonly thought to be as warm or warmer than today, may not have been what it seemed after all. He reported his findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. He presented a talk on "How Unprecedented is Recent Arctic Warming: A Look Back to the Medieval Warm Period."

Curiously enough Overpeck's Arctic paper clearly recognized the Medieval Warming Period, which made him think that the event was not global. Were is the logic?

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Which is not true, check this:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/medieval-warm-period.pdf

The main argument used by the assisinators of the Medieval Warm Period is that it's the sum of isolated events both in time and in place, which does not seem to add up to constitute a global event.

However looking at the warm period now, it's same, isolated hot spots, not connected to each other. Another thing, if you have simultaneous hot spots without balancing cool spots in between then the average must be higher and there are virtually no papers talking about cold. Well, there is one, pertaining the South west USA, but that's all. The assumtion that the period 900-950 AD was warmer than today on a global scale is very well defendable however this is simply denied by the Summary for Policy Makers.

Also a Medieval warm elaboration on papers here:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/l/summaries/littlemwp.jsp

also a compilation mix of the Holocene Thermal Optimum (also warmer without CO2) and the Medieval Warm Period here:

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5124&posts=60&start=1

Finally, the conspiracy against the Medieval Warm Period as a nasty objection against the strong role of CO2 is suggested here by David Deming.

http://www.epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543
and sure enough in the same year:

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/dec98/noaa98-88.html
Curiously enough Overpeck's Arctic paper clearly recognized the Medieval Warming Period, which made him think that the event was not global. Were is the logic?

Are you considering the pollen distribution evidence in bogs etc, but doing so in a scientific manner?

Are scientists? If you consider the growth of plants and the resultant levels of pollen? Are these corellatory with today? They are taking this into account yes, but, the pollen data shows without CO2 the rise is x, with CO2 the pollen record shows as statistical imbalence, therefore scientists make the conclusion that the unobservable factor must be CO2. if not it's an unobservable they don't know.

The logic is in using more than one resource ie ice cores and pollen samples to show that the MWP was not global and not consistent with todays findings, the difference or what is left over is explained by? Since we know CO2 has an effect on the climate, scientists have made the conclusion that this is the missing link? We are warming up because of a multitude of factors but if you take these factors without CO2 and greenhouse gasses, you are left with something non-correlatory. It's much like claiming that a huge comet wiped out the dinosaurs, no it didn't it was a combination of factors. If you include these you get a result if you don't you get BS

No period in the last million years has been this warm with the only factors considered x. With CO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

 

[Andre]

Check the abstracts, all kind of proxies, including pollen, diatoms, isotopes, from all over the world, including South America, Africa and New Zealand point towards warmer but also definitely more arid conditions than today. Only one paper about one area showing cooling. You need a balance of papers also from all over the world to neutralize the warming.

There is a recent paper suggesting that this aridness terminated but the Chinese culture dominance and the Maya culture. I'll retrieve it tomorrow

this is also pointing towards that
http://www.wdc-terra.org/pb3/pb33/staff/haug/download/Haug_et_al_2003.pdf

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Check the abstracts, all kind of proxies, including pollen, diatoms, isotopes, from all over the world, including South America, Africa and New Zealand point towards warmer but also definitely more arid conditions than today. Only one paper about one area showing cooling. You need a balance of papers also from all over the world to neutralize the warming.

There is a recent paper suggesting that this aridness terminated but the Chinese culture dominance and the Maya culture. I'll retrieve it tomorrow

this is also pointing towards that
http://www.wdc-terra.org/pb3/pb33/staff/haug/download/Haug_et_al_2003.pdf

OK but you do know of course that scientists already know this? But it'll be interesting to see your points.

They know, the don't dismiss the arguments because it's not scientific, they dismiss them or admit them purely on a few criteria, is it scientific, does it make sense, can we use it: if not can we dismiss it. Your assumptions are based on the fact that science is some ogre claiming they are right and everyone else is wrong, it simply does not work that way, It doesn't in physics and it doesn't in climatology or any other science for that matter. This is not a scientific conspiracy theory. Who is perhaps guilty of doing this? American Businessman So Obviously Lying Under The Eroneous Assumption Regarding Some Extraneous Holistic Obviously Ludicrous Experimental Science

Or absolute arse*****

And replace American with Australian.

 

[Andre]

No period in the last million years has been this warm with the only factors considered x. With CO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Not done with that, yet. And

Try not to have a good time . . . This is supposed to be educational." Lucy van Pelt (Peanuts)

We have discussed the http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/medieval-warm-period.pdf . I have shown that at the end of the first millennium multiple proxies all over the world show warming, without balancing cooling, convincingly challenging the SPM about the second half of the 20th century being the warmest 5 decades in the last 1300 years.

The obvious problem is that natural factors, without greenhouse gasses could cause more warming than today, making the global warming idea very doubtful

Then we have mentioned the Holocene Thermal Optimum, roughly 9000-6000 years ago, when http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/634/270.pdf and this happened when the CO2 was stable but lower than today. But we had a waning summer insolation maximum of the Northern Hemisphere (milankovitch cycles), so that seems to make sense. However the Holocene thermal Maximum was also evident on the Southern Hemisphere under cool summer insolation conditions:

http://tinyurl.com/2tlgy3
http://tinyurl.com/3b7uz3
http://tinyurl.com/2s3dwq
http://tinyurl.com/358w3l
http://tinyurl.com/2w86g8

It must also be noted that both the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice sheets survived this millenniums long warmer periods without any problem, challenging the melting scare. So, besides solar insolation which opposed warming on the southern hemisphere and the CO2 much lower than today, there was still natural variation making it warmer than today.

Then we have the previous interglacial period the Eemian, Ipwichian or Sangamonian some 120,000 years ago. This was when the hippopotamus swam in the Rhine in Germany and in the Thames in the UK suggesting sub-tropical conditions in areas currently with moderate climates. Would be tough to state that this period was not warmer than today. The CO2 levels were lower of course, comparable with the pre-industrial times.
Incidentely, one of the warmest periods in the distant geologic past is considered to be the early Tertiary Paleocene era from 65-55 Million years ago. How about its CO2 levels? Comparable to today!:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5525/2310
http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/royer_dissertation.pdf (fig 4.3 page 102 of the PDF count)
Double source showing robustness of the stomata method.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/CO2-KT-PETM.GIF

So it is obvious that the natural variability in climate is grossly underestimated in the Summary for Policy makers. It can be warmer than today, without excess CO2 and without increased orbital forcing. It may also be noted that this is not foreseen in any model, so it can’t reproduce it either. Nevertheless, this variability shows that CO2 is not necessarily a major climate driver if at all.

Why is this chapter neither in the SPM nor in the ISPM?

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Not done with that, yet. A very educational post here.

We have discussed the http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/medieval-warm-period.pdf . I have shown that at the end of the first millennium multiple proxies all over the world show warming, without balancing cooling, convincingly challenging the SPM about the second half of the 20th century being the warmest 5 decades in the last 1300 years.

The obvious problem is that natural factors, without greenhouse gasses could cause more warming than today, making the global warming idea very doubtful

Then we have mentioned the Holocene Thermal Optimum, rougly 9000-6000 years ago, when http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/634/270.pdf and this happened when the CO2 was stable but lower than today. But we had a waning summer insolation maximum of the Northern Hemisphere (milankovitch cycles), so that seems to make sense. However the Holocene thermal Maximum was also evident on the Southern Hemisphere:

http://tinyurl.com/2tlgy3
http://tinyurl.com/3b7uz3
http://tinyurl.com/2s3dwq
http://tinyurl.com/358w3l
http://tinyurl.com/2w86g8

It must also be noted that both the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice sheets survived this millenniums long warmer periods without any problem challenging the melting scare. So besides solar insolation which opposed warming on the southern hemisphere and the CO2 much lower than today, there was still natural variation making it warmer than today.

Then we have the previous interglacial period the Eemian, Ipwichian or Sangamonian some 120,000 years ago.. This was when the hippopotamus swam in the Rhine in Germany and in the Thames in the UK suggesting sub-tropical conditions in areas currently with moderate climates. Would be tough to state that this period was not warmer than today. The CO2 levels were lower of course, comparable with the pre-industrial times.
Incidentely, one of the warmest periods in the distant geologic past is considered to be the early Tertiary Paleocene era from 65-55 Million years ago. How about its CO2 levels? Comparable to today!:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5525/2310
http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/royer_dissertation.pdf (fig 4.3 page 102 of the PDF count)
Double source showing robustness of the stomata method.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/CO2-KT-PETM.GIF

So it is obvious that the natural variability in climate is grossly underestimated in the Summary for Policy makers. It can be warmer than today, without excess CO2 and without increased orbital forcing. It may also be noted that this is not foreseen in any model, so it can’t reproduce it either. Nevertheless, this variability shows that CO2 is not necessarily a major climate driver if at all.

Why is this chapter neither in the SPM nor in the ISPM?

To be honest I think you're not seeing the bigger picture, and you are accusing the scientists of being fraudulent and making erroneus claims, frankly I think you are wrong, and so does the scientific community, however I see that science does not convince you any more than evidence does, so it's perhaps best if you contact the scientific world to alert them to their serious mistakes, if you're right you'll be famous if you're wrong they'll tell you so, and believe me if I was half as qualified as they are, I'd be doing a much better job of trying to persuade you you are wrong.

And scientists already know all of this and in fact I've seen all this before in another forum, and seen it utterly trampled under an experts evidential and professional opinion. So mostly I don't even have to read it again, as I've seen it denounced and rejected, I assure you he is not the only person who has to face this criticism of his work, there's a constant barrage of groups trying to destroy the evidence. So far global warming remains, and until it is convincingly destroyed I'm in the science corner, yep I agree with them, they have the qualifications, so my opinion is that since I don't know even a thousandth of what they know, then I'll go with them until I see something convincing the other way backed by scientists not the Australian businessmans laymen shake your cane at the environmentalists groups and stare worryedly at your profit margin.

By the way scientists when they make that assertion mean in the last x 100000 years, it's patently absurd to compare a period 20 million years ago with today.

The medieval warming perios simply is not global, I don't know how I can clear up your misinformation here, this is why scientists do not take it as apt for comparisson, it mostly affected the Northern hemisphere, with the south getting average temperatures and in some cases lower than average temperatures, that is why they don't compare it. Remember average not anecdotal. Ie if you take all the evidence and average it the Northern hemisphere shows a marked increase, the Southern a typical average.

And yes factors in addition to CO2 are accounted for? Are you accusing scientists of being lazy or sloppy with that link?

The eocine miocene or whatever periods probably are explained solely by milankovich cycles, sun spot activity, volcanic activity or lack of it, etc,etc,etc and of course the land coverage which is probably the single biggest contributer, the albedo of a large joined land mass is much different from our current lay of the land so they are not taken into consideration, they are too far from the modern day to get any reliable comparrison so scientists tend to look back to the Ice age when making their case.

 

[ptabor]

THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING, RUSH LIMBAUGH TOLD ME SO. HE IS UBER SWEET POLITIKAL ANALYST >> YOUR STUPID LIBERAL SELF LOATHING DEMOCRATIC "SCIENTISTS"

HAHAHAHAHAH

sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING, RUSH LIMBAUGH TOLD ME SO. HE IS UBER SWEET POLITIKAL ANALYST >> YOUR STUPID LIBERAL SELF LOATHING DEMOCRATIC "SCIENTISTS"

HAHAHAHAHAH

sorry, I couldn't resist.

Actually I think many of them are Republicans

 

[ptabor]

Their political leanings mean nothing to me. The data and evidence will speak for itself.

I was merely jesting. I listen to talk radio on the way to the uni because a) the same station gives weather and traffic reports and b) the music stations play nothing but absolute garbage over and over again.

It irks me how the far right demagogues this issue and downplays it as a liberal ploy to make us feel guilty for our way of life. I think al gore's movie has done more to hurt the "green" cause than help. It's given the right wing nuts (rush in particular) much needed ammo for their ad hominem attacks on what is a scientific issue.

 

[Andre]

And scientists already know all of this.

No they most certainly do not. Otherwise it would be really fraundelent. What they usually know is the textbook knowledge of so many years ago and of course every latest nut and bolt within their own speciality. Glaciologists have no idea about the mammoth megafauna steppe of Siberia. Paleontologists have no idea about the big differences between the carbon dating and calendar dating. So who has the big picture anyway?

Now how many more people would bother for instance to study the next literature list.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/ext-refs-new.pdf

The medieval warming period is most definitely global and I have shown several dozens publications which support that. Maintaining that the Medieval Warm period was not global is getting increasingly more fraudulent, unless you can come up with a comparable number of proxies that balance it with cooling.

Furthermore I do not compare the Paleocene with today. That's a strawman. What I do show is that there is evidence that suggest that the Paleocene warming is not due to elevated CO2 levels as has been assumed before.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

No they most certainly do not. Otherwise it would be really fraundelent. What they usually know is the textbook knowledge of so many years ago and of course every latest nut and bolt within their own speciality. Glaciologists have no idea about the mammoth megafauna steppe of Siberia. Paleontologists have no idea about the big differences between the carbon dating and calendar dating. So who has the big picture anyway?

Now how many more people would bother for instance to study the next literature list.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/ext-refs-new.pdf

The medieval warming period is most definitely global and I have shown several dozens publications which support that. Maintaining that the Medieval Warm period was not global is getting increasingly more fraudulent, unless you can come up with a comparable number of proxies that balance it with cooling.

Furthermore I do not compare the Paleocene with today. That's a strawman. What I do show is that there is evidence that suggest that the Paleocene warming is not due to elevated CO2 levels as has been assumed before.

Well the only one I've met is more than well aware of all the links you gave before this new list, I should know he has to dismiss the claims on a regular basis, have you not considered even for a moment that if you are so sure you should send your thoughts to a climatologist? If the answer you get back is positive then you have changed science for the better, if however as I suspect they trample on your ideas and provide adequate reasoning why there not accurate, or where the figures have been manipulated or where there evidence that the Northern hemisphere was much warmer than the south is wrong etc. Wait I know I'll go dredge up some quotes. If I can find them, answers from a climatologist.

All models have been validated as we have discussed before, though I agree that simulations run over 100 years are not reflective of the Earth's future (they aren't really intended to be in most cases).

Global dimming has been included in climate models for decades. One of the best validations was when Pinatubo went off (1991), J. Hansen accurately predicted the timing and magnitude of the resulting global cooling (due to global dimming) - i.e. before the cooling occurred.

The question of if anthropogenic climate change is 'good or bad' is not a scientific one.

We know conclusively that the additional CO2 observed in the atmosphere is anthropogenic.

There are a large number of independent reasons why that is so, but one reason has to do with isotopes.

CO2 has various isotopomers because of the existence of 12C, 13C, 14C, 16O, 17O, 18O, etc.

Different sources and sinks fractionate these isotopomers in different ways and so by studying that fractionation we can constrain certain source and sink values.

In particular CO2 produced from fossil fuels has a different isotopic structure due to having originated in plant tissue, which has a specific isotopic signature (depleted in 13C). It has also been isolated from the atmospheric source of C14 (cosmic ray N interactions, and other nuclear processes) which has a relatively short half life. So they have almost no C14.

We also can measure the decline in the oxygen concentration of the atmosphere (a result of additional combustion), if the ocean were a source of CO2 it would also be a source of O2 for various reasons simple and complex.

Another reason has to do with possible places where CO2 can come from and/or go to and the time-scales involved.

On time scales around 100 years or less there is only the oceans and the biosphere (the biggest reservoirs of carbon like limestone, operate on much longer time-scales).

Various independent estimates show that the carbon content of the oceans is increasing by 1-3 PgC per year, and that the source of that increase is atmospheric CO2.

The biosphere is also taking up CO2 (and yes the CO2 fertilization effect is well known here), but is also a source of CO2 due to deforestation. In balance the amounts of CO2 in the biosphere is increasing.

If the oceans or land were causing the rise in atmospheric CO2 (on the relevant time-scales) they would hold less CO2, not more.

Let me dispel your idea that dedicated scientists are idiots and that all truth comes from untrained, only slightly interested, teenagers and conspiracy theorists.

It is true that antropogenic contribution to the total terrestrial greenhouse effect is small, and that water vapor is by far the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect. I once had a long discussion with others about this issue

Now taken without any context or knowledge of science, this may seem important to some, or to somehow disprove global warming, or to imply that climate scientists are idiots, etc. etc.

But in fact this has been known for hundreds of years, and is the first thing a climate science course (even at an undergraduate level) should teach you.

Fact #1: Based on the radiative characteristics of the sun, and a reasonable value for the albedo of the earth, we can calculate what the surface temperature of the Earth should be. I first performed this calculation as an undergraduate about 20 years ago.

That temperature is -30 C.

This can be validated by predicting the surface temperature of other bodies in the solar system that lack an atmosphere.

Now in the face of that fact we also must conclude that all atmospheric water vapor would freeze out on the surface of the earth, thus increasing the Earth's albedo, and decreasing its average temperature even more. This idea is sometimes known as snowball earth.

So the non-anthropogenic greenhouse effect accounts for about 45 degrees of additional warming. A critical bit of warming (and information), yes?

Fact #2: Based simply on a Henery's law argument we can predict that an increase in global temperatures will also increase atmospheric water vapor. Simply put a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, and our atmosphere is always roughly at equilibrium being in contact with large volumes of liquid water (i.e. the oceans).

This is known as a positive feedback and implies that any increase in atmospheric CO2 will be followed by an increase in atmospheric H2O.

Once consequence of this is the 'runnaway greenhouse effect' wherein an increase in temperature increases H2O, which increases atmospheric temperatures, which increases H2O, etc. etc.

This sort of thing is why we cannot use simplistic models (such as I mention above) to generate useful answers to complex questions.

Your link not only uses a simplistic model, but does so in an intellectually dishonest fashion.

Now we can take the predictions of warming in context.

The overall climate sensitivity of the Earth system to a doubling of CO2 is an often used benchmark for comparing predictions.

This climate sensitivity takes into account the water vapor feedback I mention above, and many many other things... too many to list here.

The climate sensitivity predictions are in the range of 2-4 degrees for a doubling of CO2.

Note that we have not yet reached a doubling (and your link is not looking at a doubling).

When we do reach a doubling current estimates are that anthropogenic CO2 (including feedbacks like increased water vapor) will account for 5-10% of the total greenhouse effect.

You can call this 'next to no effect' if you like, that is a judgement call. Most scientists call this 'a large effect' and note that CO2 will more than double if we continue business as usual.

Sadly there was a thread where he went through every theory counterproposed against global warming and showed in detail how they were accounted for or why they were dismissed by the so called idiots in labs, but I think it's burried in the Archive somewhere. Maybe I can pesuade him to check out your stuff, I'm sure he has better things to do with his time like climatology modelling though and it's not like he hasn't seen it all before anyway

Look, science proceeds by proposing things that can be wrong. Then allowing time for independent verification and reproduction.

The ice age predictions in the 70's are nothing like the current consensus on global warming; and on the relevant time scales discussed in the literature (not news magazines) it has not been debunked. We are still due.

Sure consensus has been wrong in the past, what's your point? I'm not claiming infallibility.

Whatever future consensus consists of it will certainly include the increase in atmospheric insulation due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. It's as near a fact as anything in science. Climate change is more uncertain

https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=9085&stc=1&d=1170769808

but this plot: Is very well tested and part a) has nothing to do with models.

Validations are published in the scientific literature. We've discussed it before remember? Just like your protein folding model. I can't look up my post on the topic ATM.

But there's lots of other stuff, like the Hansen paper on Pinatubo (Hansen, J., A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, and M. Sato, 1992: Potential climate impact of Mount Pinatubo eruption. Geophys. Res. Lett., 19, 215–218..), like stratospheric cooling, like surface temperature warming, like ocean surface warming, like an energy imbalance between incoming short wave and outgoing long wave radiation, etc. All in the open literature.

Heh, yeah its actually IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - we were both wrong) I used to work at the IGPP (Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics). Anyway, the IPCC has both a scientific and a political portion. But the science they present is the best of the best. They have published before, the 2001 report represents the best science at that time, just as the 2007 report will. Nothing political about that.

 

[Andre]

I wonder you want to impress with "I-know-a-climatologist". Who doesn't? there are thousends of them nowadays. It's a popular breed. I know a few too. But never mind

This is known as a positive feedback and implies that any increase in atmospheric CO2 will be followed by an increase in atmospheric H2O.

That's the mainstay of the global warming thought and it's highly neccesary since withoutm CO2 reradiation physics is way too small to scare anybody as can be seen http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtran-rad-bal.GIF . Just about one degree celcius per doubling CO2 after attaining thermal equilibrium, which takes a few centuries. The direct theoretical value is roughly about 0,698 degrees.

So the positive feedback is an hypothesis which requires proof. It has been attempted to see the rather large temperature dip after the Pinatubo eruption as positive feedback (Soden et al 2001 I believe) but the carefully avoided to look at any other similar type eruption, and there were two of them Agung, Indonesia and El Chichon mexico, and although the three showed stratospere warming (lower graph), only Pinatubo showed clear lower tropophere cooling (upper graph).

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/reproduceability.jpg

while there was also similar trophospheric cooling without any volcanic forces. Hence the cooling curve after Pinatubo proofs nothing, no positive feedback. Then Olavi Karner had his own way of calculating the random walk characteristics of temperature series which proved no positive feedback here:

http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf

It appears that the positive feedback is spoiled by another player providing clear negative feedback, the clouds.

Discussions with 'experts' here http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?did=1&pg=1&f=

Discussion with one of the expert, when the site was down:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer.pdf

I linked to that before. It could help to click a link occasionally.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

I wonder you want to impress with "I-know-a-climatologist". Who doesn't? there are thousends of them nowadays. It's a popular breed. I know a few too. But never mind

No one I know atleast four or five PhD in physics and two in neuropharmacology too, but since that's kind of irrellevant I am unlikely quote them even if they were regulars on forums, the point is this guy knows what he's talking about, I seriously don't get the same impression from you. I couldn't give a damn if you told me you knew the Pope, this is a discussion: not a who knows the most expertest expert in climatology.

That's the mainstay of the global warming thought and it's highly neccesary since withoutm CO2 reradiation physics is way too small to scare anybody as can be seen http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtran-rad-bal.GIF . Just about one degree celcius per doubling CO2 after attaining thermal equilibrium, which takes a few centuries. The direct theoretical value is roughly about 0,698 degrees.

So the positive feedback is an hypothesis which requires proof. It has been attempted to see the rather large temperature dip after the Pinatubo eruption as positive feedback (Soden et al 2001 I believe) but the carefully avoided to look at any other similar type eruption, and there were two of them Agung, Indonesia and El Chichon mexico, and although the three showed stratospere warming (lower graph), only Pinatubo showed clear lower tropophere cooling (upper graph).

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/reproduceability.jpg

while there was also similar trophospheric cooling without any volcanic forces. Hence the cooling curve after Pinatubo proofs nothing, no positive feedback. Then Olavi Karner had his own way of calculating the random walk characteristics of temperature series which proved no positive feedback here:

http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf

It appears that the positive feedback is spoiled by another player providing clear negative feedback, the clouds.

Discussions with 'experts' here http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?did=1&pg=1&f=

Discussion with one of the expert, when the site was down:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer.pdf

I linked to that before. It could help to click a link occasionally.

Have you discussed it with experts? I mean I'm not convinced but then I don't have the same level of expertese as an expert, have you tried rasing your issues, what did they say?

So global dimming does not need to be accounted for is that what you are saying?

 

[Andre]

Have you discussed it with experts?

So, you still have not looked at the NERC discussions when you asked that question. Perhaps you did not even see the links.
Do try. It's Prof Collin Prentice and Dr Tim Lenton versus Andre:

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?did=1&pg=1&f=

and singled out a discusion here:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer.pdf
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf


I did not talk about global dimming, which was never global anyway.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

So, you still have not looked at the NERC discussions when you asked that question. Perhaps you did not even see the links.
Do try. It's Prof Collin Prentice and Dr Tim Lenton versus Andre:

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?did=1&pg=1&f=

and singled out a discusion here:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer.pdf
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf I did not talk about global dimming, which was never global anyway.

I will read them, but I have to pop out in about five minutes, so give me time to read them, but can you answer the question? Have your forwarded your ideas to the scientific the wider science community say written to nature or NS or SA magazine?

I have addressed these issues in replies to previous postings. The pre-industrial CO2 concentration of 280-290 ppm has been replicated on multiple ice cores measured by independent groups. The Antarctic ice core measurements are extremely consistent with one another backward in time through the Holocene and through several glacial-interglacial cycles. There is no scientific basis for the claim that CO2 levels were above 500 ppm at any time during the past 800,000 years.

Jaworowski is not an expert on the subject, and his criticisms have no merit. They were made before there were multiple high resolution CO2 records available that clearly made them unsustainable. The ice core community consists of physicists who are well aware of processes that can, under some circumstances, cause problems for ice core measurements.

Leaf stomatal analyses provide a controversial proxy for CO2 concentration. CO2 measured in ancient air bubbles is not a proxy. If the two differ, very few scientists would accept the stomatal estimate.

Colin Prentice, Prof. Earth System Science, University of Bristol

Yes very interesting, I'll read the rest when I get back.

I read it, seems like the scientists are informed. They have a different conclusion than you. From what I can understand of the last link they are comparing two different effects.

I'm not sure the last link has any real relevance, since we can't know all the factors involved in the last ice age, we can't really use that as evidence now that our models are wrong, not within accuracy, therefore I'd say it's interesting but what exactly does it prove?

The second link I'm not qualified to answer so I won't, and to be frank I didn't understand some of it, so I'll refrain from making comment on the parts I didn't understand.

However that said he is giving you the same answers to these questions as I did in some cases, so I'm sure this is a matter of what and who you believe, as I say though, if you are proven correct and scientist debunk GW then I'll go with that, if not and for now like all good sheep I'm sticking with the concensus, it's not a bad thing to follow the heard sometimes, particularly when your a knowless laymen like myself

 

[Andre]

The problem with those answers is the substantiation. Even a lay man can observe that I back every statement with a multitude of references, they reply with textbook wishdom. Repeating the mere old stuff that is getting refuted, should not sound too convincing. The only thing that Prentice produces after repeated appeals for substantiation is a ten year old borehole study that happens to proof nothing due to extreme low discrimination.

..Prentice: Leaf stomatal analyses provide a controversial proxy for CO2 concentration. CO2 measured in ancient air bubbles is not a proxy.

Notice also that for the sake of the discussion Prentice is happy to betray a complete new game, that of stomata proxies which has shown robustness by duplication as I showed earlier, the ferns and the Gingko and the Metasequoa all ending up with in the same range. The same is true for Holocene proxies of Wagner et al 2005. (I'll produce that study tomorrow). The air in ice bubbles is a very complicated story due to a multitude of processes, which is simply waved away.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

The problem with those answers is the substantiation. Even a lay man can observe that I back every statement with a multitude of references, they reply with textbook wishdom. Repeating the mere old stuff that is getting refuted, should not sound too convincing. The only thing that Prentice produces after repeated appeals for substantiation is a ten year old borehole study that happens to proof nothing due to extreme low discrimination.
Notice also that for the sake of the discussion Prentice is happy to betray a complete new game, that of stomata proxies which has shown robustness by duplication as I showed earlier, the ferns and the Gingko and the Metasequoa all ending up with in the same range. The same is true for Holocene proxies of Wagner et al 2005. (I'll produce that study tomorrow). The air in ice bubbles is a very complicated story due to a multitude of processes, which is simply waved away.

I'm not going to deny you're making a valuable contribution by prodding scientists, I think if you really want to make a difference you need to become one yourself though, and I firmly do believe personally from what I've seen that everything that can be is being accounted for and there is an anomally and this is due to CO2, until I see absolute evidence to the contrary, I don't see a reason to change this position. I've talked with you before about this and I do agree the models always will need revising, but the idea that there is nothing but natural forcings to global warming is liable to remain contraversial until either a) someone produces enough contrary proof to overturn the established theory, or b) the models are confirmed as rubbish and the Earth moves slowly towards another ice age in perhaps x thousand years. Also in one of those lectures the idea was to convey the message simply so in order to debunk some of your ideas would no doubt take some real expertise, which is probably why I didn't understand some of the third link.

However I tend to agree, using very old models broadly to dispute modern models is fraught with danger and open to misinterpritation, so as a scientist if I were one, I would be wary of making broad assumptions with a spotty picture of the event at best.

 

[Andre]

Very little to add to this:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

...

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media...


..Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence.

In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," ...etc

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Very little to add to this:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science

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

Reminds me of this logical argument, that suggests a fallacy if the tennants are incorrect.

Ok pardon me but I finally get your point, the scientists and the science could be wrong and are not acknowledging their mistake, I'm not qualified to argue why they may think their theory is right, but I think this is valuable and you should be talking to scientists not me which you obviously are. After all I'm a laymen so what you say to me is meaningless in the context of GW.

Once I get a chance to speak to the said papal figure I'll put the argument to him and see what he thinks, but thanks for making my day very interesting anyway watch this space...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

On topic?

Yes, this is the Political forum and not Earth Sciences [which I shouldn't need to point out to you or anyone else], but as usual you are incapable of allowing any discussion without inserting your fringe arguments. This is about the logic of public policy, which does not take the extreme minority as a consensus.

BTW a most exemplary set of strawmen nicely avoiding the main question with a plethora of sophisticated nonsense. We can go over the list if you like.

No thanks. I take my science from scientists, but I am glad that you were published as a fighter pilot. Congratulations on that. Unfortunately this has nothing to do with AGCC.

Perhaps you would like to provide a logical argument that is free of links and diversions, and free of fringe science arguments, that justifies basing policy on the extreme minority position.

Given the consensus that there is greater than a 90% chance that GW is caused in part by green-house gas emissions, the logical basis for public policy is clear.

 

[turbo]

Given the consensus that there is greater than a 90% chance that GW is caused in part by green-house gas emissions, the logical basis for public policy is clear.

Unfortunately, public policy will not change as long as big businesses and lobbyists are the ones framing the arguments and writing the laws. In my opinion, lobbying should be illegal, and corporate contributions to politicians should be banned and henceforth prosecuted as bribery. We voters elect the congressional representatives from a field pre-approved by vested interests and they scurry off to DC to cuddle up to the money-men and betray our interests. Until this cycle of corruption is interrupted, we will never have an honest representative government.

I recently emailed all of my state's congressional representatives pleading with them to stop Bush from instigating a war with Iran. I got one automated reply from one representative that said essentially "thank you for contacting the office of Rep XXX". You can bet that if my name was Exxon-Mobil, I wouldn't have gotten the brush-off. Where in the Constitution does it say that businesses have rights to congressional representation that exceeds the rights of individual citizens?

 

[sara_87]

the hypocrites that want to save the world by switching of light bulbs when no one is in the room and by telling us to do half flushes etc all have private jets and big cars and go on holidays whenever they feel like it not to mention the big houses...
i know that it is the little things that count but seriously!

personally i think that global warming is going to happen and there is nothing we can do to stop it coz too much damage has been caused and the politicians are just talking about it so much now to get attention and to show everyone that 'we care about the future of your kids'

(maybe someone mentioned this earlier but i couldn't read ten pages of peoples posts as each person writes an essay or so...ever heard of RSI - just kidding)

 

[Andre]

Perhaps you would like to provide a logical argument that is free of links and diversions,

That's the same of asking when did you stop beating your wife. If you want to see evidence you have to accept a link to the source.

How about Nir Shaviv for instance?

http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

...

Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye.
...

Summary

As explained above, there is no real direct evidence which can be used to incriminate anthropogenic greenhouse gases as the being the main factor responsible for the observed global warming. The reason these gases were blamed are primarily because (1) we expect them to warm and indeed the global temperature increased, and (2) there is no other mechanism which can explain the warming.

Although this reasoning seems logical, it turns out that (1) We don't even know the sign of the anthropogenic climate driving (because of the unknown indirect aerosol effects), and (2) There is an alternative mechanism which can explain a large part of the warming.

Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th century global warming, on condition that there is a strong solar/climate link through modulation of the cosmic ray flux and the atmospheric ionization. Evidence for such a link has been accumulating over the past decade, and by now, it is unlikely that it does not exist.

This link also implies that Earth's global temperature sensitivity is also on the low side. Thus, if we double the amount of CO2 by 2100, we will only increase the temperature by about 1°C or so. This is still more than the change over the past century. This is good news, because it implies that future increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases will not dramatically increase the global temperature, though GHGs will probably be the dominate climate driver.

 

[Andre]

Or Henk Tennekes:

http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2006/01/06/guest-weblog-reflections-of-a-climate-skeptic-henk-tennekes/

Here in the Netherlands, many people have ranked me as a climate skeptic. It did not help much that I called myself a protestant recently. I protest against overwhelming pressure to adhere to the climate change dogma promoted by the adherents of IPCC. I was brought up in a fundamentalist protestant environment, and have become very sensitive to everything that smells like an orthodox belief system.

The advantages of accepting a dogma or paradigm are only too clear. One no longer has to query the foundations of one’s convictions, one enjoys the many advantages of belonging to a group that enjoys political power, one can participate in the benefits that the group provides, and one can delegate questions of responsibility and accountability to the leadership. In brief, the moment one accepts a dogma, one stops being an independent scientist.

cont'd

...
Finally:

From this perspective, those that advocate the idea that the response of the real climate to radiative forcing is adequately represented in climate models have an obligation to prove that they have not overlooked a single nonlinear, possibly chaotic feedback mechanism that Nature itself employs.

Popper would have been sympathetic. He repeatedly warns about the dangers of “infinite regress.” As a staunch defender of the Lorenz paradigm, I add that the task of finding all nonlinear feedback mechanisms in the microstructure of the radiation balance probably is at least as daunting as the task of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate “realistic” simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic. From my background in turbulence I look forward with grim anticipation to the day that climate models will run with a horizontal resolution of less than a kilometer. The horrible predictability problems of turbulent flows then will descend on climate science with a vengeance.

 

[denverdoc]

Unfortunately, public policy will not change as long as big businesses and lobbyists are the ones framing the arguments and writing the laws. In my opinion, lobbying should be illegal, and corporate contributions to politicians should be banned and henceforth prosecuted as bribery. We voters elect the congressional representatives from a field pre-approved by vested interests and they scurry off to DC to cuddle up to the money-men and betray our interests. Until this cycle of corruption is interrupted, we will never have an honest representative government.

I recently emailed all of my state's congressional representatives pleading with them to stop Bush from instigating a war with Iran. I got one automated reply from one representative that said essentially "thank you for contacting the office of Rep XXX". You can bet that if my name was Exxon-Mobil, I wouldn't have gotten the brush-off. Where in the Constitution does it say that businesses have rights to congressional representation that exceeds the rights of individual citizens?

Theres an idea. Limit input from special interest groups, i.e. lobbyists. Colorado passed a bill last Nov that does exactly this. Whether it works or makes such maneuvering even more secret remains to be seen. But until some reform takes place, you're right on Turbo. As to GH gasses, energy efficiency, it'll happen when it becomes profitable to do so. Here's a question--we were assured of a peace dividend when the USSR collapsed. Well what has happened to it? This years defense budget is as bad as the highest under Reagan--includng Iraq, close to 700B. Iraq alone has cost or will after amortization, a trillion dollars. Let's see 10^12/300E^6 is 3333 dollars per every citizen in the US. For what, we might secure access to the big fields in this end game, and extend our current petro consumption more or less mindlessly for another 2 decades. But a terribly shortsighted policy, whether or not it contributes to GH warming.

Divert 400 billion per year to energy programs of all types. instead of mandating a 40 mpg fleet figure, build in some heavy incentives for being the first US automaker to achieve such a figure. No you can't build only motorcycles covered with shells. I know this is a bit ot, but even w/o GH gases the pollution is awful. Plus we need to save it for plastic and for food.

 

[Astronuc]

But wait! There is action.

In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/africa/11niger.html

GUIDAN BAKOYE, Niger — In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all.

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.

These gains, moreover, have come at a time when the population of Niger has exploded, confounding the conventional wisdom that population growth leads to the loss of trees and accelerates land degradation, scientists studying Niger say.

The vegetation is densest, researchers have found, in some of the most densely populated regions of the country.

“The general picture of the Sahel is much less bleak than we tend to assume,” said Chris P. Reij, a soil conservationist who has been working in the region for more than 30 years and helped lead a study published last summer on Niger’s vegetation patterns. “Niger was for us an enormous surprise.”

It's one small step, but it's in the right direction.

Now if we can only get the US to cut energy consumption by 20% or more.

And coincidentally, I just read an article that provides incontrovertible evidence as to the deleterious effects of higher CO₂ levels - even without the concommitant temperature increases. Noxious plants like poison ivy and ragweed increase growth rates, while nutritional content of food crops decreases - just to name a few of the detriments.

And let's not forget the heavy metals, particularly mercury, which are a direct by-product of using coal (used for more than 50% of electrical production in the US). One can easily measure heavy metals deposition straight back to the power plants from which they are emitted.

 

[turbo]

And let's not forget the heavy metals, particularly mercury, which are a direct by-product of using coal (used for more than 50% of electrical production in the US). One can easily measure heavy metals deposition straight back to the power plants from which they are emitted.

That is a bad problem in Maine, since we are downstream from the Midwest coal-fired plants. People (especially children and women of child-bearing age) are warned not to eat too much fresh fish from Maine waters because of the mercury in the fish and there are similar warnings against eating too much liver or kidney meat from moose and deer due to elevated levels of cadmium, again due to coal-fired plants upwind from us. Our government, in its infinite wisdom, let's the plants continue to pollute by buying "emissions credits" from other companies, so these toxic heavy metals continue to accumulate in our wildlife, our water, and our soils.

 

[denverdoc]

That is a bad problem in Maine, since we are downstream from the Midwest coal-fired plants. People (especially children and women of child-bearing age) are warned not to eat too much fresh fish from Maine waters because of the mercury in the fish and there are similar warnings against eating too much liver or kidney meat from moose and deer due to elevated levels of cadmium, again due to coal-fired plants upwind from us. Our government, in its infinite wisdom, let's the plants continue to pollute by buying "emissions credits" from other companies, so these toxic heavy metals continue to accumulate in our wildlife, our water, and our soils.

This is weak. So we can barter among ourselves with emission credits, but not the rest of the world?!

 

[turbo]

This is weak. So we can barter among ourselves with emission credits, but not the rest of the world?!

Of course. Instead of creating jobs by requiring the installation of scrubbers, etc to make coal technology cleaner and safer, our government protects polluters and their profits so that those of us downwind from the coal-fired plants have to absorb the heavy metals, ozone, etc. It's the American way.

 

[denverdoc]

OT, but don't you love the Orwelliain dbl talk as in the last Clean Air act?

 

[Andre]

$10,000 to debunk global warming!1
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm?cnn=yes
funded by yours truly: Exxon

Talk about desperate! And they certainly have no reason to show bias, do they?

I think the anti-warmers have been duped by a big oil conspiracy. Of course the skeptics claim that they know the truth but no one will listen - that it's a conspiracy of scientists. And they appeal to the scientific expertise of Joe Sixpack to prove their point.

You choose.

Sure go ahead:

I finally found the letter.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/02/aei-responds-to-bizarre-criticism.html

I, for one, think that this is not too funny. I, for one, think that 1 million dollars is 100 times more than 10,000 dollars. I also think that there are literally hundreds or thousands of people who are deeply immersed in this extraordinary and ethically problematic business and who are collectively mining billions of dollars a year from their absurd hypotheses that the world is going to face climate emergency in a foreseeable future.

If someone tries to paint the skeptics - who often live as ascetic monks and whose physical safety is at risk - as corrupt people, even though everyone may easily see billions of dollars flowing to the pockets of people whose job is to defend some very different dogmas - such as the silly theory about the catastrophic global warming - he either shows that his ability to judge reality has collapsed to zero, or he shows that he is a financial part of the global warming fraud himself.

http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~motl/aei-president-responds-to-attack.doc

Many of us have received telephone calls and emails prompted by a shoddy article on the front page of today’s Guardian, the British newspaper, headlined
“Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study” (posted at http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2004397,00.html#article_continue).

The article uses several garden-variety journalistic tricks to create the impression of a story where none exists. Thus, AEI is described as a “lobby group” (we are a research group that does no lobbying and takes no institutional positions on policy issues); ExxonMobil’s donations to AEI are either bulked up by adding donations over many years, or simply made up (the firm’s annual AEI support is generous and valued but is a fraction of the amount reported—no corporation accounts for more than 1 percent of our annual budget); and AEI is characterized as the Bush administration’s “intellectual Cosa Nostra” and “White House surrogates” (AEI scholars criticize or praise Bush administration policies—every day, on the merits). All of this could have been gleaned from a brief visit to the AEI website.

But the article’s specific charge (announced in the headline) is a very serious one. Although most of you will appreciate the truth on your own, I thought it would be useful to provide a few details...cont'd

Conspiracy? Most definitely. It''s called noble cause corruption, if you're absolutely sure that you are right then it's okay to lie and plant false accusations.

 

[Andre]

Just for reference:

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/longversionfinal.pdf

Note for instance about the rewriting of climate history, the hockeystick:

The IPCC has not retracted its egregious error. It carries on as if nothing is wrong with its conduct or its conclusions. If the IPCC were a commercial corporation operating in Australia, its directors would now be facing criminal charges and the prospect of going to jail.

There is more rewriting going on right now; formerly, there was no global warming in America, but there is now:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1142

 

[D H]

In my opinion, lobbying should be illegal, and corporate contributions to politicians should be banned and henceforth prosecuted as bribery.

What a stereotypical, off-topic opinion. Do you really mean that, or do you really mean contributions to Republican politicians should be banned and henceforth prosecuted as bribery?

Now that the Democrats are in power, they are playing the lobbyist-financed games that got some Republicans in jail (i.e., golf at exotic resorts):
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/02/20/PM200702205.html"

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland is a Democratic powerbroker. Last year, Hoyer campaigned hard on ethics reforms. And in the wake of several scandals, harangued Republicans in the house.

STENY HOYER: The greed and flagrant absues of convicted felons, former Republican member Duke Cunningham and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, hang over this House like a dark cloud.
​

It was former Majority Leader Tom Delay's golf trip to Scotland — courtesy of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff — that inspired many recent reforms.

Still, that hasn't stopped Congressman Hoyer from planning his own lobbyist-financed, springtime getaway. He's headed to the Rio Mar Beach Golf Resort and Spa in Puerto Rico.

But Hoyer's golfing trip — scheduled to begin May 2nd — is completely legal, because it will be a fundraiser for the congressman's political action committee, or leadership PAC.​

Back on topic:
By almost any measure, the world is, on average, a whole lot better off than it was 100 years ago. If that is the price for a fraction of a degree of global warming, it was well worth it.

The US would suffer immense economic damage should we become signatories to the Kyoto protocol. This is one reason why the Senate unanimously rejected the treaty and why neither Clinton nor Bush signed it. And what would be gained environmentally? Very, very little. Killing our economy is not the answer.

 

[turbo]

What a stereotypical, off-topic opinion. Do you really mean that, or do you really mean contributions to Republican politicians should be banned and henceforth prosecuted as bribery?

I am registered as an independent, and I vote for the best candidate regardless of party affiliation. The two-party system is so corrupt as to have institutionalized bribery as "lobbying", which disenfranchises us citizens of our rights to fair representation. Don't try to twist my statements into some straw-man so you can knock them down for "dittos". I am far more conservative in fiscal matters and in the matters of the rights of states and individuals than any Republican I know, and I am far more liberal on social issues than most Democrats. The control that big-money interests have over all facets of our corrupt two-party system should be evident to anybody who has been paying attention. If you can only manage a bit of indignation about such dealings when your favorite party is in the minority, you are one of the sheep and are a crucial part of the problem facing our country.