Climate change deniers, doubters, and fence sitters: an honest question

[Sam_Stone]

Here’s an example of how bias can creep into this issue.

Recently, a new paper was published by Lindzen and Choi in Geophysical Research Letters. This paper suggests that climate sensitivity to CO2 increase is much lower than the current climate models suggest.

Now, I’m not saying this paper is necessarily correct. But I noticed that hordes of scientists on the AGW side descended on this paper, attacking it from any angle they possibly could. RealClimate is all over it. And that’s fine, and maybe they’re right about any weaknesses they found in the paper.

But in the meantime, we find that a key conclusion in the 2007 IPCC report, regarding de-glaciation of the Himalayas, is based on faulty science.

That’s okay too. A published paper isn’t ever the last word in science. But wait… this information made it into the IPCC report, but there was no paper written on it:

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research.

Got that? It appears that a fairly important warning of the danger of global warming made it into the IPCC report, and it was based on nothing more than hearsay and the speculations of a scientist in a phone interview. Someone decided that a sentence written in a popular science magazing 8 years earlier was all the evidence needed to add a very serious potential risk to the official report of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change. And since it supported the alarmist tone of the document, no one questioned it.

I’ve never seen this information criticized at RealClimate. It apparently survived scrutiny of the lead authors of the IPCC report. No scientists had come forward to refute it. Surely some of the experts on glaciation in the Himalayas knew that the science behind this claim was weak, but they kept quiet. How come? Perhaps the field has become so political that good scientists who know better are simply keeping their heads down and staying out of the fray. They may also believe in AGW and buy into the alarmist viewpoint, so they don’t want to be the ones seen as giving ammo to the ‘deniers’, so again they stay silent while bad pro-AGW information seeps into the mainstream.
Then you read of the difficulties scientists have getting papers published that are anti-AGW - papers are delayed for months in review, editors unethically send copies to scientists whose ideas are attacked, allowing them to respond anonymously, etc. And a lot of these scientists are treated as pariahs and tools of big oil or whatever by the pro-AGW scientists, who can be very nasty to them. It’s a painful way to go.

It looks to me like the bar for pro-AGW material is set much lower than the bar for anti-AGW material. This is an inherent bias in the process that is bound to skew the science in one direction. It makes me wonder how much other shoddy science is buried in the IPCC conclusions, and how much good science isn’t being published because the people making the discoveries don’t want the headaches that go along with it, or because they don’t believe their own data when it strongly disagrees with the ‘consensus’ opinion.

I have another example. One of the named potential costs of global warming is the increase in malaria in temperate climates. The logic is that malaria is tropical, so if you warm up the planet, the malaria zone increases. This conclusion also made it into the IPCC report, but it’s very weakly supported by science, if at all. Malaria is not a tropical disease. There have been Malaria outbreaks in many northern regions. Anyone who has been to the Canadian muskeg knows how many mosquitoes breed in cold climates. In fact, malaria has been eradicated in the northern countries mainly because they are richer and have better control over the disease, or they are more sparsely populated to it doesn’t spread as well. One of the scientists who is listed as an IPCC contributing author is an entomologist who has been trying to get the IPCC to correct the record, and they have refused. He then tried to get his name removed from the report, and they refused to do that as well.

Stuff like this, and the CRU E-mails, the treatment of Bjorn Lomborg by Scientific American, and other similar episodes leave a very bad taste in my mouth and help feed my skepticism over where the science is really at.

[XT]

And I’m all for research and development of those technologies, as you should know if you’ve been paying attention to my own somewhat less informed position on this. I’m totally for R&D into alternative fuels, alternative energy sources, nuclear energy, battery development, fuel cells…the works. I’m not even opposed to the government making grants and such available to companies exploring these alternatives.

As I said, my problem with this subject is with those who are attempting to propose fiat solutions handed down from the government which could potentially cost this country (and to a lesser degree other countries) a lot of money and resources for dubious gain. It’s not part of the science…but it certainly has been linked to the science in the public’s mind. You can’t swing a cat these days without a program on Science, Discovery, TLC, History, Nova, etc, touting the coming disaster and urging that we take immediate and drastic steps to avert it. Hell, even the movies are full of references to this stuff. And certainly governments, including our own, are using the science to forward their own agendas to radically (attempt, in theory) to cut CO2 emissions, with, IMHO, mounting pressure and urgency by the international community.

As I’m sure you have guessed about me, I’m not one to endorse fiat solutions handed down from a bunch of politically motivated politicians, regardless of which party (or country) they come from.

-XT

[Aji_de_Gallina]

I still don’t know why it is OK to use 1998 to show AGW but no to use to contradict it.
I know it was a Niño year, but ENSO is part of the picture always.
If you can use 1998’s temperatures as records and show a trend, I can use it too.

To the OP:

• The use of the phrase “variability is expected” as the solution for everything.

[GIGObuster]

@Sam_Stone

Stuff like this, and the CRU E-mails, the treatment of Bjorn Lomborg by Scientific American, and other similar episodes leave a very bad taste in my mouth and help feed my skepticism over where the science is really at.

Yeah, but at least you notice now that usually the exaggerations of the deniers have been answered before, but getting a bad taste in your mouth is one of the most sorry excuses to gave the time of day to denier sources.

You will have to give it up on the CRU-Emails, no serious researchers think that they show that there were underhanded changes made to the data.

As for the previous items:

Here is the criticism to the Lindzen and Choi paper.

RealClimate: Lindzen and Choi Unraveled

And a clarification that deniers would miss on their reports:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/a-rebuttal-to-a-cool-climate-paper/

For those out there seeing any talk of a human warming influence as a hoax, it’s also useful to note that this intellectual tussle over climate sensitivity is over how much human-produced greenhouse gases will warm the world, not if they can do so.

Regarding the Himalayan glacials:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/297875satellite-images-show-himalayan-glacier-receded-15-km-in-30-years.html

“Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, blasted the research, calling it “unsubstantiated” and said “ We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening.” He likened the explanations to “climate change deniers and school boy science”.
“Raina admits in his paper that there is a lack of available data. For the moment long-term data exists for only 20 to 30 Himalayan glaciers and that there was only one automated weather station recording climatic data in the Himalayas, he said.”
“According to Raina, all glaciers under observation in the Himalayan region during the past three decades have shown cumulative negative mass balance (determined by annual snow precipitation). Degradation of the glacier mass has been the highest in Jammu and Kashmir state, relatively lower in Himachal Pradesh region, even less in Uttarakhand, and the lowest in Sikkim — showing a declining trend from the north-west to the north-east.”

Though the IPCC was embarrassed, climate scientists caught themselves on this one.

And once again, science was not frozen in 2007:

http://climateprogress.org/

Good news: The Himalayan glaciers will probably endure past 2035. Bad news: If we don’t reverse our emissions trend soon, their disappearance is likely to become irreversible before then.

MEMO TO MEDIA: It isn’t news that the 2007 projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are not accurate. The real news is that the 99% of their “mistakes” are UNDERestimates of likely impacts. Indeed, they lowballed the sea level rise projections so badly that even the Bush administration rejected them within a year (see “US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections).

Back to the news of the day. Predictably, the anti-science crowd is crowing about what looks to be an inconsequential mistake in the 2007 IPCC report. In a piece absurdly headlined, “World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown,” the UK’s Times online writes:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Note to Times Online, you might want to read your own story from two months ago, “Vanishing glaciers jolt smokestack China” (discussed below), the source of the above photo.

The UK Express screed, “The New Climate Change Scandal,” claims “FRESH doubts were cast over controversial global warming theories yesterday after a major climate change argument was discredited.”

It does look like the IPCC used some out-of-date projections for a pretty minor piece of the report, but of course the IPCC basically froze all scientific inputs to its Fourth Assessment Report around 2005, so they missed the dramatic acceleration in melting of the Arctic sea ice, the inland glaciers, and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. Thus it is absolutely crucial that — if the IPCC re-examines the issue of glacial melt in the Himalayans — that it re-examine the entire issue based on the staggering new observational data in the scientific literature:

Regarding the “difficulties scientists have getting papers published that are anti-AGW”

You need a cite for that as even I noticed before that the anecdotes do not demonstrate what you are affirming here.

BBC News - Climate science: Sceptical about bias

The sum total of evidence obtained through this open invitation, then, is one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling.

No-one said they had been refused a place on the IPCC, the central global body in climate change, or denied a job or turned down for promotion or sacked or refused access to a conference platform, or indeed anything else.

If there is an anti-sceptic bias running through the institutions of science, it is evidently keeping itself well hidden.

Whether this exercise has conclusively disproved a bias is not for me to say - I am sure others will find plenty to say, doubtless in the courteous and gracious language that typifies climate discourse nowadays.

But I will say this; if someone persistently claims to be a great football player, and yet fails to find the net when you put him in front of an open goal, you cannot do other than doubt his claim.

Andres Millan, who wrote to me on the subject from Mexico, offered another explanation for why scientific journals, research grants, conference agendas and the IPCC itself are dominated by research that backs or assumes the reality of modern-day greenhouse warming.

“Most global warming sceptics have no productive alternatives; they say it is a hoax, or that it will cause severe social problems, or that we should allocate resources elsewhere,” he wrote.

"Scientifically, they have not put forward a compelling, rich, and variegated theory.

“And until that happens, to expect the government, or any source of scientific funding, to give as much money, attention, or room within academic journals to the alternatives, seems completely misguided.”

Of course that was from before the CRU hack, but seeing that the denier media discredited themselves with their accusations “found” on them I would demand better evidence.

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

I still don’t know why it is OK to use 1998 to show AGW but no to use to contradict it.

Because it is used to cherry pick and conclude that it is “cooling”. Taking 1998 and all the years from the past decades show the proper trend, It is still warming.

What has global warming done since 1998?

What the science says…

The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 - global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino.

@Aji_de_Gallina

I know it was a Niño year, but ENSO is part of the picture always.
If you can use 1998’s temperatures as records and show a trend, I can use it too.

Yes, but you will get misleading results, you need 15 to 20 years as a minimum to establish a trend.

Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday's use of his research

He told the Guardian: “It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming.”

He added: “There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.”

A report in the Mail on Sunday said that Latif’s results “challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs” and “undermine the standard climate computer models”. Monday’s Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph repeated the claims.

The reports attempted to link the Arctic weather that has enveloped the UK with research published by Latif’s team in the journal Nature in 2008. The research said that natural fluctuations in ocean temperature could have a bigger impact on global temperature than expected. In particular, the study concluded that cooling in the oceans could offset global warming, with the average temperature over the decades 2000-2010 and 2005-2015 predicted to be no higher than the average for 1994-2004. Despite clarifications from the scientists at the time, who stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend, the study was widely misreported as signaling a switch from global warming to global cooling.

The Mail on Sunday article said that Latif’s research showed that the current cold weather heralds such “a global trend towards cooler weather”.

It said: “The BBC assured viewers that the big chill was was merely short-term ‘weather’ that had nothing to do with ‘climate’, which was still warming. The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.”

Not according to Latif. “They are not related at all,” he said. “What we are experiencing now is a weather phenomenon, while we talked about the mean temperature over the next 10 years. You can’t compare the two.”

@Aji_de_Gallina

To the OP:

• The use of the phrase “variability is expected” as the solution for everything.

Nope, if the next decade is cooler then we can worry less and it will be clear to me that other forces are beginning to drive the climate or a CO2 sink that was not predicted is acting up.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@GIGObuster

Because it is used to cherry pick and conclude that it is “cooling”. Taking 1998 and all the years from the past decades show the proper trend, It is still warming.

What has global warming done since 1998?
Yes, but you will get misleading results, you need 15 to 20 years as a minimum to establish a trend.
Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday's use of his research | Climate crisis | The Guardian
Nope, if the next decade is cooler then we can worry less and it will be clear to me that other forces are beginning to drive the climate or a CO2 sink that was not predicted is acting up.

But it is also cherry-picked to show record warmings.
If you want to talk about other forces that drive climate you don’t have to go into the future, you can simply explain why the shape of the 1895-1946 temperature graph is the same as the 1957-2008

http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/slide48.jpg

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

But it is also cherry-picked to show record warmings.

No, selecting all decades is not cherry picking, doing it from 2008 is.

@Aji_de_Gallina

If you want to talk about other forces that drive climate you don’t have to go into the future, you can simply explain why the shape of the 1895-1946 temperature graph is the same as the 1957-2008

http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/slide48.jpg

Talk about misleading…

Lets say that the years are avenues in a city, from the 1895-1946 avenues a car accelerated to 20MPH, then from the 1957-2008 avenues the car accelerated other 20MPH, does one then assume that the car is going at the same speed as it was from 1895-1946?

There was already an explanation why the temperature was at that level in the early part of the 20th century, natural forcings were still controlling the warming, the point missed on purpose by the people behind your citation is that natural forcings can not explain the current warming, we should have gone back already to temperatures like the 60s at least if GWGs were not there in the atmosphere. (See natural forcing only graph)

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@GIGObuster

No, selecting all decades is not cherry picking, doing it from 2008 is.
Talk about misleading…

File:Instrumental Temperature Record.png - Wikipedia

Lets say that the years are avenues in a city, from the 1895-1946 avenues a car accelerated to 20MPH, then from the 1957-2008 avenues the car accelerated other 20MPH, does one then assume that the car is going at the same speed as it was from 1895-1946?

There was already an explanation why the temperature was at that level in the early part of the 20th century, natural forcings were still controlling the warming, the point missed on purpose by the people behind your citation is that natural forcings can not explain the current warming, we should have gone back already to temperatures like the 60s at least if GWGs were not there in the atmosphere. (See natural forcing only graph)

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

Well, if you are in 2008 and you want to talk about temperature change in the last decade when are you going to start counting?
All decades? Do AGW guys always talk about all decades? It’s always “the last 10 years have been the hottest…”
If a car accelerates fron 20 to 25 and then the same car accelerates from 25 to 30 we can draw valid conclusion about the car’s engine and its ability to accelerate.

Where are those natural forcings now? On vacation? If natural forcings alone can cause pretty much the same kind of temperature increase in the same time frame, are they now NOT working? When did they go on strike?
Because if the natural forcings still exist and we added CO2 and the theory is right then we should have even greater warmings. AGW people need forcings to explain temperature increases greater then CO2 alone can produce.

You (or anyone) cannot know where the temperatures would’ve been without the CO2 increase, sorry.

Well, the people behind the graph are the CRU guys. The guys quoting it are irrelevant to the graph itself.

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

Well, if you are in 2008 and you want to talk about temperature change in the last decade when are you going to start counting?

My mistake there, I meant to post 1998.

@Aji_de_Gallina

All decades? Do AGW guys always talk about all decades? It’s always “the last 10 years have been the hottest…”

Decadal is preferred, and yes, you are still wrong.

Key excerpts from Mojib Latif’s WCC presentation

@Aji_de_Gallina

If a car accelerates fron 20 to 25 and then the same car accelerates from 25 to 30 we can draw valid conclusion about the car’s engine and its ability to accelerate.

The implication from the sorry cut graph you posted was that the temperature increased by the same rate and temperature. It missed the context, the warming was not caused by the same reason and it was at different levels.

@Aji_de_Gallina

Where are those natural forcings now? On vacation?

They are really having a sale on straw!

No one is saying that natural forcings are on vacation, they are the reason why there is variation and the cause for “apparent” cooling in the last decade.

@Aji_de_Gallina

If natural forcings alone can cause pretty much the same kind of temperature increase in the same time frame, are they now NOT working? When did they go on strike?

As you never tire to show your ignorance, they are continuing to work, and as the graphs show, the forcing brought by the unnaturally produced global warming gases is **added **to the natural forcings.

@Aji_de_Gallina

Because if the natural forcings still exist and we added CO2 and the theory is right then we should have even greater warmings.

Nope, you are pulling that out of nowhere. Cite?

@Aji_de_Gallina

AGW people need forcings to explain temperature increases greater then CO2 alone can produce.

Cite and context please.

@Aji_de_Gallina

You (or anyone) cannot know where the temperatures would’ve been without the CO2 increase, sorry.

Your say so’s are not based on any evidence. The models are not going to get 100% correct values but they are based on the best current science.

@Aji_de_Gallina

Well, the people behind the graph are the CRU guys. The guys quoting it are irrelevant to the graph itself.

If you had paid attention you will realize that my complaint was that the cut pieces eliminated the context. The full picture shows the context: unprecedented warming in the last part of the 20th century and beyond.

[Shodan]

@GIGObuster

@Shodan

You can’t really separate out questions about the science from questions about the proposed solutions, since the degree to which humans can or do affect global warming will pretty much determine how much, if anything, we can or should do.

Why?

Because science has not established with certainty how severe the consequences of AGW might be. It may be manageable, it may be catastrophic, it may be somewhere in between.

We cannot answer the question ‘what, if anything, do we need to do?’ until we have answered the question ‘what, if anything, is going to happen?’

A warmer, wetter world with slightly more CO[sub]2[/sub] could be good for vegetation. But bad news for the deserts of Africa is good news for the Upper Midwest and Canada, if that is the case.

It’s not “denying the science” to point out that the science is not exactly clear or certain.

Maybe we need to reduce our carbon outputs in the West. [ul][li]Will that have any significant effect []how much will it cost us, and []what happens when India and China nod wisely at global conferences and build hundreds more coal fired power polants?[/ul][/li]IYSWIM.

Regards,
Shodan

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@GIGObuster

My mistake there, I meant to post 1998.
Decadal is preferred, and yes, you are still wrong.

Key excerpts from Mojib Latif’s WCC presentation | Deep Climate

The implication from the sorry cut graph you posted was that the temperature increased by the same rate and temperature. It missed the context, the warming was not caused by the same reason and it was at different levels.
They are really having a sale on straw!

No one is saying that natural forcings are on vacation, they are the reason why there is variation and the cause for “apparent” cooling in the last decade.
As you never tire to show your ignorance, they are continuing to work, and as the graphs show, the forcing brought by the unnaturally produced global warming gases is **added **to the natural forcings.
Nope, you are pulling that out of nowhere. Cite?
Cite and context please.
Your say so’s are not based on any evidence. The models are not going to get 100% correct values but they are based on the best current science.
If you had paid attention you will realize that my complaint was that the cut pieces eliminated the context. The full picture shows the context: unprecedented warming in the last part of the 20th century and beyond.

Of course decadal is a good idea, but it is nor obligatory that decades start on 0 or 3 or 6.
But the graph did show the same increase in the same period and that’s what I said. AGW is about temperatures increasing, and I showed increase without the need for CO2. My point, which you have chosen to ignore, is that we have seen temperature change with the same speed as one the is supposedly CO2-driven.
This is the whole graph.

The purpose of the cut graph is to force you to see the numbers and not be influenced by preconceptions. Nobody can tell me there are enough differences to know which is which.

Ahhh, forcings are part of the “natural variations”, the answer to all AGW problems.
Two forces (natural + manmade) working in the same direction add each other.

The warming (i.e. the temperature increase) is not unprecedented. The average temperature might, but not the change.

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

Of course decadal is a good idea, but it is nor obligatory that decades start on 0 or 3 or 6.
But the graph did show the same increase in the same period and that’s what I said. AGW is about temperatures increasing, and I showed increase without the need for CO2. My point, which you have chosen to ignore, is that we have seen temperature change with the same speed as one the is supposedly CO2-driven.

Another straw man, no one has denied that.

What the evidence shows is that the rise in the early 20th century was influenced by some of the CO2, but natural forcings still were driving the warming.

@Aji_de_Gallina

This is the whole graph.

The purpose of the cut graph is to force you to see the numbers and not be influenced by preconceptions. Nobody can tell me there are enough differences to know which is which.

And nobody did, you are only looking at periods influenced by natural cycles that never took a vacation. (Add the CO2 and then we get a very similar period, only warmer, and the misleading bit was to remove the temperature and the context)

@Aji_de_Gallina

Ahhh, forcings are part of the “natural variations”, the answer to all AGW problems.

As you are failing for the second time to post a cite you are not being taken seriously for your say so, in this case you need a cite that shows that the forcings are not part of the natural variations.

@Aji_de_Gallina

Two forces (natural + manmade) working in the same direction add each other.

The warming (i.e. the temperature increase) is not unprecedented. The average temperature might, but not the change.

As mentioned before, the change you cherry picked was just a strawman. The current warming is not natural, that it was warmer before does not mean that we are automatically off the hook.

Hockey sticks, 'unprecedented warming' and past climate change

the broader argument is that climate change has happened naturally in the past. Global temperatures have changed dramatically - in particular during those periods when we emerged from world-wide ice ages. Looking back over the past 500,000 years, we see periods where temperature has warmed over 10°C and interglacial periods that were warmer than today.

Many peer reviewed papers have studied these periods to glean a deeper understanding of climate. As climate scientist Dana Royer puts it: “the geologic record contains a treasure trove of ‘alternative Earths’ that allow scientists to study how the various components of the Earth system respond to a range of climatic forcings.” The key result we obtain from examining past records is that climate is sensitive to changes in the planet’s energy balance. When the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures rise, enhanced by net positive feedbacks. In the past, energy imbalance (or radiative forcing) have been imposed by a combination of forces: changes in the Earth’s orbit, solar variations, volcanic activity and yes, natural changes in greenhouse gases.

Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is currently causing a heat build-up. While there are various uncertainties in climate science, the radiative forcing from carbon dioxide is one factor that is known with high understanding and confirmed by empirical observations. How much warming can we expect from rising carbon dioxide? The temperature change is determined by climate sensitivity, which is determined from past periods. By comparing temperature change in past periods to the energy imbalance over that period, we can calculate climate sensitivity.

There are important lessons to be learnt from the past 500,000 years of temperature change. But the lesson is not that humans can’t change climate. On the contrary, the past provides evidence for our climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/its-a-gas/

CO2 does absorb infrared radiation; it’s been measured in the laboratory countless times. In fact the absorption of infrared can be used to measure CO2 concentration in gas samples. Therefore unless physics is fundamentally wrong, CO2 will act as a greenhouse gas: it will warm the planet.

Since the beginning of the industrial age, CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity. Since about 1975, CO2 concentration has gotten so high that its greenhouse effect dominates other climate factors (which are also quite thoroughly studied).

And lo and behold, since about 1975 the planet has been warming significantly — at nearly 0.2 deg.C/decade.

We can even use the laws of physics to build computer models of global climate change. When we plug in all the known factors except man-made greenhouse gases, the calculations of the models don’t match what we’ve observed over the last century and a half. But when we include the effect of man-made greenhouse gases, the match is near-perfect.

It’s like your wife decides to put an extra blanket on the bed. You sleep warmer. But she keeps putting another blanket on the bed every week. By the time you have 20 extra blankets, you’re uncomfortably warm.

But your wife insists that it’s not the extra blankets that are making the two of you so warm night; it’s galactic cosmic rays. You reply that we know there are extra blankets on the bed, and there’s no doubt that she’s the cause. But she insists that the key question is, “are those extra blankets causing the recent warming?”

If you want to deny anthropogenic global warming, not only do you have to show what’s causing the recent warming (and absolutely no alternative explanation passes muster), you also have to show how it’s possible that greenhouse gases do not.

[GIGObuster]

@Shodan

Because science has not established with certainty how severe the consequences of AGW might be. It may be manageable, it may be catastrophic, it may be somewhere in between.

We cannot answer the question ‘what, if anything, do we need to do?’ until we have answered the question ‘what, if anything, is going to happen?’

As I see it, there is very little evidence for the catastrophic, most of the recommendations coming from the IPCC are in the range of “somewhere in between” to “manageable”, the IPCC was very conservative IMO, but even I have found that a gut feeling that it could get warmer than what they estimated will not do, we have to act on what the best estimates coming from the scientists.

@Shodan

A warmer, wetter world with slightly more CO[sub]2[/sub] could be good for vegetation.

An recent experiment found that it could be very good for insects too.

@Shodan

But bad news for the deserts of Africa is good news for the Upper Midwest and Canada, if that is the case.

Positives and negatives of global warming

What the science says…

The negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health, economy and environment far outweigh any positives.

@Shodan

It’s not “denying the science” to point out that the science is not exactly clear or certain.

Well, it is more clear with the physics and chemistry of it. What you may have a point is with what the expected rise in temperature will mean. However, there is clearly a bunch of very likely changes.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/futurecc.html

@Shodan

Maybe we need to reduce our carbon outputs in the West. [ul][li]Will that have any significant effect []how much will it cost us, and []what happens when India and China nod wisely at global conferences and build hundreds more coal fired power polants?[/ul][/li]IYSWIM.

Regards,
Shodan

For China, most likely a revolution caused by millions of displaced by droughts and rising seas.

Only half joking there, while it is true that leaders in China are currently making attempts to ignore the obvious, many scientists there are not, to me it is clear that China will either change their tune or the CP in China will end.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/15/energy-and-global-warming-news-for-december-15th-glaciers-in-southern-china-receding-rapidly-scientists-say-most-back-a-treaty-on-global-warming/

[Shodan]

@GIGObuster

Positives and negatives of global warming

I’m sorry, but a cite that claims “lots of work for lawyers” as one of the benefits of global warming is not a cite that can be taken seriously.

Regards,
Shodan

[GIGObuster]

@Shodan

I’m sorry, but a cite that claims “lots of work for lawyers” as one of the benefits of global warming is not a cite that can be taken seriously.

Regards,
Shodan

Besides shooting the messenger and not replying to any of the points there is this on the cite:

(note - some of the positives are tongue in cheek)

[Shodan]

Then you see my point.

Regards,
Shodan

[GIGObuster]

@Shodan

Then you see my point.

Regards,
Shodan

The point I see was an attempt to mislead others, telling others to ignore the cite for making a joke regarding the “positive” is reaching malice levels.

[Defero]

Gotta love that consensus!

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=1a5e6e32-802a-23ad-40ed-ecd53cd3d320

In packs and one by one each and every AGW “scientist” gets outed. And it’s accelerating. The death throws of the AGW hoax? We scientists think so. What can we expect from the AGW religion in the mean time? Labels. “Denier”. Well, somebody’s in denial!

Some quotes from the article

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears.

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA’s Apollo 7 also recently chastised Hansen. “Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him,” Cunningham wrote in an essay in the July/August 2008 issue of Launch Magazine. “NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science,” Cunningham wrote.

According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released, Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears.

And that was a year ago. It’s completely out of hand now.

[Defero]

Daniel Henninger on Climategate: Science Is Dying

“The East Anglians’ mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming’s claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State’s Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.”

Sounds like certain threads on…er…the internet!

If the new ethos is that “close-enough” science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

Copy that! Most of us “deniers” are on that already. Can someone who’s been around a while tell me: was AGW hoax clarity considered a CT around here last year?

[GIGObuster]

@Defero

Gotta love that consensus!

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Ok, it is clear that you are not paying any attention, the Inhofe’s list has been discredited many times before.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/how_many_inhofes_list_compared.php

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/so_whos_on_inhofes_list_and_th.php
As for the real consensus:

Scientific consensus on climate change

Scientists Agree Human-induced Global Warming Is Real, Survey Says

Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.

About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent respectively believing in human involvement. Doran compared their responses to a recent poll showing only 58 percent of the public thinks human activity contributes to global warming.

@Defero

In packs and one by one each and every AGW “scientist” gets outed. And it’s accelerating. The death throws of the AGW hoax? We scientists think so.

Gee… what scientific organization is **saying **that?

@Defero

What can we expect from the AGW religion in the mean time? Labels. “Denier”. Well, somebody’s in denial!

Somebody is, but since climate researchers came to the current conclusions by science and not by religion I think you have to guess who is the one that is using faith to deny the facts.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

@Defero

Some quotes from the article

And that was a year ago. It’s completely out of hand now.

Something to agree here. Deniers are coming unhinged.