Do Peer-Reviewed papers exists supporting skepticism of "man-made" global warming alarm?

[Icerigger]

There is an interesting new book about the “denial industry” called Merchants of Doubt.The book chronicles the raise of “experts” and “think tanks” whose sole purpose is to obscure scientific findings related to many different issues, mostly to protect industry and ideology. The whole nasty business came to prominence with the anti-science regarding smoking with The Tobacco Institute that “proved” cigarettes did not cause cancer and had an entire retinue of scientists and studies that “confirmed” their findings. Sound familiar?

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues...

[Bridget_Burke]

@Poptech

Oh so admit RealClimate is not impartial? At least you state the obvious.

No, I’m stating that your site’s motto is a lie.

Why aren’t your minions flocking over here to amaze us with their brilliance?

[Poptech]

@Icerigger

There is an interesting new book about the “denial industry” called Merchants of Doubt.The book chronicles the raise of “experts” and “think tanks” …

There are much better books not filled with misinformation,

The Hockey Stick Illusion: Global Warming and the Corruption of Science (A.W. Montford, 2009)

Here is the definitive expose of the distorted science behind the iconic global warming graph centrally responsible for the global panic about climate change. From Steve McIntyre’s earliest attempts to reproduce the Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick graph, to the explosive publication of his work and the launch of a congressional inquiry, The Hockey Stick Illusion is a remarkable tale of scientific misconduct and amateur sleuthing. It explains the complex science of this most controversial of temperature reconstructions in layperson’s language and lays bare the remarkable extent to which climatologists have been willing to break their own rules in order to defend climate science’s most famous finding. The book also covers the recent leak of the email archives of the Climatic Research Unit which has led to the resignation of its Director, Professor Phil Jones, and exposed the degree to which climate scientists on both sides of the Atlantic have hidden and manipulated data to support their claims.

Climategate: The Crutape Letters (Steven Mosher, Thomas W. Fuller, 2010)

The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end–from ‘Hide the Decline’ to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene–Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller–Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why. For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context–we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided. For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup–we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change. And for those who have heard that this scandal is just ‘boys being boys’–well, boy. It’s as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.

Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D. Climatology ; Robert C. Balling, Ph.D. Professor of Climatology, 2009)

Michaels (The Satanic Gases) and Balling (The Heated Debate) claim that, although global warming is real, it does not herald a climate crisis and that human beings cannot significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet. They present detailed evidence that climate data is inaccurate, the fear that permafrost will release huge amounts of the greenhouse gas methane is unfounded and that horror stories about an imminent collapse of Greenland’s ice simply aren’t borne out by the fact that it was warmer there for decades in the early 20th century, and for millennia after the end of the last ice age. The authors make persuasive arguments and climate crisis skeptics will applaud the book’s message. Other readers may wonder why governments would, as Michaels and Balling suggest, have a stake in manufacturing a crisis, and think that the book’s credibility is undermined by the authors’ tendency to mix sarcasm with facts and figures (Earth’s temperature is doubtlessly warmer than it was 100 years ago. Get over it) and clear frustration with their minority status in the global warming debate.

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. Former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies, NASA, 2010)

The Great Global Warming Blunder unveils new evidence from major scientific findings that explode the conventional wisdom on climate change and reshape the global warming debate as we know it. Roy W. Spencer, a former senior NASA climatologist, reveals how climate researchers have mistaken cause and effect when analyzing cloud behavior and have been duped by Mother Nature into believing the Earth’s climate system is far more sensitive to human activities and carbon dioxide than it really is. In fact, Spencer presents astonishing new evidence that recent warming is not the fault of humans, but the result of chaotic, internal natural cycles that have been causing periods of warming and cooling for millennia. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not necessarily to be feared; The Great Global Warming Blunder explains that burning of fossil fuels may actually be beneficial for life on Earth. As group-think behavior and misguided global warming policy proposals threaten the lives of millions of the world’s poorest, most vulnerable citizens, The Great Global Warming Blunder is a scintillating exposé and much-needed call for debate.

[Bridget_Burke]

@Poptech

There are much better books not filled with misinformation…

Please recommend some. Hint: Vanity Press publications don’t count.

[GIGObuster]

@Poptech

There are much better books not filled with misinformation,

As Bridget Burke said, it is not an impressive book list at all.

All concerns mentioned in the quotes were already dealt with:

The Hockey Stick Illusion: Global Warming and the Corruption of Science (A.W. Montford, 2009)

What evidence is there for the hockey stick?

What the science says…

All recent professional analyses agree that the high global temperatures since 1970 are unprecedented in the last 1,000 years.

The “hockey stick” describes a reconstruction of past temperature over the past 1000 to 2000 years using tree-rings, ice cores, coral and other records that act as proxies for temperature (Mann 1999). The reconstruction found that global temperature gradually cooled over the last 1000 years with a sharp upturn in the 20th Century. The principal result from the hockey stick is that global temperatures over the last few decades are the warmest in the last 1000 years.

Climategate: The Crutape Letters (Steven Mosher, Thomas W. Fuller, 2010)

What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

What the science says…

Several independent investigations have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing in the media-hyped email incident.

Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D. Climatology ; Robert C. Balling, Ph.D. Professor of Climatology, 2009)

Satellite measurements of warming in the troposphere

What the science says…

The most recent satellite data show that the earth as a whole is warming.

Is Greenland gaining or losing ice?

What the science says…

Greenland on the whole is losing ice, as confirmed by satellite measurement.

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. Former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies, NASA, 2010)

How sensitive is our climate?

What the science says…

Climate sensitivity is high, and the doubtful hypothesis of low sensitivity relies on flimsy negative feedback ideas.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

As Bridget Burke said, it is not an impressive book list at all.

All concerns mentioned in the quotes were already dealt with:

Only if you never read the books and are trying to get people not to read them. LOL, you clearly have never read any of those books as those links and quotes do not remotely deal with what is covered in these books.

For instance your hockey stick link is laughable as he uses a reference to Wahl 2007 which was torn to shreds in chapters 8 and 12 of The Hockey Stick Illusion and summarized here,

Caspar and the Jesus paper (PDF) (Andrew W. Montford)

Please read the books before posting links that do not address what is actually in the books, thanks.

[GIGObuster]

@Poptech

Only if you never read the books and are trying to get people not to read them. LOL, you clearly have never read any of those books as those links and quotes do not remotely deal with what is covered in these books.

For instance your hockey stick link is laughable as he uses a reference to Wahl 2007 which was torn to shreds in chapters 8 and 12 of The Hockey Stick Illusion and summarized here,

Caspar and the Jesus paper (PDF) (Andrew W. Montford)

Please read the books before posting links that do not address what is actually in the books, thanks.

I already had seen that before, also useless. But thanks for bringing reheated baloney.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

I already had seen that before, also useless. But thanks for bringing reheated baloney.

Then you should not have a problem with anyone reading such a “useless” document or the full text in the book.

[Bridget_Burke]

@Poptech

Only if you never read the books and are trying to get people not to read them. LOL, you clearly have never read any of those books as those links and quotes do not remotely deal with what is covered in these books.

For instance your hockey stick link is laughable as he uses a reference to Wahl 2007 which was torn to shreds in chapters 8 and 12 of The Hockey Stick Illusion and summarized here,

Caspar and the Jesus paper (PDF) (Andrew W. Montford)

Please read the books before posting links that do not address what is actually in the books, thanks.

Well, if you’ve actually read the books, surely you can summarize them in your own words. Cutting & pasting is easy!

And I’ll stand by my opinion on Vanity Press books. Those are books that the author paid to have published…

[Poptech]

@Lobohan

Have you any idea how sad it is to see you stumbling away, nose bloodied, declaring victory in this fight?

You are advocating a conspiracy theory, and you aren’t even trying to actually debate. You swim around like a tadpole from fact to fact, never for an instant acknowledging when you’ve been shown to be utterly and embarrassingly wrong.

My nose is not bleeding as no one has even landed a punch. Please name the conspiracy theory I am advocating. I have extensively debated on topic comments and will continue to.Please list where I have been shown wrong.

[Poptech]

@tomndebb

Except the parts where you have responded to things that were never posted and the parts where you got your facts wrong

Why are you ignoring all the other posters who constantly post strawman and instead focus on my one minor misreading of a commentators post of which I have since corrected?

Name the facts I have gotten wrong.

@tomndebb

…and the parts where you have never even made it clear what you think you are arguing about, “everything” has made sense.

You are hardly “winning” an argument that you cannot even describe.

What the thread is about is explicit in the title. The argument is laid out in the first post if you care to read it.

“Proponents of government action to regulate CO2 all in the name of preventing a “man-made” global warming “catastrophe” will declare that no peer-reviewed papers exists supporting skepticism of “man-made” global warming alarm. I argue this is not true,”

Why are you ignoring what was stated in the first post?

@tomndebb

No one has threatened to ban you, (more failure of understanding–or deliberate mischaracterization–on your part), and you have not been threatened with censorship, either. I have only noted that you are not conducting a debate and that if you do not begin to behave in a reasonable fashion, it will not remain open in this forum.

You seem to be holding me accountable for arguing off topic points interjected by others. How is this fair? You continue to threaten me based on your subjective interpretation of “reasonable fashion” all the while ignoring everyone else.

@tomndebb

AGW threads are more common than gun control threads. I rarely participate and I really have little interest in who “wins” or “loses” such brawls. I do care about having to read pointless threads because they keep getting reported as trolling and, when I open them, I find one or more posters pushing hostility supported by bad logic and a lack of facts.

The truth comes out! So if a bunch of people who want to get a discussion censored all they have to do is report it over and over. Sounds fair to me!

@tomndebb

You have been instructed to lay out what you think this debate is supposed to be about (with the implication that you might want to indicate why it is a debate and not a personal rant). If you are unable to do that, I can accommodate you with a more appropriate forum.

The debate is to wether peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skepticism of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm. This an issue of national importance as U.S. Senator John Kerry (and likely many other Democratic Senators) does not believe these papers exist and the U.S. Senate is currently considering energy legislation based on this misinformation.

“You realize that there are something like two or three thousand studies all of which concur which have been peer reviewed, and not one of the studies dissenting has been peer reviewed?” - U.S. Senator John Kerry

[GIGObuster]

@Poptech

My nose is not bleeding as no one has even landed a punch.

I have seen your act elsewhere, no one in the science blogs or forums is impressed. Impressed that you are the Black Knight maybe.

@Poptech

Please name the conspiracy theory I am advocating.

That all the ones proposing AGW are hacks or “filled with misinformation”. When you mentioned that book regarding the CRU hack and others, you are indeed adopting their point that scientists are conspiring to change the climate data.

@Poptech

I have extensively debated on topic comments and will continue to.Please list where I have been shown wrong.

Regarding all your citations on the Hockey Stick:

Yes you are wrong, specifically where it counts, scientists that checked the data confirmed that it is a Myth that ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong.

Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

In fact, later studies support the key conclusion: the world is warmer now than it has been for at least 1000 years

The “hockey stick” graph was the result of the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the average northern hemisphere temperature over the past 1000 years, based on numerous indicators of past temperatures, such as tree rings. It shows temperatures holding fairly steady until the last part of the 20th century and then suddenly shooting up (see graphic, right).

It provided yet more evidence that the rise in greenhouse gases due human activity is causing warming, although the case for this was already very strong. The conclusion that we are making the world warmer certainly does not depend on reconstructions of temperature prior to direct records.

The hockey graph was first published in a 1999 paper (pdf) by Michael Mann and colleagues, which was an extension of a 1998 study in Nature. The graph was highlighted in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Since 2001, there have been repeated claims that the reconstruction is at best seriously flawed and at worst a fraud, no more than an artefact of the statistical methods used to create it (see The great hockey stick debate).

Details of the claims and counterclaims involve lengthy and arcane statistical arguments, so let’s skip straight to the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science (pdf). The academy was asked by Congress to assess the validity of temperature reconstructions, including the hockey stick.
“Array of evidence”

The report states: “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world”.

Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been improved in a number of ways, it was not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading up to the 20th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of the 20th century.

It is true that there are big uncertainties about the accuracy of all past temperature reconstructions, and that these uncertainties have sometimes been ignored or glossed over by those who have presented the hockey stick as evidence for global warming.
The problems

Climate scientists, however, are only too aware of the problems (see Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period), and the uncertainties were both highlighted by Mann’s original paper and by others at the time it was published.

Update: as suggested by the academy in its 2006 report, Michael Mann and his colleagues have reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study and updated measurements from the recent past.

The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study. Like other temperature reconstructions done since 2001 (see graph), it shows greater variability than the original hockey stick. Yet again, though, the key conclusion is the same: it’s hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.

In fact, independent evidence, from ice cores and sea sediments for instance, suggest the last time the planet approached this degree of warmth was during the interglacial period preceding the last ice age over 100,000 years ago. It might even be hotter now than it has been for at least a million years.

*What is that -arm and blood on the floor- then?

• It is just a flesh wound.*

[GIGObuster]

@Poptech

The debate is to wether peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skepticism of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm. This an issue of national importance as U.S. Senator John Kerry (and likely many other Democratic Senators) does not believe these papers exist and the U.S. Senate is currently considering energy legislation based on this misinformation.

“You realize that there are something like two or three thousand studies all of which concur which have been peer reviewed, and not one of the studies dissenting has been peer reviewed?” - U.S. Senator John Kerry

At last the point of the debate!

Ah darn, you are just talking about a politician being wrong on a science bit (I’m already on the record saying that I do not trust politicians to do the correct thing). You are correct regarding Kerry, but as this thread has shown, the overwhelming majority of climate peer review papers and scientists involved with this issue still support AGW.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Is peer review in itself to be accepted as evidence, now? I can understand why it would help get one’s thesis taken more seriously, but the mere fact of being peer reviewed (and presumably not rejected out of hand) doesn’t, as far as I know, prove one’s thesis is correct. Time and repeatability does that.

[BrainGlutton]

@Bryan_Ekers

Is peer review in itself to be accepted as evidence, now? I can understand why it would help get one’s thesis taken more seriously, but the mere fact of being peer reviewed (and presumably not rejected out of hand) doesn’t, as far as I know, prove one’s thesis is correct. Time and repeatability does that.

To the layman (and it is to lay voters that the politicians concerned with relevant legislation are ultimately answerable), consensus among the scientists in the relevant field may justly be taken as a good indicator that the thesis is correct. (There are some exceptions in the history of science – but, face it, for every Galileo there are at least a thousand TimeCube Guys.) At present, there is a consensus on AGW – not nearly as overwhelming as on evolution, but pretty solid – and the whole point of this thread and Poptech’s blog and the industry-front groups is to chip away at the public perception of same.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

I have seen your act elsewhere, no one in the science blogs or forums is impressed.

Yes no alarmist at an alarmist blog is impressed with me, this is correct.

@GIGObuster

That all the ones proposing AGW are hacks or “filled with misinformation”. When you mentioned that book regarding the CRU hack and others, you are indeed adopting their point that scientists are conspiring to change the climate data.

Stating someone is a hack has nothing to do with any conspiracy nor is stating they spread misinformation. Recommending a book on Climategate is not advocating any conspiracy it is recommending a book.

@GIGObuster

Regarding all your citations on the Hockey Stick:

Yes you are wrong, specifically where it counts, scientists that checked the data confirmed that it is a Myth that ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646

Your link includes references to the NAS study which is exposed and refuted in detail in the book. Seriously you have clearly never read the book as you are just throwing out nonsense. Please stop posting about something you have obviously never read or researched.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

but as this thread has shown, the overwhelming majority of climate peer review papers and scientists involved with this issue still support AGW.

This thread has shown no such thing and you have failed to provide any evidence to support this talking point.

[Poptech]

@BrainGlutton

At present, there is a consensus on AGW – not nearly as overwhelming as on evolution, but pretty solid

The wikipedia page provides no evidence of any consensus outside of the same tired talking points. None of those scientific organizations have ever had their membership body endorse any of their position statements created by their council members.

[tomndebb]

So, we’re supposed to be debating whether a politician made a dumb comment when it is posted in overlarge type?

I am unimpressed and you keep declaring victories as you perform your CT dog-and-pony.

meh.

[Poptech]

@Bridget_Burke

No, I’m stating that your site’s motto is a lie.

Where does the motto say open commenting? This was done at one time and the owner got tired of deleting posts and links to porn sites even with various security measures so it will not be reversed.

@Bridget_Burke

Why aren’t your minions flocking over here to amaze us with their brilliance?

I do not have any minions.

@Bridget_Burke

Well, if you’ve actually read the books, surely you can summarize them in your own words. Cutting & pasting is easy!

Unlike others here I have read all four books and more but these are the ones I recommend. I actually own two copies of the Hockey Stick Illusion and will be buying many more for presents, it is one of the best books on the subject. I do not have time for book reports least of all when the summaries for the books explain them very well.