Did you read your own cite? 75 of 77 climatologists surveyed? What a statistical load of crap.
Again, you are arguing to what you think I have said. not what I have said. None of your cites you have posted disagrees with "*How much of that is natural and how much caused by humans is a matter of debate. ".
*
Even you agree “There may be a debate on how much humans have caused the warming…”= How much of that is natural and how much caused by humans is a matter of debate. ".
AGAIN:** Last I heard it was a “significant” amount or that “very likely” most of the current trend was caused by humans. I have also seen “due primarily”, " most of the warming"* and other terms.
"There is international scientific consensus that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."*
Apparently you are so closed minded here that you will even argue with posters that generally agree with the premise, unless they put it in the exact same words you do. That’s not science, that’s faith.
Thus, I might as well debate a wall. Go away. :mad:
Yes, the majority of scientists think that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that increased concentrations will lead to higher temperatures through radiative forcing. Hell, I believe that. I think most of the serious skeptics also believe this.
The pro-AGW side has a vested interest in making this argument, because it truly is the area where the science is most settled. They’re on the high ground fighting from here, and they like it that way.
But that’s not where the real debate is. The real debate is around secondary effects: What is the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 forcing? What are the possible effects of warming? What feedback mechanisms exist, and how do they affect temperature in the medium and longer terms? What is the cost and political feasibility of making changes significant enough affect temperature in a measurable way?
All of these are open questions. Cloud feedback modeling is still in its infancy, and no one has confidence that they really understand how temperature affects cloud coverage, and yet cloud coverage changes are potentially big enough to completely offset temperature increases. There is also significant question about the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will affect accumulation rates and ultimately, maximum levels. The error bars on that estimate are still way too big.
The errors in the IPCC report all over-state the potential economic harm from global warming. If that’s the case, then what’s the real number? And is it big enough to warrant spending trillions of dollars to prevent?
There are many other issues - some small, some big in which economists and climate scientists disagree when evaluating climate change and its economic effects.
This would be the biggest project mankind has ever undertaken. It would be a significant burden on the economy. Before you do that, you need due diligence. Prof. Jones losing source data because he’s no good with paperwork does NOT make the grade. If he’s undermining confidence in climate science, it’s for good reason. Climate Scientists are not high priests. They don’t get to dictate science policy. They can give information to the public, and the public will decide whether or not they want to pay for it. If they don’t, oh well. The people are also racking up big deficits, which is every bit as much a burden to the future as global warming.
If you want to convince people, you have to be scrupulous about your record-keeping. You have to be absolutely open and transparent with every bit of data, every bit of source code. You need to embrace your critics and work with them to get across your point of view. You have to build a consensus over time with compelling arguments. The people have a right to choose, because it’s their resources you want to spend. So far, you’re not making your case to them very well.
Instead of shooting the messengers, maybe this would be a good time to go back and see if you can’t build a new consensus by changing tactics.
Well, so now you know exactly how many climatologists are there?
If you look carefully you would see that 90% of them agree. From them the ones that were identified as climatologists were separated and the researches took a look on how they voted, no mystery nor crap.
Meh, I thought you would appreciate that there is not really too much debate on the rates attributed to humans.
As it was mentioned, they are not depending on his data, there are more sources and they do confirm what Jones said, so he gets egg in his face but the science has not changed.
Sorry, but after finding that the messengers changed the information then one has to shoot them. It is only a fallacy if one does it for no reason.
Show me the numbers. If the sample is small then there is a serious problem with the field of science to begin with and if the sample is large (as would be expected) then the numbers are bullshit.
A change here, it is actually 82% blaming human activity, 90% refers to them affirming that mean global temperatures have risen.
I don’t think that is how it works, if there was no consensus then one would expect that a good number of scientific organizations would come with positions, examples and evidence of why they are not supporting the conclusions reached by the climate researchers.
History shows that the process to convince virtually all scientific organizations that global warming gases released by humans are an issue, was with evidence.
As for the numbers, you are missing that there are links to the survey in the site.
In which case, we may have some very good news for you!
GIGObuster I don’t think you’re grasping what we’re saying. Nobody is dismissing global warming. What is being questioned, and for good reason, is the accuracy of the data AND the modeling. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to construct a predictive model but it becomes exponentially difficult with each variable that is added (or left out). Climatology has to be the biggest predictive modeling project ever conceived. I guarantee you it’s not perfect. The question is how perfect is the model in relation to the monies spent reacting to the predictions.
My own state set down an edict for the power companies to follow in an effort to curb co2. Because of this my local producer is building a huge solar array panel at a cost of $5 million. It will generate enough power for 150 homes. That’s $33,000 per home. Unless it incorporates a storage system then it really on serves 75 homes because solar sells only generate power during the day. That doubles the cost to $66,000 per home. Did we get our moneys worth? Is this going to satisfy our power needs in the future?
We need to be cost effective to deal with the future and it needs to be based on accurate information.
The simple fact is that in one instance you are basing your decisions on the evidence from the scientific literature, and the other you are rejecting the evidence from the scientific literature in favor of an alternate position. Where your motivation to take up the alternate position comes from is your own game to figure out, but the hypocrisy is manifest, and you would do well to explore it. On your own time, of course.
As a bit of evidence for your consideration, I would point out that when I see your name come up in a thread, I think “global warming” because in my experience that’s the subject I see you post most frequenlty about.
I would also say that you seem to use the word “psychological” in some way to express contempt, denigration or at the very least minimalization of others. You appear to use it when you want to call others’ motivations into question. Certainly, you wouldn’t be the first physician to do so. You would also not be the first physician who points to the literature base when it suits him and acts ignorantly of it when it doesn’t.
Finally, as a generalization, physicians are no better than lay people when it comes to understanding and interpreting research. I think you’ve gone all psychological on the matter of climate change.
Unfortunately, that scientific literature has been shown to have significant errors that even a layman should have spotted, like the Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. And emails have been published indicating questionable choices of data, questionable processing of data, and attempts to subvert editorial boards. This has quite rightly, called the whole peer review process into question. IIRC one climate scientist said something along the lines of, “Why should I let you see my data when I know you want to disprove my findings?” to which I’d respond, “If your results can’t stand hostile inquiry, then are they really valid?”
Anyway, the whole U.K. side is being thoroughly and independently investigated.
If you think the average emphasis/money spent/corrective proposals/etc around the issue of population control ranks right up there along with AGW, you serve nicely as an example of what I am talking about when I refer to the underlying mass psychology which distorts the thinking of pro-AGW proselytizers.
In AGW, House A is predicted to take a tumble because the sea is eroding the cliff it’s near.
In overpopulation, House B is already on fire and burning vigorously.
I am bemused (again) about the emphasis on House A, and expressing some sort of non-specific concern about the house on fire is comically inadequate. Pretending there is equal on the part of either the scientific or the political or the polloi’s concern is ridiculous. One is a Great Cause; the other just one of the (many) problems facing mankind. And yet the one elevated to Great Cause status pales in comparison as a defined immediate threat the failure of which to address is permanent disaster for the ecosystem.
Right. The layperson probably doesn’t understand the full scope of the climate research. I know I don’t. I do understand scientific research well enough to know that on any subject matter, some predictions will be incorrect, and some individual researchers will do things that are not great. If that prediction were the only prediction made and if that researcher were the only researcher, you might have a point.
Unfortunately, you don’t.
All legitimate points and I grant you them.
I am pretty sure my hobby of posting on the SDMB is motivated by ( for lack of a better way of putting it) liking to be right, be it a GQ answer or an opinion. It’s fun, and it passes the time, along with being educational for me when I read the posts of others. The “delicious” part is getting the last laugh. I’m not that vested in being the AGW skeptic. Really. I’ll plead guilty to having an ego, sure.
Ten years is a safe distance and you are right to complain about it. (I did make a bet with a more proximate timeline with SentientMeat here to wear a “I believie in AGW” placard if we get a record hot year in the next 3 or 4 years and post the photo on the Dope) If you want a more proximate prediction, I’ll predict that over the next two to three years there will be an increasing number of analyses critical of AGW that are more broadly accepted; I’ll predict that “Global Warming” is increasingly less emphasized in favor of “Climate Change” as currently-accepted datasets and future data collection are more rigorously scrutinized, and I’ll predict the mass hysteria will further abate and not strengthen. But remember it’s the pro-AGW crowd who is so insistent about the reminder that we are talking “Climate Change” and not weather. So any short-term or local changes are dismissed as anomalies and it takes time to wean people–even scientists–off their assumptions. When one of the core tenets of a paradigm is computer-modeled predictions for past and future temperature that’s based on a variety of soft parameters and those parameters can be “tweaked” as the predictions diverge from the modeling, it takes a long time to reverse a construct. I may get lucky and we’ll get a nice study in the next year that the big parameter we screwed up was net thermal input into the ocean from the earth’s crust or something (not proposing; just throwing out an example) and it’s really ocean warming and not lawn-mowers that’s melting the Arctic ice. But absent that, even if my skepticism proves well-founded, the pro-AGW folks can hide equally behind “That’s an anomaly over there; this is AGW over here” when the science needs tweaking.
You really could had fool many with your efforts so far. 
Of course it is not perfect, but it is the best of what science is telling us now and many still do not understand that models are not just for predictions, the computer simulations showing that co2 is warming the earth are not doing a prediction, they are based on the data gathered so far, and so far they continue to show that there is no explanation of the current warming unless one adds the extra CO2 and other gases that human activities produce.
And as I mentioned before, it is when we reach the “what to do about the warming” level were I do then acknowledge that the analysis of what is cost effective or not is not well thought out. I have pointed at that many times before, once again, I do have a beef when silly efforts are made to deny the science. But to complain about several of the solutions proposed? I’m there.
As your example shows it is in reality you who does not grasp where I’m coming from. Finding that CO2 and other gases released by humans are changing the climate does not mean that several of the solutions proposed should not be criticized.
Ah, luci, man of science. You are just an impartial observer making his decision based on the impartial science. Your decision has nothing to do with the fact that AGW neatly fits into your political beliefs.
And the conclusions of scientists have nothing to do with the incestuous nature of the grant-making and peer review processes, the political funding of their work, the political pressure to come up with the right answer, and their own political concictions.
And the science here is fully reproducible just like other types of science–it’s not like it just involves subjectively adjusted measurements that are inputted into models with subjective criteria, which makes the whole exercise more on the level of pure theory than other types of science.
And it’s not like governments are all jazzed about using these results to support tangentially related programs they find desirable for other reasons, like green jobs programs, etc.
Nope, none of that is the case. The scientists are just doing pure impartial science and you are just impartially interpreting the science.
Yes, that is the case. Funding is not terribly difficult to come by. We Americans like to keep our status as scientific leaders in the world. We certainly would need climatologists in the absence of global warming.
Scientist are in fact slaves to the facts. This is why lawyers make such terrible scientists, and why you have absolutely no scientific facts to back up your argument. Instead, you ignorantly attack the sources based on fantasized motivations.
There are huge powerful,forces that have a financial stake in blowing up the global warming discussion. Fox TV and conservative talk radio endlessly say it is a fraud. The energy companies have a huge stake in the status quo. They spend enormous amounts of money fighting global warming scientists and investigating every scientist who backs it. It is the typical American story. Our corporations will fight to survive and make money. That is what they do. They would not be doing a corporations work, if they voluntarily spent money cleaning up their industry. Their prime directive is make money, any way possible. The corporate structure is the reason we need strong and constant regulation. They have too much access to the airways and politicians. It is not an even playing field at all.