The receding glaciers are often cited as a consequence of global warming, but late breaking local news (no cite yet available) concerning the Comox Glacier near Mt Washington on Vancouver Island reports of the discovery of monster size (5x) carnivorous ice worms that feed on the regular size (2 cm long) ice worms. Research is presently underway to evaluate the degree of heat that these animals generate. The speculation now is that the Comox Glacier may disappear in 100 years.
Steel Rat, your posts here wouldn’t be so ironic if you weren’t also posting in the thread on creationism. There you are defending science against attacks by pseudoscience and here you are posting links to pseudoscience websites that are very analogous to the “creation science” websites!
And, furthermore, you are making almost exactly the same sort of arguments that lekatt is making in that thread! “Well, I don’t understand how they could possibly know…” and “All these scientists are in cohoots to foist this view on us…”
You are basically just making baseless attacks on the IPCC that you no doubt read on one of the pseudoscience websites (like the one you linked to run by the Idso brothers). The IPCC doesn’t have an agenda other than to review the state of the peer-reviewed science. And, what “agenda” does the NAS have. What agenda does the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have? What agenda does the American Geophysical Union (AGU) have? What agenda does the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have? What agenda does Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine Donald Kennedy have? What agenda does British Petroleum have? What agenda does Shell Oil have?
It would seem that the New Zealand government blame the cows.
1.) Earlier in the thread, we mentioned that the data for the medieval warm period is only local data, so it’s incorrect to assume that it was a worldwide trend. That article only mentions data from parts of western Asia. If you want to prove that the medieval warm period was a global phenomenon, you need global data.
2.) The majority of the articles cited rely on tree-ring data. Tree-ring data is always more strongly correlated to rainfall than to temperature, and I didn’t see any mention of how the researchers verified temperature data in their studies.
3.) The article is biased. Rather than simply reporting scientific data, they tell the reader what political stances to take and launch insults at anyone who believes that man-made global warming is a serious problem. A few clicks will show you that the other articles on that site are all written the same way. Science is about gathering data and making conclusions based on that data, not about descending into juvenile name-calling matches. I have never read any paper by a real scientist that looks like the writing on that website.
In short, if you want me to believe that this medieval warming period actually happened, show me global data from an unbiased source, along with an argument for why that data should be considered reliable.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
1.) Earlier in the thread, we mentioned that the data for the medieval warm period is only local data, so it’s incorrect to assume that it was a worldwide trend. That article only mentions data from parts of western Asia. If you want to prove that the medieval warm period was a global phenomenon, you need global data.
[quote]
Ice core sample corroborate the tree-ring data. If you expect data from every point on the globe, well, we don’t eve have that now.
But tree-ring data is ok when PROVING global warming is caused by man, right? ok, whatever.
Are you serious? Where is the name-calling in the article? The only part of the article which even remotely comes close to name calling is the summary where they mention that as we learn more we find that the IPCC has really jumped the gun. Maybe we interpret english differently, I don’t know.
However, this article provided considerably more data than the links you provided, which simply spouted numbers that had no relevance.
That’s quite a stretch. So when scientists question each other one side is automatically preaching pseudoscience? If you think Creation Science is really science then you need to go back to school.
And you’re making baseless attacks on anyone with an opposing view. So the Idso brothers are evil because they believe the IPCC is wrong?
What agenda do Fred Seitz and all the scientists that signed this petition have? All 2660 of them. What agenda does the Cato Institute have? What agenda does NASA have?
I can keep going, but I really don’t have time. If at some point in the future the evidence definitively shows a human-induced warming trend, then I’ll believe it. And since things aren’t happening at anywhere near the rate the IPCC originally, or even secondarily, said it would, I don’t think we’re in trouble from anything except people who want to take drastic steps without even knowing what they’re fighting.
First, cite please? Second, if a good scientist has data on a local phenomenon, do they report it as a global phenomenon, or do they state up front and honestly that they don’t have any evidence that works on a global scale? Because the source that you cited certainly is not honest about it. They claim that their local data should be construed as proof of a global trend.
Do you have evidence that I’ve tried to use tree-ring data to prove that global warming is caused by man, or this another malicious attempt on your part to smear me with a straw-man argument?
Yes.
You provided a link to a summary of severa articles, with hyperlinks to several pages on that same site. This may shock you, but I actually followed those hyperlinks. Among the highlights:
1.) Anyone who believes that human activity causes global warming is an “alarmist”, and their research is “pathetic”.
2.) The IPCC does not have a “shred of rationality”.
3.) Anyone who believes that human activity causes global warming is part of a super-secret one world government conspiracy.
If those don’t count as juvenile insults to you, then we certainly do interpret English differently. No one who wanted to uphold rigorous scientific standards would dish out name-calling or black-helicopter style conspiracy theories in their “scientific” write-ups.
I see. Let’s have a brief summary of this portion of the thread:
steel rat: Methane absorbs more energy than carbon dioxide.
ITR: That’s a lie. Carbon dioxide absorbs more energy than methane, and here are the data that prove it.
steel rat: That has no relevance.
This raises two fairly obvious questions:
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In a debate about global warming, how can data about atmospheric levels of gases “have no relevance”?
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If the amount of energy absorbed by greenhouse gases “has no relevance”, then why did you bring the topic up in the first place?
Face the facts. You got caught trying to pass off a blatant lie. Now you’re trying to weasel out of it by saying that the topic has no relevance.
When people who have not taken the considerable amount of time (and training) it would take to understand the peer-reviewed science in a field nonetheless believe that they can make pronouncements that they don’t agree with what the peer-reviewed science says and make vague statements about how they don’t understand the evidence for this or that (implying not just that they don’t understand it but that it is therefore not compelling), then yes, I think that is pseudoscience.
I don’t. And, that is exactly my point.
They are not evil but why are to we to believe them when they are just a few scientists, ones who do not have a strong publication in peer-reviewed journals in the field and they are known to have extremely strong biases on this issue.
The Oregon Petition has been debunked in past threads on this subject. It was a petition circulated by a mass mailing to scientists along with a paper full of deception and half-truths. And, it was formatted to make it look like a paper in a National Academy of Sciences journal, which caused the Academy to take the unusual step of disassociating themselves from it…noting that it had not appeared in any of their publications and its conclusions were not in agreement with NAS studies.
Almost all of those who signed on to that petition are not qualified to judge the state of the peer-reviewed science in the field.
Are you serious?!?! Do you know who Cato is? They are a libertarian think tank that argues against most government regulation and presumably receives lots of financial support from lots of corporations, some likely with a direct stake in this issue. Climate change is one of the big issues for most of the libertarian think tanks like Cato and NCPA (National Center for Policy Analysis).
Well, what you linked to is one now-over-6-year-old site by one research group at NASA discussing one aspect of the climate change issue over which there has been some contention. It is also worth noting that while the satellite temperature record remains a subject of debate, there is a recent (2003) re-analysis of that record that shows a warming in the troposphere that is actually somewhat larger than the surface observations show…which is in good agreement with the climate models. (The NAS page I linked to before also includes a report from 2000 discussing the issue of the surface vs. satellite observation.) This issue of the trend in the satellite data remains unresolved but the question has now change from “Why does the satellite data show the troposphere as a whole has warmed considerably less than the surface observations show?” to “Does the satellite data show the troposphere as a whole has warmed less than the surface observations show?”
By the way, just to note, I am not claiming that everything is known with certainty in this field. It is certainly not…as the considerable range in the IPCC prediction of 21st century warming (2.5 to 10.4 F) shows. However, the climate change naysayers are exaggerating the extent of the uncertainty (except when they make their own predictions which are often with extreme certainty…Patrick Michaels at Cato will tell you the warming will be 2.5 F and because of its geographic distribution will be no big deal) and in general muddying the waters in lots of other ways.
Here is a description of the Oregon petition from Robert Park, who is the former director of the American Physical Society’s Public Affairs Department and writes a weekly column called “What’s New” on the goings-on in issues related to science policy:
Here is a more detailed discussion from an organization called “PR Watch”:
Ok folks, I don’t have the time to argue this point further. I’m sure you feel I haven’t even made a point, since I’ve now been called a liar, talk about personal attacks. And perhaps the links I posted really aren’t that good, I don’t know. I just know they seem to make more sense than the IPCC and their revisionist reporting, emotionally-driven groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.
Information I had read a couple years ago mentioned that both Methane and Water Vapor both absorb more HEAT (I don’t believe I said energy, but maybe I did) than equal amounts of CO2.
I guess only time will tell, and once the major world economies are totally trashed due to a bogus protocol that ultimately will not have one bit of effect on the atmosphere, then we can take up the argument again.
So the next time I read that some dying trees in a small portion of Canada is proof of Global Warming, I’ll think of you ITR.
Fire away folks, I won’t be responding, though I would love to have the time.
You still haven’t backed up this claim about the IPCC. As for the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, I don’t think we have provided any links to any sort of environmental groups (even though, at least on this issue, their information is closer to what the peer-reviewed science is saying than the information one gets from Cato or other anti-environmental groups). In fact, the closest I have come to links with some likely bias is when I provided links to two major multinational oil companies that both acknowledge the threat of anthropogenic climate change, for heaven’s sake!
Well, ITR has already provided you with information in regards to methane. And, I have noted at any rate that it among those greenhouse gases covered by Kyoto and proposed bills to regulate greenhouse gases here in the U.S. [Heat, by the way, is a form of energy.]
In regards to water vapor, I have already explained why the statement that it absorbs a lot of heat is true but not really relevant since humans cannot significantly directly affect its atmospheric concentrations. However, I also explained that water vapor plays an important role in climate change as a feedback by which the warming affect of increasing concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases like CO2 gets magnified.
I see that while you are unwilling to believe serious science in regards to an environmental danger such as climate change, you are perfectly willing to accept fanciful “sky-is-falling” economics scenarios that are unsupported by most serious economic analyses.
Following up on this issue of the economic consequences of Kyoto-type reductions in greenhouse gases, here is a story from an NY Times Magazine article about the experience of BP (and its CEO John Browne) in implementing a steeper-than-Kyoto reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions:
Here and here are a couple of stories about an article published this week in the journal Nature discussing the possibility of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet over the next thousand years or so…raising sea levels by something like 7 meters which is enough to put large populated lowland areas under water.
Of course, this carries the caveats that one must associate with any one scientific study, even if published in a very prestigious journal such as Nature. Nonetheless, it clearly illustrates some of the potential dangers that scientists believe we might face due to anthropogenic warming.
Just out of curiosity, do you guys recognize the caveats of that study? Identifiable from the 2 articles jshore linked?
Yes…And, by the way, I purposely linked to two reports of the study that explicitly mentioned some of the caveats and uncertainties. By contrast, here is the first (or maybe second?) story that I found on this (from Yahoo) but that I avoided linking to because I didn’t think it did a good enough job in explaining the uncertainties. (I should note, however, that I haven’t been able to get hold of the Nature paper itself yet so I am not basing this on any comparison to the paper itself).
There is too much money to be made encouraging people to be stupid. Try getting an economist to calculate how much mericans loose on depreciation of automobiles.
Dal Timgar