# What's all this talk about "Global Warming?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 3, 2009, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859 "2009-12-03T16:06:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/21 "2009-12-03T19:26:15Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > The hysteria about island countries being inundated, or a massive rise in tropical storms, turns me off. What we seem to have is a gradual climate change that will cause gradual dislocations (of the economic as well as geographic nature). Look at it from a conservative’s viewpoint: we are asking the industrialized countries to cut back while emerging countries like China and India massively increase their CO2 production, so that we can save a few million people in low lying island countries. It’s not like people who live in mainland coastal areas won’t be able to gradually move to higher ground. As a resident of Idaho, which will be one of the last places in the states to go the next time God decides to flood the tub, I find your casual dismissal of huge swaths of land containing densely-populated and long-established cities to be quite charming! ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/22 "2009-12-03T19:26:29Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ve seen firsthand disappearing glaciers, so I can easily buy into the assertion that things are heating up. Is the debate about the mechanism and our ability to affect it one way or the other? I don’t think there is any serious debate that we are in an interglacial period, and that the trend is still towards warming. The debate seems to hinge on the exact mechanism for the warming, and whether humans are fully, partially, or incidental contributors to that warming. That’s the ‘science’ part of the debate. Then it branches out from there into ‘what should we do about it’, which, to my mind, isn’t really science at all. Such as this: [QUOTE=Rhythmdvl] If you get over the anti-science/denier hump, there is a major debate about what do/where to sink (heh) money: mitigation (i.e., invest in GHG emission reduction) or adaptation (i.e., invest in infrastructure to manage changes). [/QUOTE] IOW, the ‘debate’ is over, and the ‘real’ question is how do we fix it. The problem is, that’s NOT the scientific aspect of the debate. That’s the agenda laden political aspect…IMHO. And THAT is where things get ugly between the GW faithful and the deniers. The REAL scientists (on either side) aren’t really involved in this part, at least not the one’s I’m acquainted with (except at cocktail parties, where it’s often fun to speculate and BS). -XT ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/23 "2009-12-03T19:52:00Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > As a resident of Idaho, which will be one of the last places in the states to go the next time God decides to flood the tub, I find your casual dismissal of huge swaths of land containing densely-populated and long-established cities to be quite charming! You’re not at all alarmed that _every single glacier_ in Idaho has melted in the last decade!?! [http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2008/08/20/rockybarker/idahos\_last\_glacier\_apparently\_disappears](http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2008/08/20/rockybarker/idahos_last_glacier_apparently_disappears) Well, okay, there was only one to begin with, and it might not have been a glacier at all, but still. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/24 "2009-12-03T19:57:15Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > You’re not at all alarmed that _every single glacier_ in Idaho has melted in the last decade!?! > > [http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2008/08/20/rockybarker/idahos\_last\_glacier\_apparently\_disappears](http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2008/08/20/rockybarker/idahos_last_glacier_apparently_disappears) > > Well, okay, there was only one to begin with, and it might not have been a glacier at all, but still. Well, it didn’t flood _us_, so why should _I_ care? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/25 "2009-12-03T20:16:23Z")
> [@Euphonious Polemic](#): > > Are you seriously suggesting that the THOUSANDS of scientists on the Intergovernmental panel on climate change got together to say “Hey, lets’ fudge the data and grab ourselves a Nobel Prize!” This is beyond ludicrous. This is a highly disingenous number. Thousands of scientists contributed to the IPCC reports only in that many of them contributed in their area of expertise. So if a scientist is an expert in soil chemistry, and some part of an analysis of the effects of warming refers to his paper on soil chemistry, suddenly he’s listed as one of the thousands of scientists who ‘support’ global warming, even if he’s never been asked for his personal opinion on the subject. There have been a number of cases where scientists have actively worked to have their names removed from the list of thousands because they _don’t_ support the global warming conclusions, but the IPCC has refused. > [@](#): > > You further suggest that every scientist on record that climate change is real is only “sticking with the crowd” and going for tenure. You, my friend, do not have the faintest glimmering of how science works, and how many scientists would LOVE to find contrary evidence to ANY theory that would help them rise above the crowd. In any other field, this would be true. In climate study, not so much. Scientists who oppose the AGW consensus are labeled as ‘deniers’, subject to attack, actively prevented from being published in peer review journals, and their funding can be at risk. There’s a lot of “keep your head down” among such people. Nonetheless, there are various lists floating around containing the names of hundreds of scientists willing to say that they do not agree with the consensus view. The other part of this is that journals that publish ‘denier’ papers have come under attack from the AGW scientists. Several editors have been pressured to resign because they refused to keep anti-AGW papers out of the journals. The hacked CRU E-mails show that there is a concerted effort by a core group of AGW scientists to manipulate the peer-review process in their favor. For one thing, the ‘peers’ that review the paper are generally only people who already agree with the core conclusions. You won’t see Richard Lindzen being asked to peer-review Michael Mann’s next paper. But that’s unscientific. Skeptics are exactly the people who should be peer-reviewing papers. But in the global warming community, there are no honest skeptics - only ‘deniers’. There’s the truth, then there’s the unscientific people who ‘deny’ the truth. You know, like professors of Climate Science at major universities who just don’t happen to agree with the consensus view. > [@Triskadecamus](#): > > The implication that a scientist who came up with a reproducible, reliable, and factual set of evidence that there was no such thing as global warming would not publish the results is so damned silly it cannot be the case that people actually believe it. They say they believe it, because it suits their political, and economic interests to say they believe it. It’s not damned silly if the theory isn’t falsifiable. How do you disprove man-made global warming? You can certainly study certain claimed effects and write papers calling them into question, and there are many such papers. Some are acknowledged in the IPCC reports and contribute to their stated uncertainties, and some are not. For instance, you might like to read this, a peer reviewed paper that did NOT make it into the IPCC report: [Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends](http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf), _Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 112, 2007_. This paper calls into question the reliability of the basic temperature data sets used by the main global warming simulations. > [@](#): > > Science works by collecting evidence, making falsifiable predictions, and then testing those predictions. Then you do it over again, and then a bunch of other people do it over again. Even finding out you were incorrect is science. Good science, in fact. The predictions being made are not falsifiable, other than to wait and see if they come true. Right now, global temperature is not tracking the predictions made from these models, but the variation is so large in the earth’s climate that we can’t say current temperatures are falsifying the models since they are still in the range of variability. If we want to test the models more thoroughly, we should wait until we are sure variance isn’t a problem. That could take another ten or twenty years. Are you advocating that? Also, it’s pretty hard to try to reproduce results when they come from computer simulations and the authors won’t release the source code to other scientists, and when the raw data they used is no longer available because it was accidentally destroyed, leaving only the data that has already been ‘corrected’ and ‘smoothed’ and ‘gridded’ and otherwise manipulated in ways that are not documented. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/26 "2009-12-03T20:22:14Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > What I can’t fathom is why so many people of modest means are willing to carry the water for mega-corporations on this. It seems they’re conditioned to believe whatever Fixed News or Sean Halfwitty or Rash Limpballs say as gospel truth. Actual scientific evidence carries no weight whatsoever with them, all they need is someone on the other side assuring them that there is no consensus and that the global warming science is fraudulent. I can see why the head of Exxon might be trying to debunk the science, but why are ordinary citizens so quick to join their side? Do you have any evidence that mega-corporations are behind anti-AGW science? Because the opposite looks to be the case to me. One of the biggest corporations in the world, General Electric, is one of the lead drivers of the green movement. Of course, they make windmills, industrial hardware needed to convert manufacturing to new power systems, and nuclear power plants. Are YOU a stooge for GE? Why are you willing to carry water for an multinational conglomerate? Have you no shame? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/27 "2009-12-03T20:25:58Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > I’ll add one more: some hard-core libertarians I know oppose AGW because any solution will require government intervention. They’d rather ignore AGW than give any power to the government. Wouldn’t that imply that many of the supporters are people who like big government and support global warming because they know it will give more power to the government? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/28 "2009-12-03T20:41:07Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Wouldn’t that imply that many of the supporters are people who like big government and support global warming because they know it will give more power to the government? No; it only implies the hard-core libertarians **think** that. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/29 "2009-12-03T20:46:11Z")
Indeed, just because one side thinks an increase in government is always bad means that an increase in government is always good. It could very well be that those favoring more regulations w/r/t environmental emissions believe that one should, all other things being equal, have less government, but feel that it is apprpriate in this situation. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/30 "2009-12-03T20:54:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is a highly disingenous number. Thousands of scientists contributed to the IPCC reports only in that many of them contributed in their area of expertise. So if a scientist is an expert in soil chemistry, and some part of an analysis of the effects of warming refers to his paper on soil chemistry, suddenly he’s listed as one of the thousands of scientists who ‘support’ global warming, even if he’s never been asked for his personal opinion on the subject. So you think you can simply call my number of “thousands” disingenuous ? As in “Lacking in frankness, candor or sincerity”?? In that case, I call your unspecified "number of cases where scientists have actively worked to have their names removed from the list of thousands " Disingenuous in the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/31 "2009-12-03T21:09:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s not damned silly if the theory isn’t falsifiable. How do you disprove man-made global warming? You can certainly study certain claimed effects and write papers calling them into question, and there are many such papers. Some are acknowledged in the IPCC reports and contribute to their stated uncertainties, and some are not. So, the IPCC failed to cite and include all papers. Many papers are cited. No one cites everything. > [@](#): > > For instance, you might like to read this, a peer reviewed paper that did NOT make it into the IPCC report: [Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends](http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf), _Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 112, 2007_. This paper calls into question the reliability of the basic temperature data sets used by the main global warming simulations. I have read that report. I read it not long after it was published. I also read a number of papers, and letters which responded to it. You didn’t cite those reports. No one cites everything. The problem of climate measurement is fundamentally new science. Consensus is hard to come by. That doesn’t mean that the majority of researchers are wrong, it means that more research will need to be done. But the political climate we live in makes it unlikely that a brand new surface based infrastructure for recording weather information will be installed soon. Nor is the existing surface based system the only information source being used. Comparisons between these records, and other instrumental methods show strong correlations. The differences pointed out in the paper you cited are not overwhelming evidence against AGW, they are a valid, but unimplementable suggestion that new instrument systems are needed. Don’t hold your breath on that, though. > [@](#): > > The predictions being made are not falsifiable, other than to wait and see if they come true. Right now, global temperature is not tracking the predictions made from these models, but the variation is so large in the earth’s climate that we can’t say current temperatures are falsifying the models since they are still in the range of variability. If we want to test the models more thoroughly, we should wait until we are sure variance isn’t a problem. That could take another ten or twenty years. Are you advocating that? No. But neither am I advocating doing nothing at all about human activities that influence the environment, and climate until absolute proof is obtained. Are you advocating that? The evidence is not just one report, or one type of observation. The climate is an extraordinarily complex system, and our ability to predict it is entirely inadequate for providing proof beyond any argument. It won’t be, unless the entire ice mass of the planet disappears. Should we wait? > [@](#): > > Also, it’s pretty hard to try to reproduce results when they come from computer simulations and the authors won’t release the source code to other scientists, and when the raw data they used is no longer available because it was accidentally destroyed, leaving only the data that has already been ‘corrected’ and ‘smoothed’ and ‘gridded’ and otherwise manipulated in ways that are not documented. I am not a big fan of computer simulations, I think they are prone to observational bias at every level. But, we have no other models to observe. Oh wait, we do. History. No glaciers in places where there used to be glaciers, shrinking ice masses at both poles, the Northwest Passage exists, now. The Northeast Passage exists now. The layers of non radioactive ice (deposited before 1945) no longer exist on any mountain glacier in the world. The Baltimore Sleigh company went out of business, because no one ever takes a sleigh across the Chesapeake Bay anymore. The location and dates of Yukon Ice breakups has moved north, and been earlier steadily for decades. Hundreds of historic examples exist. Satellite data also supports the observation that climate change is more rapid, and increasing more rapidly than long term historic trends due to being in an interglacial period could reasonably explain. Finding a dozen mistakes in a thousand facts is not unlikely. Marching along with your economic and political allies because of such thinking is unfortunately no less likely. Scientists are paid by the tobacco companies to publish papers displaying errors in the science that says tobacco causes cancer. Coal companies pay a lot of folks to do research on climate. All the reports they publish support the contention that coal doesn’t cause global warming. They don’t publish many of them, though. No one cites everything. Tris ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/32 "2009-12-03T21:17:21Z")
For contrary views, here are the web pages of some prominent scientists who take a contrarian view towards global warming: [Dr. Roy Spencer, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center](http://www.drroyspencer.com/) [Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorological Studies, MIT. Lead author of chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC report](http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm) [Dr. John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, IPCC 2007 contributor and IPCC 2001 lead author](http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy.html) This guy is no lightweight, as you can see from his resume. On his web site, he helpfully provides links to PDFs of some of his peer-reviewed papers, such as: [A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions](http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy/2007_Dougless_etal.pdf), _International Journal of Climatology_, 2007. The abstract is particularly interesting: > [@](#): > > ABSTRACT: We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). > > Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. Hey Triskademus, there’s some testability and falsification for you. I could list more, but you could just go look up the web sites of the numerous Ph.D’s who signed their names to [this letter](http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=165020) in 2007: > [@](#): > > Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Dec. 13, 2007 > > His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon Secretary-General, United Nations New York, N.Y. > > Dear Mr. Secretary-General, > > Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction > > It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation. > > The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it. > > The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts. > > Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports: - Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability. - The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years. - Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling. > > In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see [http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/](http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/) wg1\_timetable\_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated. > > The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future. > > The current UN focus on “fighting climate change,” as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems. If you want to have an interesting afternoon of reading, google the scientists on the list, go to their home pages, and look up their publications. Many of them reprint their publications there in PDF format, which gets you around the gating problem of the various journals they were published in, where papers are not available to non-subscribers. These are generally peer-reviewed papers. There are hundreds of them, calling into question many of the foundational aspects of the current global warming consensus. If you want to dig deeper, you can look up the web sites of the various papers’ co-authors, and find even more. What you’ll find is that the consensus view is not necessarily what it seems. The IPCC reports are actually pretty good, if you skip the politically-biased ‘summary for policy makers’ and go read the actual scientific conclusions. You’ll find a hell of a lot more uncertainty and claims of a much more modest nature than you’ll find in the general media or reproduced by global warming hysterics. I posted some of those conclusions in [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542190), which appears to have killed it. Basically, the IPCC’s ‘best estimates’ for the various scenarios they looked at range from 1.8° C to 4° C This translates into sea level rises of perhaps 180mm to 590mm, some of which would happen even if man wasn’t emitting any CO2 at all. But the uncertainty around these estimates is very high - and generally left out of the summary report. The actual scientific chapters explain the source of all the unknowns. And there are a lot of them. For example, in the section on feedback from cloud cover, they admit that the mechanisms are pretty much a mystery, while acknowledging that they are an important factor. The problem is that these effects are modest enough, and uncertain enough, that it’s hard to get political traction for them. So as you move farther away from the real science and more politicians and fuzzy-science types (political science, economics, sociology, etc) add their bits to it, it sounds more and more extreme - to the point where people like Lindzen and Christy, who were the actual _lead authors_ of their respective chapters of the report, have had to distance themselves from the conclusions drawn from them. The IPCC report excluded a lot of peer-reviewed literature that cast even more uncertainty on the conclusions, but the pro-AGW side does not care about that. But when a university in Australia releases a paper on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, saying that global temperatures could rise by 7° C causing catastrophe, that’s instantly accepted as ‘scientific’ and becomes part of the consensus. This whole issue is just a little more complicated than “scientists and the truth, vs deniers and big oil.” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/33 "2009-12-03T21:24:04Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Wouldn’t that imply that many of the supporters are people who like big government and support global warming because they know it will give more power to the government? Say, **Sam** , who are these people, anyway? If they are as pervasive as you suggest, shouldn’t you be able to point them out to us? Like a post from somebody along the lines of… “Boy, do I love me some big government! I don’t care, monarchist, socialist, capitalist, nihilist, just as long as its big, big, BIG! When I look to the north and see the great, soft, fleshy mounds of sweet, sweet government that Canada’s got, I just get goosebumps all over! Mmmm, mmmmm, good!..” Is it the love that dare not speak its name? None of them will admit it, but you know who they are, those lovers of big government? Is it merely a coincidence that they are almost always aligned with causes you find disagreeable? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/34 "2009-12-03T21:34:55Z")
> [@Triskadecamus](#): > > Oh wait, we do. History. No glaciers in places where there used to be glaciers, shrinking ice masses at both poles, the Northwest Passage exists, now. The Northeast Passage exists now. The layers of non radioactive ice (deposited before 1945) no longer exist on any mountain glacier in the world. The Baltimore Sleigh company went out of business, because no one ever takes a sleigh across the Chesapeake Bay anymore. The location and dates of Yukon Ice breakups has moved north, and been earlier steadily for decades. Hundreds of historic examples exist. Here’s some more history for you: Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland. They’re slowly being uncovered as the glaciers that engulfed them retreat. It’s no surprise that the Earth has been warmer in the past and colder in the past. It proves nothing, other than that Earth’s temperature is somewhat variable. There are ice ages, and warm periods. In between the long-term cycles, there are other cycles of varying length. Cannon were dragged across ice-covered rivers in New England in the Revolutionary War. You haven’t been able to do that since the mid-1800’s, long before man started significantly contributing to atmospheric CO2. The Earth is currently in a warming period. If mankind had never existed, the earth would currently still warm up by about a degree in the next century. Citing these simple facts as proof of man-made global warming is ridiculous. > [@](#): > > Satellite data also supports the observation that climate change is more rapid, and increasing more rapidly than long term historic trends due to being in an interglacial period could reasonably explain. Yes, and just about everyone agrees that man-made CO2 is warming the planet to some degree. That’s not where the disagreement lies. The disagreement lies in just how much of an effect man is having, how sensitive the climate is to CO2 increases, what effects a warmer planet will have on the earth’s ecosystem and human economies, how the oceans will react, what long-term feedback mechanisms exist and whether they are positive or negative, etc. But these areas are much harder for AGW proponents to defend, so they tend to do what you just did - retreat to the basic conclusions no one seriously disagrees with, then claim that either you don’t believe that, which makes you an unscientific ‘denier’, or you must accept the whole IPCC/Copenhagen/Kyoto/Bali clambake and logically agree to sweeping changes to the worlds political systems and economies. There’s a huge excluded middle, but you’d rather keep the debate out of there, because it gets a lot muddier in that particular sandpit. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/35 "2009-12-03T21:43:08Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Wouldn’t that imply that many of the supporters are people who like big government and support global warming because they know it will give more power to the government? No. There are a myriad of ways to give government more power. Government supporters don’t need to latch onto any one proposal and hang on. However, for hard-core libertarians there is no solution to AGW (if we assume it is true) that doesn’t require intervention–they must be resigned to bigger government if they are to accept AGW as a problem. To a degree AGW reveals a flaw in hard-core libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/36 "2009-12-03T21:46:06Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > For contrary views, here are the web pages of some prominent scientists who take a contrarian view towards global warming: > > [Dr. Roy Spencer, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center](http://www.drroyspencer.com/) > > [Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorological Studies, MIT. Lead author of chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC report](http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm) > > [Dr. John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, IPCC 2007 contributor and IPCC 2001 lead author](http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy.html) > This guy is no lightweight, as you can see from his resume. On his web site, he helpfully provides links to PDFs of some of his peer-reviewed papers, such as: > > [A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions](http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy/2007_Dougless_etal.pdf), _International Journal of Climatology_, 2007. > > The abstract is particularly interesting: > Hey Triskademus, there’s some testability and falsification for you. > > I could list more, but you could just go look up the web sites of the numerous Ph.D’s who signed their names to [this letter](http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=165020) in 2007: > If you want to have an interesting afternoon of reading, google the scientists on the list, go to their home pages, and look up their publications. Many of them reprint their publications there in PDF format, which gets you around the gating problem of the various journals they were published in, where papers are not available to non-subscribers. These are generally peer-reviewed papers. There are hundreds of them, calling into question many of the foundational aspects of the current global warming consensus. If you want to dig deeper, you can look up the web sites of the various papers’ co-authors, and find even more. > > What you’ll find is that the consensus view is not necessarily what it seems. The IPCC reports are actually pretty good, if you skip the politically-biased ‘summary for policy makers’ and go read the actual scientific conclusions. You’ll find a hell of a lot more uncertainty and claims of a much more modest nature than you’ll find in the general media or reproduced by global warming hysterics. I posted some of those conclusions in [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542190), which appears to have killed it. > > Basically, the IPCC’s ‘best estimates’ for the various scenarios they looked at range from 1.8° C to 4° C This translates into sea level rises of perhaps 180mm to 590mm, some of which would happen even if man wasn’t emitting any CO2 at all. But the uncertainty around these estimates is very high - and generally left out of the summary report. The actual scientific chapters explain the source of all the unknowns. And there are a lot of them. For example, in the section on feedback from cloud cover, they admit that the mechanisms are pretty much a mystery, while acknowledging that they are an important factor. > > The problem is that these effects are modest enough, and uncertain enough, that it’s hard to get political traction for them. So as you move farther away from the real science and more politicians and fuzzy-science types (political science, economics, sociology, etc) add their bits to it, it sounds more and more extreme - to the point where people like Lindzen and Christy, who were the actual _lead authors_ of their respective chapters of the report, have had to distance themselves from the conclusions drawn from them. > > The IPCC report excluded a lot of peer-reviewed literature that cast even more uncertainty on the conclusions, but the pro-AGW side does not care about that. But when a university in Australia releases a paper on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, saying that global temperatures could rise by 7° C causing catastrophe, that’s instantly accepted as ‘scientific’ and becomes part of the consensus. > > This whole issue is just a little more complicated than “scientists and the truth, vs deniers and big oil.” In other words you trust the very very small slice of climate scientists who believe what you want to believe and ignore the vast majority of them who don’t. The letter you linked appears to have a list of random people who may or may not have hard science PhDs and may or may not have any kind of real expertise about climate science. Could I ask you to tell me how many of them have published work in climate science? I’d like to know the actual amount of weight the list carries, because it seems like you’re tossing it out as chaff to support _goggle vomit_ post. Or otherwise can I ask you to retract that list as evidence for anything other than a gaggle of people who agree with you? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/37 "2009-12-03T21:52:14Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > I call BS on this line of reasoning. Are you seriously suggesting that the THOUSANDS of scientists on the Intergovernmental panel on climate change got together to say “Hey, lets’ fudge the data and grab ourselves a Nobel Prize!” This is beyond ludicrous. > > You further suggest that every scientist on record that climate change is real is only “sticking with the crowd” and going for tenure. You, my friend, do not have the faintest glimmering of how science works, and how many scientists would LOVE to find contrary evidence to ANY theory that would help them rise above the crowd. > > You also imply that scientists all have preconceived notions about less cars, industrialization, consumerism, etc. Where do you get your stereotypes about scientists? The muppet show? You are far underestimating group think mentality. Global warming was found on mars and other planets / moons something that is almost always dismissed by AGW supporters. And why is global warming ‘bad’? ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/38 "2009-12-03T22:01:59Z")
How is it acceptance of a scientific theory is ‘cool’ but when said scientific observation is condemned as it might be false it is deemed ‘less than scientific’? There are proponents in this very thread that decry those who doubt global warming (and the many reasons to do so when it comes to what causes it) as scientific buffoons. It makes me laugh. I guess it just goes to prove that any thought that doesn’t follow the sheeple’s logic is condemned. This saddens me from this board of ignorance fighters. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/39 "2009-12-03T22:03:44Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > You are far underestimating group think mentality. I would always bow to your expertise on mindless group-think. > [@](#): > > Global warming was found on mars and other planets / moons something that is almost always dismissed by AGW supporters. You misunderstand. The Earth goes through natural cycles of heating and cooling. We’re heating faster than we should be. If your body temperature ranges from 95 to 98 degrees throughout the day and a fever pushes you from 96 to 98 it still means you’re sick. > [@](#): > > And why is global warming ‘bad’? Because of rising ocean levels, altered crop growth, and the richest cities on Earth being coastal. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859/40 "2009-12-03T22:04:58Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > How is it acceptance of a scientific theory is ‘cool’ but when said scientific observation is proved false it is deemed ‘less than scientific’? > > There are proponents in this very thread that decry those who doubt global warming (and the many reasons to do so when it comes to what causes it) as scientific buffoons. > > It makes me laugh. I guess it just goes to prove that any thought that doesn’t follow the sheeple’s logic is condemned. This saddens me from this board of ignorance fighters. I cannot think of a scientifically valid objection raised on this board. If not completely unscientific, they are based on deliberate lies and/or misconstruals. Meanwhile, in a completely hypocritical way, they expect the scientists to admit that one or two examples from teh warmerz invalidates decades of research. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-all-this-talk-about-global-warming/519859.md?page=3)