[...] Cross-posted at Lean Left. [...]

Congrats. Excellent work.

Kinda silly to be debating about who is wrong and who is right on this issue, because we will know soon enough, whether the theory of natural climate cycle has any legs. Right now, the sun has hit an unusual low, and the PDO has entered into a long term negitive phase. Never since the public debate about global warming has begun have the conditions been right to test the naturalists theories, but now they are almost perfect, with the exception of a warm North Atlantic.

In the interest of Science instead of politics, I am very interested to see how this experiment turns out, and in a way I hope that everyone is sort of right. If anyone party is entirely right, it will spell doom for mankind. If the AGW people are entirely right, then we can either expect run away global warming or a bloody return to the 16th century, which will require a lot of us people being killed off. If the Ice Age people are 100% right and CO2 has no effect at all, then we are about to get really cold and a bunch of people are going to starve to death.

In either case, I guess we should start building more nuke plants right now, because we can use them no matter who is right, and maybe start to rebuild our infrastructure for the 21st century, because that will also be a benefit no matter who is right.

As far funding idiotic pipedreams like windfarms, Solar Plants, and bio-fuel, or imposing draconian taxes on carbon to be collected by the UN world Government. I think that we should wait to see how this current experiment turns out. 3-5 years is not going to make any difference one way or the other. Fools rush in.

Don’t trust anything you read in the Investors Business Daily…

The latest story doing the rounds of the global warming deniers (Drudge, Instapundit, Andrew Bolt, etc), is this one from the Investors Business Daily: Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, is…

Nice work Tom.

Hard to believe, but 6 days before IBD ran this piece, they ran one that claimed there was now evidence a mini ice age would not occur. Rather amazing.

This from Februrary 1 piece

Even as Clinton was speaking, the day after tomorrow was getting a little less threatening with the announcement that the alleged cause of climate change in the disaster flick of the same name may have the exact opposite effect of what the film depicts.

In that movie, rapidly melting polar freshwater ice interrupted the world’s ocean currents, stopping the Gulf Stream that warms the Northern Hemisphere in its tracks. A paper published last week in the journal Nature said the exact opposite is true, and that ocean circulation would become stronger as polar ice melted.

“We missed what was right in front of our eyes,” said Joellen Russell, an assistant professor of earth sciences at the University of Arizona and co-author of the paper that concluded that wind pushes these ocean currents and that warming temperatures would increase their speed.

The westerlies, also known as the trade winds, are the main winds in the middle latitudes of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. These winds, according to Russell and co-author J.R. Toggweiler, have been moving toward their respective poles for the past four decades.

As the westerlies move, the ocean circulation increases, releasing more carbon dioxide from the deep ocean. This leads to more warming but not to an ice age. According to Russell and Toggweiler, this natural movement of wind and ocean currents is what ended the last ice age some 18,000 years ago.

Ted:

Thanks for the compliment, and the additional info. I’d never read IBD, and I had no idea that they were that bad of partisan hacks over there…

Brian:
That an interesting quote since it admits that solar effects can overpower warming

Nice try, but not quite. Given the right conditions, yes, solar output can have a profound effect. That doesn’t mean that it is doing so, and in fact there’s no evidence right now that this is the case.

I can’t believe you can’t grasp a concept so basic: just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s what’s happening. That’s why we have this thing called “observed evidence” to tell us whether or not things are actually happening.

As mentioned above, solar output has been in a downturn for much of the last decade, and yet the planet continues to warm, because of something other than solar output. That “something else” is greenhouse gases, specifically CO2. So if the sun is currently in a down-cycle, and it turns around from that down cycle, things could go from bad to worse. Or, if we were to get extremely lucky, the sun could go into a big enough, long enough down cycle to buy us more time to work on the greenhouse gas problem. But wanting that to be so doesn’t make it so.

That’s one of the many problems with you anti-AGW types. As soon as you hear that it’s hypothetically possible that something else other than our CO2 output could be responsible, you just latch onto that and call it a day, without ever bothering to figure out if the hypothetical possibility is actually a reality.

The door is always open for invoking solar effects; you just have to provide evidence and numbers to back that up. As it turns out, people have been researching this for a couple of decades, and the sun can’t be responsible — the numbers simply don’t work. But you ignore all that evidence, because it doesn’t confirm what you want to hear.

Brian, whether Global Warming has occured over the last 10 years depends on whose charts you look at. If you look at Hansen’s Charts, then yes, Global Warming has occured over the last decade, but if you look at anyone elses charts, Global Warming stopped in 1998. January was the 2nd coldest January in the last 15 years, accoring to RSS and UAH charts.

Also that Pacific Decadal Oscillation, happened to switch from a cool phase to a warm phase in 1978, the same time that all of this Global Warming supposedly has been happening. In about 2000, the PDO switched back to a cool phase and is expected to favor La Nina conditions for about the next 30 years or so.

Remember that we are talking about events that are in the works right now. We cannot change the natural cycles like the PDO, the Solar cycles or other natural variables, so this experiment is going forward no matter what. All we can do is step back and watch, and see what happens, no one has a choice because no one can command nature how to behave.

Anyone who is intellectually curious about the Global Warming issue, should be excited to see the results of this experiment, and the IBD article is merely informing you all what many of us believe about the true nature and cause of Global Warming. If it does not cool over the next couple of years, you people who have always believed in AGW, will be able to wag your fingers at the skeptics, and tell us that you told us so, and thats fine because our hypothesis was tested and proven incorrect.

But what if it does cool over the next couple years? How many AGW believers do think will accept that nature is mostly responsible for the Global Climate? How many do you think will try to make something up, like somehow mankind is responsible for the recent cooling trend?

What evidence would you like to see to be able to give the skeptic’s case credence? Would a drop down to 1980s temperatures satisfy, or do you need to see 1880s to be convinced? How long of a period of time do you need to see depressed global temperatures? What if the 10 year moving average had a negative slope, would that be enough? 20 years? 30 years?

Right now we do not know who is right about Global Warming, because the natural theorists have been saying that it was going to get warmer, and the CO2 people have been saying the same thing. Now for the first time, we have have 2 camps with divergent opinions. One side is going to have to revise their thesis, and in my opinion this is one of the most exciting scientific oportunities that have had since this debate attracted main stream attention. A real test of competing theories!

Sit back and enjoy the show, because right now no one has a choice. Cheers!

JohnnyB:

Global warming did not “stop” in 1998. Some extremely disingenuous anti-global-warming types have used the fact that 1998 was an unusually warm year (thanks to El Niño) to do the old lies, damn lies, and statistics trick. If you have a chart that starts in 1998, then it looks like things are okay from 1998-2005, with that last year only slightly warmer than the first, and a dip in the middle. But if you look at a larger chart covering more time, it’s clear that 1998 was an anomalous spike, and that the overall upward trends still exists.

The claim that “global warming stopped in 1998″ has been debunked all over the place, if you’re willing to look. It’s a blatant example of cherry-picking to make a point, the exact thing I’ve been accusing the anti-AGW people of doing.

I can’t say I think much of your intellectual integrity on this issue, give the fact that you continue to defend the IBD article, despite the fact that they explicitly misrepresent the position of the researcher/scientist they cite.

But you do ask a fair question. What would it take to get me to “accept” that AGW theory is wrong? That’s pretty simple: Give me three consecutive years in which the earth’s average surface temperature goes down by a statistically significant amount, despite (A) continued increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations; (B) no significant increased in aerosolized atmospheric pollutants (from industry, or, say, a major volcanic eruption); and (C) no substantial drop in solar output. If you could show me that, I’d have to concede that AGW is open for more debate than I would have thought. Now, let me toss it back into your court: what would it take to convince you that AGW is a real problem?

Finally, you write:

Right now we do not know who is right about Global Warming, because the natural theorists have been saying that it was going to get warmer, and the CO2 people have been saying the same thing. Now for the first time, we have have 2 camps with divergent opinions.

I don’t suppose you can support those claims with actual evidence, can you? Because they sound an awful lot like BS to me.

If rising CO2 ( whether natural or anthropogenic)is the real culprit, I still have a problem with the fact that temperatures fell from ~1940 – 1975, a period during which CO2 levels rose markedly (all the computer models predict gradually rising CO2 levels, and corresponding temp rise). We had been coming out of the LIA for many years up to that point, with gradual temp rise along the way.

The other issue I need to raise, is with Gore’s film I.T. Gore was unwilling to superimpose his temp and CO2 level charts, for the audience . That’s usually the way you make this sort of comparison, when the data jumps around and the eye is unable to match corresponding points well. This was definitely the case with these two charts. In fact, if you take the 2 charts and superimpose them, you find overwhelming evidence of temp rise preceeding CO2 rise. Oops.

I guess that’s why a British High Court recently wacked his peepee for 9 of his film’s claims, and had 35 potential points of contention with him.

I should stop now.

tgirsh,

If temperatures fail to go down over the next 3 years, or if they continue to rise then, I have to accept that CO2 has a much greater influence than I think that it does.

Brian:

I’m pretty sure temperatures have been going up again. Indeed, 2007 tied 1998 for second, behind only the record year of 2005. If you take 1998 and 2005 out of the picture, you have an overall upward trend that continues today. And as noted in the report, this warming is occurring despite the sun being in its “cool” phase.

As for the cosmic ray hypothesis, I’d like to see some contemporary source material on that. My understanding is that the proponents of the cosmic ray hypothesis manipulated the data in ways that aren’t justifiable in order to get the conclusion they wanted.

Randall S:

The reprieve after World War II has been addressed many times. here is a concise summary. In a nutshell: industrial air pollution had a cooling effect that for a time canceled out the greenhouse effect.

Johnnyb:

I’ll hold you to that.

Brian:

Your competing datasets might be interesting to look at. Do you have some cites for that? The reason I quoted the GISS dataset is pretty basic and simple: It was the first (and only) one I found for global mean temperature that included anything after 2005. Basically, if there are vetted numbers out there that show cooling over the last six years, I haven’t seen them.

As to the cosmic ray stuff, even setting aside your objections to the debunking, the fact remains that the case for cosmic rays remains far from compelling. There’s a ton more evidence in favor of the effect of greenhouse gases than there is for cosmic ray effects, and it’s supported by decades of research and observation. I suppose it’s hypothetically possible that cosmic rays are playing a larger role than is currently allowed, but right now there’s no compelling evidence to suggest this, and certainly nowhere near enough to set aside everything we know about the greenhouse effect and collectively hold our breath while we wait for the cosmic ray advocates to find something (or not).

I have yet to understand how adding one molecule of Co2 per 500,000 per year does anything at all.

Yeah, me too.

Shit, I just swallowed this tiny little piece of paper barely big enough to fit the tiny image of a sunshine stamped on it, and I don’t understand how my keyboard smells like vanilla fudge.

Hold on, gotta rewind the Wizard of Oz, see I happened to be listening to this Pink Floyd album when the movie came on cable, and you won’t believe what I think is going on here…

digglah: Stay away from the shrums. And if you don’t like CO2, stop breathing.

Cato, please understand that this is ignorance on your part and not a valid point. If you take the time to educate yourself on how CO2 impacts heat transfer in the upper atmosphere (there are innumerable sources on the web for this) you will then know how changes in CO2 concentration of the magnitude that have – and are – occurring can impact the temperature of the earth.

I don’t fully understand the wave/particle duality of light, but I don’t offer up my ignorance as evidence that the phenomenon does not exist…

This from a website called “LeanLeft”….

tgirsch writes:

Randall S:

The reprieve after World War II has been addressed many times. here is a concise summary. In a nutshell: industrial air pollution had a cooling effect that for a time canceled out the greenhouse effect.

And the atmosphere has now decided 30 years of world growth later, that it will refuse to cool because of much HIGHER levels of industrial air pollution ? In the time that it took Canada ( 12 months) to decide NOT to build 2 coal-fired power plants, China built 99 !

I don’t quite follow your line of reasoning.

Randall:

I don’t see what’s so hard to follow about the reasoning. Particulate pollution hasn’t grown at the same rate as CO2 output has, in large part because of clean air standards in much of the world. As such, for a time these pollutants counteracted the greenhouse effect, but as the disparity has grown, the role of CO2 has become dominant and has overpowered the pollutant effect. There’s a lot more good information on this subject in this program, if you’re genuinely interested.

Brian

Don’t worry about the troposphere not warming as per GCM predictions. If the measurements don’t meet the predictions, that must mean it’s simply time to move the Goalposts again !

“For instance, the atmosphere is more or less saturated with enough CO2 already to intercept nearly all outgoing long wave in the CO2 bands.”

can you back up that claim? I have never heard it before.

Brian, How do you refute the conclusion found at

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/

that doubling CO2 leads to 3deg C temp rise? If you don’t refute it, how do you square it with your claim that there CO2 levels are effectively saturated?

Brian:

I tried to recover your eaten-as-spam comments, but Spam Karma 2 is being very finicky today. In the process of trying to un-spam you, I may have actually lost a couple of comments that hadn’t been marked as spam. Sorry about that.

In any case, a lot of your objections about the data sets are addressed here.

Brian, you did not say there were diminishing returns. You said “For instance, the atmosphere is more or less saturated with enough CO2 already to intercept nearly all outgoing long wave in the CO2 bands.”

This is a prefect example of playing fast and loose with the facts to distort the science. realclimate.org predicts a 3deg C rise in temp with a doubling of CO2. That hardly meshes with your original statement.

In your most recent quote, one specific band is described as saturated. Your original quote stated “the atmosphere is more or less saturated.” You need to be a bit craftier to slip stuff like that past an informed audience. It might play at the local bar, but not here.

Brian:

there’s really only 2 basic supporting “proofs” for the current warming being attributed to GHG forcing via anthropogenic emissions. One is the “this rate of warming never occurred before”. The other is “when we create models with forcings assigned to GHGs, we can duplicate the 20th century climate record”.

If it walks like a straw man, and talks like a straw man…

What people don’t understand is that the physics of the atmosphere are as yet not clearly understood.

There’s a lot we don’t understand about gravity, either, but we don’t throw out the whole thing just because we haven’t yet dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. You don’t get to ignore the parts we do understand just because of the parts that we don’t yet. That’s not how science works.

For instance, the atmosphere is more or less saturated with enough CO2 already to intercept nearly all outgoing long wave in the CO2 bands. More CO2 can still cause warming in theory, but the explanation is complicated. And it is certainly true that there is a diminishing returns relationship between outgoing long wave capture and CO2 content.

I’ve got one word for you: Venus

I’m not saying that’s where we’re headed, but a look at our inward neighbor is more than enough to belie the idea that at some point CO2 forcing “saturates” and ceases to be an issue.

Your troposphere questions have also already been asked and answered. In fact, many of your objections are also addressed here (PDF).

Ted:

Daaaaaamn! You usually save that level of bluntness for me. Well put, however.

Brian, spin, spin, spin away, but the fact is the source you quoted (realclimate) has a detailed “proof” (I use the term proof becasue they end their article with Q.E.D.) that doubling CO2 will add 3deg C to the earth’s temp. That’s the bottom line. So spin all you want about saturated wavelengths in an attempt to undercut the science, but your source clearly contradicts you.

Brian:

Venus isn’t a good example of your “diminishing returns” argument on CO2, because Venus’ atmosphere lacks water vapor, which makes up for 1/3 to 2/3 of the greenhouse effect on Earth. And before you go claiming that we should then worry about water vapor, the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere hasn’t changed significantly. It’s CO2 that’s changing.

So if you want to use Venus to make your diminishing returns argument, you first have to factor out the effect of water vapor on our environment and then do the math.

Brian:

Somehow, I don’t think it’s RealClimate that’s trying to lay down a “professional smokescreen.” That’s generally the job of the AGW deniers (and at least in the case of Frank Luntz, that’s by their own admission). In any case, RealClimate are hardly the only ones who dispute the claim that the troposphere is cooling.

What’s up here. All of Brian’s comments have disapeared. Makes it seem like Tgirsch and I have been hearing voices..

Somebody screwed this forum up. Sort of the same way Enviro – Nazi policy is threatening to screw up our economy, and our Nation…..

I keep un-spamming Brian’s comments, and Wordpress keeps re-spamming them. I have no idea why.

huge spam attack today in Canada. Shut our servers down and sent the anti-spam/anti-spyware programs into shock. Stuff getting through shouldn’t have and stuff getting blocked should have been let through.
Messed with our whole system. maybe the same thing happened to you guys.

Brian, I’m going to side with the majority of experts on the subject. I don’t pretend to be one.

I will note that in summarizing the results of the past 100 years you ignore the well-documented contributors to global cooling, several of which have been discussed in this very thread. It sure seems like you have an agenda to which you are fitting your analysis.

I meant it shut down the servers at my work. Not in all of Canada.

Brian:

It seems that you insist on arguing that since CO2 is not the only factor, it must not be the dominant factor, either. And you keep insisting that the warming could be caused by something else, without ever mentioning what that “something else” might be, much less actually trying to provide evidence to support that allegation.

You may not see it, but you’re doing the same thing creationists do when attacking evolution: You’re doing everything you can to try to cast doubt on the prevailing wisdom, without even pretending to make an effort to advance and defend an alternate theory. It’s age old politics: keep your opponents on the defensive, and never stake out an affirmative position of your own, lest you be put on the defensive.

Sorry, but it’s getting old fast.

P.S. Feel free to e-mail me copies of your comments: tgirsch-at-gmail-dot-com — I’ll do my best to make sure the filter doesn’t eat them. I’m still trying to figure out what it is that makes Spam Karma keep identifying you as spam. Best I can tell so far, we get a lot of spam from your domain.

I’m sorry, but color me skeptical about “things stacking up of late.” AGW deniers always have a laundry list of cherry-picked objections, most of which have been repeatedly addressed. Why should I expect that the current crop is any different?

Did you know that the drop in the global temperature anomaly between January 2008 and January 2007 was the largest 12 month drop ever?

Did you know that a single month-over-month comparison tells us absolutely nothing about the rightness or wrongness of global warming theory? When discussing long-term trends, a single month is not statistically significant. If climate models predicted a perfectly consistent warming-only trend with no temporary periods of cooling, you might have something. Problem is, the models have never predicted that.

Pretty hard to put us skeptics on the defensive

You’re right, but it’s not for the reason you give; it’s because, as I said, you never make an affirmative proposition. You only take pot-shots at the affirmative propositions made by others.

As far as what we do and don’t know about the physics of the atmosphere, I hope you won’t be too offended if I tend to believe the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion over Some Guy on a Blog. Further, I’m not so sure why you refuse to accept the idea that an imperfect understanding is not the same thing as no understanding. Newton had no concept of either relativity or quantum mechanics, and yet his observations in the physics of gravity remain valid and useful for the overwhelming majority of even modern applications.

As for “suck[ing up] all the oxygen in the room,” yeah, global warming has sucked up so much air, that we still haven’t gotten around to doing a damn thing about it, at least not here in the US. But I suppose you’re probably right: We shouldn’t pay any attention at all to long-term problems, until every single short-term problem is completely solved…

By the way, if I haven’t issued this disclaimer recently, let me do it again: I would love to be wrong about human-exacerbated global warming. There are few things that could make me happier, and I mean that. But wanting something to be so doesn’t make it so…

Alright, perhaps we can look at this from a different perspective.

Let’s assume that the validity of global warming has not sufficiently been proven. Let’s work with Brian’s position, that it may or may not be the case.

What are the ramifications of each outcome, what are the opportunity costs of adopting each position in the event that you choose the wrong one?

If your doctor told you that the medical consensus is that eating a specific unhealthy delicacy would quite probably cause cancer, and you loved that food, would you stop eating it? If you didn’t stop and they were wrong, you’d die. If you did stop and they were wrong, you’d only lower your cholesterol, lose weight, and be generally in better health…

Who benefits from the lax environmental standards? Not me! You? The concomitant socio-political ripple effect of acting as if global warming is a given is enough to justify that course of action even if global warming is proven non-existent or non-threatening. On the other hand, the disregard for the environment is merely one of myriad manifestations of profit margin myopia that devalues life of all forms, including yours.

Make very clear, my opinion on the legitimacy of global warming is not driven by an agenda to scale back corporate power, I believe in the science behind it (though I fully recognize that it could prove incorrect). I’m just raising the question, assuming uncertainty, isn’t it still better to act as if the prospects are true than act as if they are false?

Perhaps we can actually learn the material in the process of making a cheat sheet…

Digglahhh:

Now you’re just talking sense. Cut it out! This is a blog, there’s no room for that here!

Seriously, though, I’ve long argued in a similar vein: most of what we need to do to combat global warming also makes sense to do from a national security perspective. And unlike the denialists, I think it would benefit, rather than inhibit, the economy. We could create a whole new clean energy industry, and make the United States the world leader in that industry, if we simply had the political will to do so…

The toughest thing regarding the clean energy industry, is what do you classify as clean energy?

Wind, solar, and wave.

Is it possible to produce enough energy with those to replace the dirty industries (i.e. coal?) Just wondering. I’ve done no research on it.

With current technology, it’s not enough to completely replace those dirty industries, no. Not even close, actually. But you could probably get to something like 30% or more with a concerted effort. Couple that with mandating efficiency improvements on older coal plants, and you’d go along way toward reducing CO2 output. I don’t think you could ever completely eliminate CO2 production in the energy industry, but you could make a pretty substantial dent.

For too long, we’ve been too willing to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fact that no one solution solves the entire problem. That’s not an excuse for not starting to move in the right direction.

Yeah, I’d love to see someone heat or cool their own homes with Wind/solar/tidal (WST), muchless run an industrialized country. WST is a freaking joke, a total waste of time money and effort. Might as well thow biofuels in the collective dust bin of idiotic green “technology”.

If you seriously want to reduce greenhouse emisions, and not destroy the industrialized world, then the only way to do that would be to go 100% nuclear. Of course the true goal of the Warmists is to destroy the industrialized world, then after they have destroyed the wealth of the middle and working class, start rounding us up and putting us in camps, before they start to kill us off.

Ever wonder why the same idiots that push all of this global warming crap are the same ones that are always pro-socialism and anti-gun? The environmental movement is the NAZI movement of the 21st century. These people are not looking to save the Earth, they are looking to kill the humans. Thats why inspite of knowing that WST is absolute garbage, and cannot warm a home or power industry they continue to push it as a viable alternative to the World’s energy needs. Some of these people who push this crap are absolute morons and actually believe in it, but the ones who came up with this crap are evil people who want to see you and your family freeze to death during the coming solar minimum. Unfortunately for them, its happening sooner than they thought.

Johnnyb:
Yeah, I’d love to see someone heat or cool their own homes with Wind/solar/tidal (WST), muchless run an industrialized country.

Actually, in certain locations, a lot homes could be run on a combination of those technologies without much trouble. But that aside, nobody’s suggesting we can completely replace fossil fuels with these clean technologies — just that we can leverage them to significantly reduce our fossil fuel use. Couple them with efficiency improvements, both to consumer technology and to traditional coal-fired plants, and you could make a substantial difference.

If you seriously want to reduce greenhouse emisions, and not destroy the industrialized world, then the only way to do that would be to go 100% nuclear.

I’d be more open to that solution if it didn’t create more problems than it solves. You think the NIMBY problem is bad with off-shore wind off Cape Cod? Imagine what it would be for nuclear reactors! Do we have enough nuclear fuel to power the entire nation for a long period of time? I honestly don’t know. Then there’s the elephant in the room: the problem of what to do with the waste. We have a hard time dealing with the nuclear waste we produce today, so I can only imagine what would happen if we were to increase capacity several-fold. All of these problems exist, even without discussing the obvious security issues in the current day and age.

Of course the true goal of the Warmists is to destroy the industrialized world, then after they have destroyed the wealth of the middle and working class, start rounding us up and putting us in camps, before they start to kill us off.

Whoa, there, tiger! Take off the tinfoil hat, set it down, and back slowly away.

Bluebristolian:

Your link doesn’t work — it requires a login.

Weird. The link wasn’t working yesterday (giving an error indicating that a login was required to view the article), but it’s working now.

Anyway, color me unimpressed.

Bluebristolian:

As I’ve already noted, those graphs don’t show what you think they show. If you compare Summer dates (the ones that matter) side-by-side, our current summers have at least a third less sea ice as compared to 25 years ago.

Sorry, you wound up in the moderation queue. I cleared it.

As for Antarctic ice, it’s melting too, but a lot of it isn’t sea ice, because there’s a land mass down there.

In any case, most of your objections are answered here. But it seems clear that you’ve made your mind up, and that you’ll seize on any piece of evidence that confirms your point of view, and ignore any evidence that doesn’t. Which would explain why you keep throwing links against the wall, hoping something will stick.

If you’re ever interested in a serious discussion of the matter, let me know. But until then, I’m not interested in the sort of obfuscatory tactics that the anti-evolution people use, which is in effect what you’re doing.

Isn’t this exactly what you are doing

For the most part, no, at least in part because I’ve got the weight of scientific consensus on my side, whereas you do not.

The IPCC has a lot of explaining to do over the hockey stick fiasco

This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I’m really tired of pointing out that the hockey stick has been vindicated. Repeatedly. But for the so-called “skeptics” of global warming, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that there were errors in the original research; it doesn’t matter to them that once these errors are corrected, the results are essentially the same. It doesn’t matter that other studies have confirmed the result. The original errors play to their pre-existing doubt, and they seize on them and ignore all else.

It also doesn’t matter to them that the “hockey stick” is far from the only piece of evidence for AGW.

it’s the Sun dummy!

See, there’s a problem with this idea. Actually a lot of problems, but they’re summarized pretty easily: at the end of the day, we’re dealing with is a math problem. Either the numbers add up for a particular explanation, or they don’t. When you model for the physics of the system, the numbers for solar forcing simply don’t make enough difference — the numbers don’t add up. Whereas for CO2 forcing, the numbers largely do add up. Are they perfect? No, but they’re close, and they’re far closer than for any other explanation.

You want to offer up a different explanation? Fine. But you’ve got to present evidence in favor of that alternate explanation, and show that it’s a superior explanation. That’s how science works, you know. Until you do that, whether you like it or not, you’re doing the same thing that Intelligent Design advocates, creationists, and tobacco lobbyists do: trumpet (and often misrepresent) minor problems with the prevailing wisdom, exaggerate the degree to which those details are a problem with the larger theory, and then hide behind a false dichotomy of “because of these errors, the prevailing wisdom is wrong, therefore I must be right.”

Are there questions about climate science still left to be answered? Of course there are. But that doesn’t mean we should sit on our thumbs and do nothing but argue while we “wait for all the science to come in” (it never will be; that’s not how science works) any more than we should pretend gravity doesn’t exist just because somebody hasn’t solved unified field theory yet.

Comments above indicate that industrial aerosols offset a significant amount of global warming. That sounds like an easy way to avoid a global catastrophe. Could the overzealous application of pollution controls have caused global warming ?

For the most part, no, at least in part because I’ve got the weight of scientific consensus on my side, whereas you do not.
OK, so you’re right, because you’re right? That’s funny!
By the way, don’t confuse political consensus with scientific consensus

This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I’m really tired of pointing out that the hockey stick has been vindicated. Repeatedly
Yes you must be fed up with the hockey stick being proven wrong by
real data, again and again. You can also see what was said by witnesses under oath on the subject. You may also enjoy this and
this recent article that confirms previous warm periods. There are LOTS more.

at the end of the day, we’re dealing with is a math problem. Either the numbers add up for a particular explanation, or they don’t. When you model for the physics of the system
So here we come to the computer games. The IPCC computer games do not model the physics of the THE system, they model a system that has been tuned to resemble the real world. They prove nothing. This is where you and the IPCC completely fail to understand the scientific process. It goes like this: A theory is devised and this is submitted for peer review. Peers then submit difficult questions that have to be answered, not ignored or dismissed with cries of DENIER! When everybody is satisfied, the theory can be tested by using it to PREDICT real world behaviour, and when these predictions are repeatably proven accurate the theory gains credibility. This after all is the whole point, as the theory as becomes useful in the real world. The IPCC computer games by comparison can’t even agree with each other much less predict anything.
We’ve been told for over 10 years that there will be catastrophic sea level rise due to AGW. Perhaps you’d like to try and find the numerous examples of where these computer games have accurately predicted the sea level rise in metres, and the geographical locations round the world where this occurred. After all, you were keen to use this sad and misleading alarmist article to insinuate that the Antarctic ice sheet is disappearing when the opposite is true. Oh yes, and you never explained how driving SUVs on earth is causing Neptune to get warmer?

But you’ve got to present evidence in favour of that alternate explanation, and show that it’s a superior explanation. Wrong again. I don’t think that even you would deny that the climate has varied hugely in the past, and that this was due natural processes. All I’m saying is that it is still changing due to natural processes. This is the simplest explanation and theories (one example) are appearing that are suggesting a testable link to the sun. It’s actually the AGW camp that have to prove that this time it due to something different, especially when stupid left wing economists are calling for such ridiculous CO2 cuts.
Finally you use that old chestnut the precautionary principle. Well, there’s no evidence that God exists either but I recommend that you start going to church a lot more just in case, because Hell is a really nasty place.

Sigh. Spam filtered again. That one way to avoid printing it.

Barrington:

The problem is that the aerosolized pollutants are harmful in other, more immediate ways, which are not in dispute. And there’s also a problem with the way aerosols counteract global warming — they do so by reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface of the Earth, which is bad for crops, etc.

I’d take a slight reduction in sunlight to stop catastrophic global warming. Who even noticed the reduction in sunlight in the early 1990’s ? The crop yields didn’t seem that bad. And I can’t recall any major health problems caused by aerosols in the extreme upper atmosphere in the early 1990’s. Maybe I’m alone on this. But if I can come up with a way to avoid catastrophic global warming other than by a reduction of CO2, do you think there would be any interest ? It would cause a slight reduction in sunlight like in the early 1990’s and would have no health effects. Or is reduction or elimination of fossil fuels the main goal….

Barrington:

You’re actually not the first one to suggest this. Others have discussed it. If we could be reasonably certain that the effects of doing this wouldn’t be harmful, it might be something to consider. There’s very good information about all of that here.

The biggest problem is that the CO2 forcing was already starting to overpower the effect of atmospheric aerosols. So unless you also reduced CO2 consumption, you’d have to put more and more aerosols into the atmosphere to keep up, resulting in lower and lower total sunlight amounts. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea.

Believe me, I’d love to be wrong about all of this. But wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.

tgirsch:

Unless one believes the earth is already too warm, the sunblocker only has to offset future CO2 warming beyond the point where earth hits the ideal warmth. That wouldn’t seem to require much sunlight reduction – a little bit goes a long way. If it does become a problem after a few decades, then just do whatever is planned now. Thanks for the link above. It’s not surprising that people have thought about “Global Dimming”. It is kind of surprising that there’s been so little action.

bluebristolian:

Sorry. I’m not sure why Spam Karma 2 doesn’t like you. It took a while (had to go back through about 400 spams to find them) but I found and restored your comments. For the record, if the spam filter eats you, send us an e-mail (I’m tgirsch-at-gmail-dot-com) — if you try to re-post your comment, that just makes you look more like spam to the spam filter. I’m not saying it’s fair, it’s just how it works.

Now, on to what you wrote:

By the way, don’t confuse political consensus with scientific consensus

I should be telling you that. There’s far more political disagreement over global warming than scientific disagreement. Also, I’m not entirely sure you’re clear on the concept of what scientific consensus is (and is not). It doesn’t mean that absolutely every scientist agrees; it simply means that the overwhelming majority of qualified scientists agree. There will always be a few dissenters to just about any theory, no matter how well established. And once in a great while, these dissenters turn out to be right (and thus, the consensus was wrong). But these dissenters “win” by building a compelling case for their point of view, not by taking contrarian pot-shots at the prevailing view.

Yes you must be fed up with the hockey stick being proven wrong by real data, again and again.

Yes, because two pages of uncategorized data from unknown sources and a “404 not found” error are such a compelling refutation of the hockey stick. You can cherry-pick quotes and links until the cows come home, but that won’t change the fact that anthropogenic global warming is overwhelmingly accepted by scientists in general and climatologists in particular — not just in the US, but around the world. But hey, I read on the internet that they all must be wrong, so they must be wrong!

A theory is devised and this is submitted for peer review. Peers then submit difficult questions that have to be answered, not ignored or dismissed with cries of DENIER!

Perhaps you should take your own explanation to heart. Because when a theory (like AGW) repeatedly passes peer review, and the criticisms of that theory repeatedly fail (like those denying AGW), and when those who oppose the prevailing view never offer anything new — instead choosing to rehash and repackage criticisms that have been addressed and debunked repeatedly — are continuously rejected by the peer review process, then that’s science working as it should.

We’ve been told for over 10 years that there will be catastrophic sea level rise due to AGW.

And in those ten years, people like you have been saying the planet isn’t warming. Oh, wait, the planet is warming but it’s not because of greenhouse gases. Oh, wait, the planet is warming, and greenhouse gases might be factoring in, but it’s not because of anything we’re doing. Oh, wait, it’s the sun that’s doing it. What? The sun’s output is going down and the planet continues to warm? Well, even if it’s CO2 and it’s our doing, it’s too late and too expensive to do anything about it anyway. Oh, wait, it’s cosmic rays. And gremlins! Did I mention the gremlins?! It’s always a moving target with you people.

Oh yes, and you never explained how driving SUVs on earth is causing Neptune to get warmer?

That’s in part because you’ve provided zero evidence to suggest that Neptune is undergoing a long-term warming trend over the course of Neptunian years and decades. (Of course, given that Neptune’s year is 165 Earth years, it could just be summer there… not to mention the fact that I seriously doubt we have anything approaching the level of climate data for Neptune than we have closer to home.)

I don’t think that even you would deny that the climate has varied hugely in the past, and that this was due natural processes.

No, I don’t deny that at all. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can stick our fingers up our noses and just assume that whatever mechanisms caused past climate change are exactly the same mechanisms that are in play now. We can’t go back and re-measure 1,500 years ago, but we can measure what’s going on now, and we can determine what factors can and cannot explain the changes now. The overwhelming consensus is that CO2 is the largest current player, and there are reams of data to back this up, and by and large, the math works out. If you think it’s not CO2, then you’d better present an alternative explanation that works better, or at the very least demonstrate with hard numbers why CO2 can’t explain it. But you don’t just get to play the ignorance card and hide behind “we don’t understand.”

It’s actually the AGW camp that have to prove that this time it due to something different

The problem is that, whether or not you are intellectually honest enough to acknowledge it, they have done so, such that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, including and especially climatologists, accepts this as fact. And over the course of the last 15-20 years, the case for AGW and CO2’s role in it has only gotten stronger, despite a nearly constant assault on the theory by politically- and financially-motivated contrarians. (Using, as I pointed out, and you didn’t deny, exactly the same tactics that the deniers of evolution use.)

Of course, no amount of consensus could ever convince you, not even this:

Where does this leave us? Actually, with a surprising degree of consensus about the basic science of global warming – at least among scientists. As science historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego, wrote in Science late last year (vol 306, p 1686): “Politicians, economists, journalists and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.”

Her review of all 928 peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 showed the consensus to be real and near universal. Even sceptical scientists now accept that we can expect some warming. They differ from the rest only in that they believe most climate models overestimate the positive feedback and underestimate the negative, and they predict that warming will be at the bottom end of the IPCC’s scale

For the true hard-liners, of course, the scientific consensus must, by definition, be wrong. As far as they are concerned the thousands of scientists behind the IPCC models have either been seduced by their own doom-laden narrative or are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy. They say we are faced with what the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm problem”.

Something tells me you’re among those true hard-liners. It won’t matter what the science says, you’ll find some cherry-picked bit to cling to, and if something happens to that one, you’ll find another.

Finally you use that old chestnut the precautionary principle. Well, there’s no evidence that God exists either but I recommend that you start going to church a lot more just in case, because Hell is a really nasty place.

Nice try, but I doubt even you would put the current evidence for CO2-based warming on par with the evidence for the existence of the Christian God.

Science is all about percentages and margins of error. We’ll never be 100% sure about anything, so it makes no sense to wait until we’re 100% sure before we act. Should we take bold action at 20% or 30% sure? Almost certainly not. But at 85% sure, or 90% sure, or 95% sure, it seems foolish not to take action. Unless, of course, one finds that action politically inconvenient, in which case, screw science, let’s throw it under the bus and just believe whatever the hell we want — especially when I can find some oil company-funded shill to tell me what I want to hear.

One final note: You sure do love to bash the IPCC and the UN, but those are political organizations, and scientific consensus on AGW existed well before anyone had ever heard of either of those.

bluebristolian:

I beg your pardon? I took the time to search through the spam filter and restore your comments, with all links included as you typed them (nine of them, by my count). With the amount of comment spam we get on a daily basis, this was no small task. I didn’t edit or delete anything. How that constitutes me “deleting all of [your] links and most of [your] post” is beyond me.

You can dodge debate all you want, but don’t try and pretend that it’s because of a lack of intellectual integrity on my part.

I beg your pardon?

While I applaud your determination in sifting through 400 junk mails, you then responded without reposting the original. You did not include the original links so statements like
Yes, because two pages of uncategorized data from unknown sources
leave anyone else reading this thread, with only your opinion and no way of checking the link themselves. Next time please just fix the spam filter and let me repost before responding. More later.

bluebristolian:
While I applaud your determination in sifting through 400 junk mails, you then responded without reposting the original.

Allow me to direct your attention to comment #54.

And I don’t control the spam filter. For one thing, it’s third-party software, and for another, I’m not the site owner here. “I just work here,” as the saying goes.

Frankly, your allegations of malfeasance on my part are getting very, very tiresome. I’ve given you a way to contact me directly if you should have another comment eaten by the spam filter. What the hell more do you want?

Allow me to direct your attention to comment #54.

OK, my mistake. Put that down to spam filter rage, it still won’t let me post more than a sentence. Please get a new one. More later.

Posting lots of links, and posting multiple comments in a short time period, are both prone to tripping the spam filter. It’s easier for us to find eaten comments if you let us know right away, and we can approve those comments. The way the spam filter works (as I understand it), it “learns” who you are (based on your IP and other factors), so the more approved comments you post, the less likely (in theory) it should be to deem you spam.

Sorry again for losing my temper over the spam filter.

Yes, because two pages of uncategorized data from unknown sources

This graph of real global temperature vs C02 data is formed from the original data sets defined here link that I posted last time. As I said before,the hockey stick is

well and truly broken since global temperatures since 1998 have actually fallen.

The overwhelming consensus is that CO2 is the largest current player
If this is correct, and given that atmospheric C02 has increased since 1998 how do you explain that global temperatures are

falling? Perhaps you think that C02 can also cause global cooling?

Because when a theory (like AGW) repeatedly passes peer review
Does it really?. Wot no IPCC peer review?

And in those ten years, people like you have been saying the planet isn’t warming. Oh, wait, the planet is warming but

it’s not because of greenhouse gases. Oh, wait, the planet is warming..
As for my question about the IPCC computer games actually predicting anything. Spare me the invective and answer the

question, with some proof.

Of course, no amount of consensus could ever convince you, not even this:
You link to that sadly now corrupted journal the New Scientist. The way they choose to ignore the latest data to continue

this fiasco is illistraed by this line from the article.

they found that between 1970 and 1997 less and less radiation was escaping. They concluded that the increasing

for the other greenhouse gases were similar.

So what about since 1997?

You sure do love to bash the IPCC
The IPCC is by far the most widely quoted authority on AGW in the media.

As for Neptune
link, and notice the date on this.

Nice try, but I doubt even you would put the current evidence for CO2-based warming on par with the evidence for the

existence of the Christian God.
Given the lack of evidence for AGW, it does look more and more like another religion.

On the precautionary principle, I’ll have another go. There are some theories that there may aliens on many other planets

and statistically some may be hostile, There are computer models that simulate

the dire consequences of an alien invasion on earth. Shouldn’t we massively increase military spending in case they do

invade rather than just sitting on our hands?

bluebristolian:
As I said before,the hockey stick is well and truly broken since global temperatures since 1998 have actually fallen.

[Emphasis mine]

This is exactly the sort of misleading “how to lie with statistics” type of crap that really irks me about the anti-AGW folks. They love to make comparisons against 1998, because 1998 was an unusually warm year (thanks to El Niño) — a one-off spike. If you ignore 1998, however, the upward trend is abundantly clear. And even when you include 1998 and work on a five-year moving average, the upward trend is apparent.

And for the record, it hasn’t been “cooling” since 1998. 2005 was warmer than 1998, and 2007 tied 1998 statistically.

But again, compare 2007 (the last year where we have complete data) against just about any other year in the last 50, and it’s warmer. Instead of starting at 1998, start at 1999, and see what it looks like.

Does [AGW theory] really [pass peer-review]?

Yes, it does. The number of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that confirm various aspects of AGW theory is in the hundreds. There haven’t been more than a handful of such articles that deny AGW and pass peer-review.

As for my question about the IPCC computer games actually predicting anything. Spare me the invective and answer the question, with some proof.

You can start here and also look here, if you’re genuinely interested, but if you continue to insist on equating scientific computer modeling with video games, there probably isn’t much point in engaging you on the issue.

You link to that sadly now corrupted journal the New Scientist.

If you don’t like New Scientist as a source, that’s fine. Do me a favor, then, and point me to a respected, peer-reviewed science journal (any such journal) that doesn’t believe in AGW. You won’t be able to find one. Virtually all of the organizations that are “skeptical” of AGW are political organizations, not scientific ones. Has it occurs to you that there may be a reason for that?

(Before you go there, yes, a lot of political organizations back AGW theory. The difference, though, is that they have the weight of scientific consensus on their side. And in case you need to be reminded again, consensus != unanimous, it means overwhelming majority.)

So what about since 1997?

Asked and answered above. But you guys sure do love to beat that 1998 drum, as though a single aberration proves (or disproves) everything.

The IPCC is by far the most widely quoted authority on AGW in the media.

Perhaps so, but they’re far from the only ones arguing that AGW is happening, as I’ve noted above. New Scientist, Scientific American, Science, Omni, Discover, etc. I’m sure you think that all of these are corrupted by the VGWCM (Vast Global Warming Conspiracy, Maaaaaan!).

As to the Neptune link, color me unimpressed. For starters, Neptune’s moon is not the same thing as Neptune. Moving on, the period in question in your article is a period of nine years — when corrected against the length of the Neptunian year, that would be the equivalent of fewer than 20 Earth days. Not exactly a huge data set from which to pull. And finally, of course, most of those variables that you like to toss around to muddy the water about the climate here simply don’t exist there, so you’re working with a different set of parameters there.

Arguing that Neptune is warming at the same time the Earth is warming, therefore they must be warming for the same reasons is rather like arguing that since the World Trade Center and the Old Man of the Mountain collapsed within a couple of years ago, they must have collapsed for the same reason.

Without a lot more evidence, bringing up possible warming on other planets is little more than a diversionary tactic.

Given the lack of evidence for AGW, it does look more and more like another religion.

Your ignorance of and/or refusal to accept the evidence for AGW does not equate to a lack of evidence for it. There are reams of it out there, if only you’re willing to look and retain an open mind. As linked above, the computer models (or “games” as you prefer to call them) have been remarkably accurate when you plot predicted results against actually observed results.

But I’m forced to ask you the same question I’ve asked others on this subject: What would convince you that AGW is real? What evidence would it take to make you reconsider? Is it even conceivably possible?

I’ve stated that if we were to have a period of three consecutive years of cooling despite increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and absent a major offsetting event like a volcanic eruption, that would cause me to seriously reconsider AGW theory. I’ve also stated many times that global warming is the type of thing I’d absolutely love to be wrong about.

So put up or shut up: What’s it going to take to convince you?

And even when you include 1998 and work on a five-year moving average, the upward trend is apparent.

Interesting, you might have been wise to read all the comments before deciding to post it.

And for the record, it hasn’t been “cooling” since 1998. 2005 was warmer than 1998
First of all NASA have already admitted making mistakes with these claims. This article is based on ground station readings which you should already know are
not always reliable
Given the very rapid drop in global temperatures recently, and the
dangers of global cooling I think wish you were right!
Unlike you this isn’t my job, and I also have a family so I’ll be back later.

You can start here and also look here, if you’re genuinely interested, but if you continue to insist on equating scientific computer modeling with video games, there probably isn’t much point in engaging you on the issue.

Why are all the links you
provide so old? Anyway on the subject of climate computer games, including some
from New Scientist as you like them so much.

A Skeptical View of Climate Models (Hendrik Tennekes, Former Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute)
Antarctic Temperatures Disagree With Climate Model Predictions (Science Daily)
Climate is too complex for accurate predictions (NewScientist)
Climate Model Problems in Representing Near-Surface Temperatures at Night (Climate Science)
Computer Climate Models: Voodoo for Scientists (PDF) (EIR Science)
Dyson: Climate models are rubbish (The Register, UK)
Error strikes ‘BBC climate model’ (BBC)
Fossils leaves reveal climate model errors (NewScientist)
Global Warming Computer Models Seriously Flawed, Studies Show (The Heartland Institute)
Models simulating global climate don’t capture fine-scale ups and downs of temperature (PDF) (Nature)
New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability (Science Daily)
Overconfidence Leads To Bias In Climate Change Estimations (Science Daily)
Satellite observations suggest climate models are wrong on rainfall (BioEd Online)
The Mathematical Reason Why Long-run Climatic prediction is Impossible (Science and Public Policy Institute)
Those Darn Computer Models (AccuWeather)
Widespread ‘Twilight Zone’ Detected Around Clouds, Not Included In Most Climate Change Models (Science Daily)

Evaluating Jim Hansen’s 1988 Climate Forecast

bluebristolian:
Interesting, you might have been wise to read all the comments before deciding to post it.

I don’t see anything in the comments that contradicts the point.

First of all NASA have already admitted making mistakes with these claims.

This may indeed be the case, but I wasn’t able to verify it. All I could find were anti-AGW sites and conservative think-tanks claiming that this was the case, but none of the ones I looked at (or that you linked) linked to an actual NASA retraction. In any case, I don’t mind conceding that particular point, because it’s not critical to the point I was trying to make, which was that 1998 was an anomaly. You’ve done nothing to refute this.

Given the very rapid drop in global temperatures recently

Another fine example of how to lie with statistics. A single cold winter does no more to disprove the theory than a single cold summer does to prove it. Again, work with the rolling averages. This is nothing new, by the way. Climatologists have been saying for well over a decade that brief periods of both extreme heat and extreme cold can be expected as a result of global warming. Unless that cooling trend continues over a period of years, it doesn’t do anything to refute (or even contradict) what climate scientists have been telling us.

By the way, more on the “hockey stick” here:

Some reconstructions show much more variability, especially those based only on tree rings, but every reconstruction to date supports the main claim in the IPCC summary: the past decade is likely the warmest for 1000 years (see Graphs). Whatever the flaws in Mann’s original work, it seems the broad conclusion is correct.

Which doesn’t prevent the AGW-deniers from making unsubstantiated allegations:

McIntyre is not impressed. “There is a distinct possibility that researchers have either purposefully or subconsciously selected series with the hockey stick shape,” he told one reporter.

Yet science marches on, with or without their approval:

But for most climate scientists, the controversy is a sideshow. Whatever happened before 1860, the world has been getting warmer since that time, and there is no doubt in their minds that industrialisation is mostly responsible.

Why are all the links you provide so old?

This from a guy who cites a ten-year-old Neptune article? That’s rich!

As for your link dump, apart from noting that the fact that models are not perfect does not make them useless, and that most of what you’ve linked doesn’t qualify as “peer-reviewed,” I’d like to point out:

- An undated essay from an organization (SEPP) whose sole stated purpose is to question environmental science? Color me unimpressed.
- As for Science Daily, you might be interested in what they’re saying more recently.
- I don’t think that the New Scientist article on computer models says what you think it says. From a related New Scientist article: “Indeed, one recent study [links to article you post] suggests that the feedbacks in climate systems means climate models will never be able to tell us exactly how much warming to expect. However, there is no doubt that there will be warming.” [Emphasis mine.]
- Your Climate Science link doesn’t seem to work — it just goes to the main page for that site.
- Regarding the BBC project, the error is really only interesting if the results after the error is fixed directly contradict those with the error. Does fixing the error tell us that we should expect cooling rather than warming? Doesn’t look that way. Looks like it’s an error of degree, not of direction.
- Your AccuWeather link is an interesting piece of guilt-by-association, now isn’t it? It notes that a model that incorrectly predicted the path of a hurricane “was developed in the same place as some of the climate models that are used to support major global warming because of increased greenhouse gases.” It doesn’t say that it’s the same model, mind you, or even that it was developed by the same people or using the same techniques. Just that it was developed at the same place. Hardly compelling, especially when you consider that there are a lot of groups doing climate modeling, not just one place.

All in all, your list is the very definition of cherry-picking. I’m sure there are all kinds of details that the computer models have been — and will continue to be — wrong about (in particular, cloud cover — they’ve always been bad at this, and will likely continue to be). But again, this doesn’t make them useless, and it doesn’t discredit those things that the models have been right about — which is an awful lot.

Oh, and I can’t help but notice that you ducked my question about what would convince you that AGW is a real problem.

Oh, and I can’t help but notice that you ducked my question about what would convince you that AGW is a real problem.
Some decent science would be good. I think someone would have to also show how C02 could cause global cooling, after all we’ve been told so many times how CO2 is by far the biggest forcing factor that lead to the late 20th century temperature rise. This is why it will be SO dangerous to continue burning fossil fuels. Now however, even though C02 continues to increase, temperatures are at most flat since 1988, or are falling depending on which set of measurments you use. 2008 will probably be the coldest
year this century.It just does not add up for AGW, but is very interesting if you are following what the sun is doing. I’m interested to see if
this prediction comes true.
As for how much global warming CO2 does actually cause, this paper is good

Finally, you are very keen on the concensus you claim for AGW, so I’ll leave you with this quote

“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus…”
- Michael Crichton, A.B. Anthropology, M.D. Harvard

bluebristolian:
Some decent science would be good.

Your ignorance of the science is not the same thing as the science not existing.

Now however, even though C02 continues to increase, temperatures are at most flat since 1988

Your insistence on hammering the “flat since 1998″ point (and consistently ignoring five-year running averages) can lead to only one of two conclusions: either you’re being disingenuous, or you suck at statistics. I’ll let you pick which one.

Regarding your first link, did you actually read it? It says that 2008 may be cooler than recent years because of a La Niña pattern — thereby making it an anomalous year, not unlike 1998 was an anomalous year — but that it will still be one of the ten warmest years recorded, and warmer than 2000, which was also a La Niña year. If you think that this contradicts AGW theory in any way, then you need to go out and buy yourself a clue.

As for the rest, well, if some guy in Finland, the producers of some open-source Linux software, and an author of crappy books about resurrected dinosaurs and super-intelligent gorillas really say those things, then man, that changes everything. That casts serious doubt on what a few hundred scientists who spend their lives studying the subject might think about it — what the hell do they know, anyway?

Seriously: Jesus, man, you’re having to dig pretty damn deep on the link-cherry-picking to come up with this stuff.

And for what it’s worth, Crichton is right, as far as it goes. But he forgets two important aspects: First, the scientists who “are great … because they broke with consensus” built a compelling case for their alternate view. Breaking with consensus does not, in and of itself, make one great. You have to make the break and then prove yourself right, and convince others of this. So far, in at least 15 years of trying, the opponents of AGW theory have failed miserably in that aspect, which should be instructive. They’ve even lost support — the consensus is growing, while the number of credible “skeptics” is shrinking.

The second thing Crichton fails to mention is what happens after those great scientists break consensus: their view becomes the consensus.

Science is a meritocracy, and the theories with the most merit earn the consensus. That’s how the process works. Breaking with consensus isn’t “cool” or “great,” unless you’re able to prove you’re right. But you have to do that with hard evidence. You don’t just get to whine about how the consensus doesn’t like you, or how unfair that is — at least, not if you want anyone to take you seriously.

tgirsch

“Breaking with consensus isn’t “cool” or “great,” unless you’re able to prove you’re right.”

Is “proof” a fair standard for those who break with support of a theory ? I’d be grateful if you could state your understanding of the AGW theory to help me understand what a member of the “consensus” is subcribing to.

the producers of some open-source Linux software
Well, if that C02 article was too hard for you to understand, let alone comment upon intelligently, then you really are just like all the other fanatic acolytes of AGW that this guy describes.
Right. I’m going to try and explain this to you slowly one more time, because you are obviously having trouble grasping something that is really very simple. First I’d like to quote some guy called Evan Jones from a thread here. Who put it quite well. This is important scientific principle so please read it.

Mere correlation is not proof. It is a mere starting point for further empirical observation. Lack of correlation, however, may be considered likely to be disproof.

Got that? Right, now this next statement is from the latest IPCC assessment-report.

Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is
very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.8 This is an
advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years
is likely to have been due to the increase in GHG concentrations” (Figure 2.5). {WGI 9.4, SPM}

As you are devout believer I’m sure you are in complete agreement, so next I’d like you to look at this temperature graph, from your heroes at NASA GISS. Now if you pick any 10 year gap from, say 1970 to 2000, you will find that the temperature has risen sharply. Fine

Now look at this temperature graph, again from NASA GISS. If you look you will see that the mean temperature at the end of this last 10 year period is actually lower than the start. Finally, I think we can both agree that C02 has been rising at a rapidly increasing rate since the middle of the 20th century.

So, in case you have not spotted the problem yet, I’m going to help you out with a car analogy.

At the start of 1970, you get into your AGW temperature car, and you press on the C02 accelerator, and the car speeds up. You keep pressing harder on the C02 accelerator. As expected the car goes faster until 1998 when revered Gore comes on the radio, and tells you that if don’t stop pressing the accelerator immediately, that within 10 seconds the car will soon be doing 500 mph, the tyres will melt, and the car will burst into flames. Suddenly and unexpectedly the car stops accelerating. This is strange because the IPCC who sold you the car assured you that the speed of the AGW car was controlled by the C02 accelerator. Even though you press harder and harder on the accelerator the car does not speed up for 10 years. The only logical conclusion is that something has gone wrong with your AGW car.

Now, you can bleat on about 1998 (or any other year that does not fit your religion as being an anomoly), and we can argue the toss about whether the rolling temperature over the last five years has risen slightly, or fallen slightly, or stayed constant. It does not change the fact that AGW IS BROKEN! You can also claim as many times as you like that there is some dubious concensus. I say big deal.

Barrington:
I’d be grateful if you could state your understanding of the AGW theory to help me understand what a member of the “consensus” is subcribing to.

In a nutshell:

- The average annual surface temperature of the planet is undergoing a warming trend.
- The single biggest factor contributing to this warming trend is an increased concentration of CO2, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere.
- The single biggest factor contributing to that increased concentration is human activity, principally widespread consumption of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal.
- The consequences of the warming trend could range from “bad” to “disastrous” with a decreased stability in localized weather patterns: unusually hot summers, unusually cold winters, periods of drought, more severe storms, etc.

That’s my understanding of it. But there are good primers out there, if you’re genuinely interested. You can find them here and here and here and here.

Bluebristolian:
Well, if that C02 article was too hard for you to understand, let alone comment upon intelligently

It isn’t that at all. I specifically asked for stuff that had survived peer review, and you instead presented me with a motley list of cherry-picked links from obscure sources (like that one), or articles from reputable journals that didn’t exactly claim what you said they did.

Now look at this temperature graph, again from NASA GISS. If you look you will see that the mean temperature at the end of this last 10 year period is actually lower than the start.

And I’m going to say this slowly, because you still don’t seem to get it (or care): That graph isn’t useful for the point you’re trying to demonstrate, because: (A) it doesn’t use rolling averages, but instead just shows single point-in-time temperatures; (B) it starts from that extremely convenient starting point of 1998; and (C) if you look at the scale to the left, it doesn’t show mean temperature, but temperature anomaly, which is the deviation from the mean (which is calculated based on seasonal global temperatures from 1951 to 1980). And if you look closely at those numbers at the left, you’ll see that all of them are positive, meaning that for every point in time listed, for every year listed, the temperatures are above average. All it shows is that the temperature in Dec08/Jan08 isn’t as much above average as the temperature was in Jan98. (What, did you think that the Earth’s average temperature was hovering between 0.1C (32F) in the coldest winter and 1.1C (34F) in the warmest summer? That doesn’t even come close to making the point you think it does.

So, in answer to my own question above, I’m going to go with “you suck at statistics.”

By the way, what happens when one doesn’t just cherry pick a certain graph, but actually looks at the context from which the graph was yanked? We find this:

The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the “El Niño of the century”. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle.

[Emphasis mine]

You can yank graphs out of context all you want, but let’s be honest about what they really represent, shall we?

As expected the car goes faster until 1998 when revered Gore comes on the radio, and tells you that if don’t stop pressing the accelerator immediately, that within 10 seconds the car will soon be doing 500 mph, the tyres will melt, and the car will burst into flames.

Have Hyperbol-O’s for breakfast this morning, did we?

Now, you can bleat on about 1998 (or any other year that does not fit your religion as being an anomoly)

I’d prefer to “bleat on” about your [incompetent misunderstanding / disingenuous misappropriation] of statistics, thanks.

You can also claim as many times as you like that there is some dubious concensus. I say big deal.

Oooh, you found an anti-AGW think tank that spun off from another think tank that receives significant funding from ExxonMobil. Color me impressed!

See, that’s the difference between you and I. When I’m looking for information on global warming science, I start by looking at bona fide scientific resources like NASA, New Scientist, etc. When you look, you start from political think tanks, and regurgitate whatever obscure links they feed you.

Sorry, chum, but that’s neither being serious nor maintaining an open mind. That’s engaging in political obfuscation, pure and simple. As I mentioned a couple of times before, the same sort of obfuscation as was used by the “tobacco doesn’t cause cancer” people, the “evolution is ‘just a theory’” people, and the “CFCs don’t harm the ozone layer” people. Frank Luntz would be proud.

So, in answer to my own question above, I’m going to go with “you suck at statistics.”

If you still can’t see the blindingly obvious contradiction betweem what those NASA graphs actually show, and that IPCC statement, then you suck at reality. Have a nice life.

The contradiction is only “blindingly obvious” if you (1) use an obviously cherry-picked graph, and (2) misread or misrepresent what the graph actually shows. That you lack even the basic intellectual integrity to admit that you were wrong about what the graph actually represents is simply mind-boggling, but it tells anyone else who may be reading exactly how much credence to give your arguments.

tgirsch

Your statement of the AGW theory above is helpful. And I can see that there might be a broad scientific consensus. This statement refers to but doesn’t define “bad” so at your suggestion, I checked out your first link, the Woods Hole Research Center.
Under the heading of “Potential Outcome” (of AGW) they provide “an adaptation of the analysis of potential outcomes of climate change delineated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their second assessment report”. This second and last paragraph of this section states “Scientific modeling suggests that the surface temperature will continue to increase beyond the year 2100 even if concentrations of greenhouse gases are stabilized by that time. However, if carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase at present rates, a quadrupling of pre-industrial CO2 concentration will occur not long after the year 2100. Projected temperature increases for such an atmospheric concentration are 15-20 °F above the present day mean annual global surface temperature.”

Is there a scientific consensus concerning the IPCC report ?

Barrington:

I frankly haven’t followed the IPCC all that closely, in part because it’s nearly as much political as it is scientific; that said, what little I have read about the IPCC’s findings has essentially said that if anything, they err too much one the side of caution, which is to say they understate the risks and the degree of certainty.

Generally, I find that anti-AGW types tend to like to criticize the IPCC a lot, and I suspect that this is in part because the type of people who deny AGW are generally the same type of people who despise the UN, and therefore look upon anything that comes out of the UN (like the IPCC) with an extremely cynical eye.

All that said, and in more direct response to your question, I haven’t heard much criticism of the IPCC report (barring the aforementioned “not pessimistic enough” caveat) from credible sources, which would lead me to believe that there’s a general consensus about the IPCC’s work.

If you’re interested in more reading on the subject, I highly recommend Carl Sagan’s 1997 book Billions and Billions. He’s got a couple of chapters in there on global warming that are quite prophetic, both in terms of what we could expect to see, and what we could expect the so-called “skeptics” to argue to try to refute it. Mind you, it’s written for the laity, so it’s not super-technical, but when you consider that it was written a dozen years ago, it’s held up surprisingly well.

I find it amazing that some folks insist on comparing specific years to evaluate a trend that everyone admits contains a lot of noise. If we revisit the first graph blue referenced, we can see that it does not end in year 200, but continues to year 2007. I defy anyone to look at the slope of the graph between the mid to late 90’s and 2007 and then claim that AGW is “broken”. The graph clearly shows the trend continuing unabated up to and including the most current data.

As for the CO2 car going 500 mph, perhaps a more relevant analogy would be a long container of thick viscous fluid balanced in the middle on a fulcrum. There are lots of small perturbations (external forcing factors) being applied all along the container, but there is a slight preponderance of perturbations on the right half. Over time, the container will non monotonically lower on the right side and rise on the left. This change in angle will increasingly cause the viscous fluid inside the container to shift to the right, which in turn will further lower that end. In other words, a positive feedback loop is created that magnifies the effect of the slightly unbalanced perterbations – which were the only external forces applied to the system. The net effect being much greater than the unbalanced sum of the external forcing factors.

This parallels how climate experts expect the earth’s temperature to change over time. It will fluctuate month to month and year to year with a slight long term upward trend. As the temp slowly rises (due mainly to an increase in upper atmosphere CO2), other systems will get out of balance. Some will contribute to the aggregate warming trend, perhaps a few will act to counter it. The net effect will be an increase in the positive (higher temp) forcing factors over time.

Relating this to the car example, while the pedal contributes a constant accelerating force to the vehicle, as speed increases other forces come into play, thus the rate of acceleration increases over time. It’s the positive feedback loop that causes velocity (temps) to really surge.

There is plenty of debate over the specifics of the models, but there is a large and growing consensus that the trend will continue upward, and the impact of that trend over time will be significantly negative.

No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.

Christine Stewart, Minister of the Environment of Canada
recent quote from the Calgary Herald

“Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”
Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland’s glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

Relating this to the car example, while the pedal contributes a constant accelerating force to the vehicle, as speed increases other forces come into play, thus the rate of acceleration increases over time. It’s the positive feedback loop that causes velocity (temps) to really surge.
Ted, you should have ‘increasing’, but in fact the opposite is happening.

bluebristolian:

Has it really come to this? You’ve lost on the merits, and lost on the facts, so now you just resort to cherry-picked quotes from obscure, out-of-context quotes?

That’s just pathetic.

The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data
Or perhaps it was the seventh warmest.

I’ve stated that if we were to have a period of three consecutive years of cooling despite increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and absent a major offsetting event like a volcanic eruption, that would cause me to seriously reconsider AGW theory
Look at the table here. If 2008 is colder than 2007, are you just going to claim it’s another case of cherry picking, or another anomaly? You make me laugh.

bluebristolian:
Or perhaps it was the seventh warmest.

Yes, because NASA’s numbers, released in late January and including the entire year of 2007, are to be ignored in favor of Met Office’s provisional numbers, released in mid December of 2007, which only account for Jan-Nov, according to them. You sure do love some cherry-picking, don’t you?

If 2008 is colder than 2007, are you just going to claim it’s another case of cherry picking, or another anomaly?

If 2008 is significantly cooler than 2007, and 2009 is significantly cooler than both 2007 and 2008, then yes, that could be a problem. From what I understand, 2008 is predicted to be somewhat cooler than 2007, thanks in part to La Niña. But it will be interesting to see what that does to the longer-term trends (it’s still predicted to be substantially warmer than the long-term average, and still one of the ten warmest years ever recorded). One doesn’t draw conclusions about long-term trends by looking only at short-term figures.

But, of course, I’m the only one of the two of us with any skin in this game. You haven’t had the courage or intellectual integrity to pony up and give criteria that you would accept as proving you wrong. And then you wonder why I compare you to the evolution deniers — you never make an affirmative statement of your own and try to defend it, you only ever try to poke holes in the statements of others. Just like the creationists do.

And, of course, you cherry pick graphs, while ignoring statements like these:

the top 11 warmest years all occur in the last 13 years.
…snip…
The last time annual mean global temperatures were below the 1961-1990 long-term average was in 1985. Since then, mean surface air temperatures have continued to demonstrate a warming trend around the world. 2007 has been no exception to this, even though there has been a La Niña event which usually reduces global temperatures.
…snip…
2007 was warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, where the year ranks second warmest, than the Southern Hemisphere, where it ranks ninth warmest.
…snip…
This year has also seen sea-ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere below average in each month of 2007, with record minima sea-ice reported in July, August and September.

Statements which, by the way, came from your source.

bluebristolian, look at the global graph you linked to. You are seriously going to argue that graph does not show a warming trend over the past 100 years? You are seriously going to ignore the other two dips in that past 30 years that were followed by large spikes upward, the net effect being an undeniable warming trend over the past 30 years? Casual examination of the curve reveals that there is a cyclical variant with a period of 5 or so years superimposed on an upward sloping curve. So we happen to be in one of the predicted flat or slightly downturn phases and you ignore 100 years of data and claim AGW is broken.

This is equivalent to flipping a coin 1000 times with a 50.05 to 49.95 chance of heads over tails, then flipping heads three time in a row and claiming the laws of probability are broken. This debate is too childish, I’m out.

tgirsch;

As I said above, I can see how many(most?) scientists could agree with AGW theory as you define it above (comment #75). My comment #78 refers to findings that are attributed to the IPCC. It is easy to prove the “quadrupling” statement wrong or at least very greatly exaggerated and the projected temperature rise is much higher than given by most experts (Gavin in your comment above, for example). Asa result of these and a myriad of other issues, it’s not so clear to me that the IPCC studies/report has broad support from the scientific and technical community.

My interest in global warming is from an investor/problem-solving viewpoint. I’m finding that there is much less interest from investor’s than I expected. I’m talking about investors I’ve had a long and successful relationship with. They, either right away or after some cursory discussions with their own sources, have their own list of problems with the IPCC reports and are unwilling to proceed based on their own assessment of the global warming situation. I’m certain this is not because of political bias or anti-UN feelings. Believe me, neither of these would stand in their way a good investment opportunity.

I’m also finding that at least some supporters of the IPCC do not seem interested in supporting projects/programs that may mitigate future negative impacts of global warming – unless the project is based solely on a reduction in fossil fuel usage. If they’re convinced a catastrophe is facing us, why not develop as many options as possible and determine which are best for all concerned?

Barrington:

Again, I’ll have to defer on the IPCC stuff, because I haven’t really followed it that closely. As to why certain alternative solutions haven’t caught on, it’s because they usually come with huge drawbacks — re-polluting the atmosphere, for example, or nuclear with its ever-present radioactive waste problem. Basically, the alternatives I’ve seen suggested are more difficult, more expensive, and more risky than simply investing in renewable energy and mandating efficiency. Doing these would be the easiest thing moving forward, and would bring political and economic benefits that have nothing to do with the environment or global warming.

I have to say there are some compelling opinions on both sides of the issue.My belief is that with Co2 has substantially less effect on earth temperature than the sun’s activity. This being said, sure we have noticed slow increases in average earth temps over 100 years, but they are minisule rises and in some years no rise at all. But, an overall drop of this much in a years time, which come from reputable and reliable data observations would suggest there are more powerful forces at work here than, possible co2 levels created by man. Water vapor is a much better heat concealer than co2, w/o the h20, co2 cannot substantialy heat. Sure earth has more water vapor than Venus and can heat, but not enough to cause the kind of heating GW doomers say.I’m not saying we are bound for an imminant mini ice age, but we are certainly due in cycle for a cooling period. We are in a inter-glacial period, and someday it will end and the ice will come back, but in the meantime, worry more about larger cooling dips in gloabal temps rather than one hundreth of a degree of average gloabal temp for any one year of the past one hundred, but more so a 1 degree fall in the last 12 months globally on avg.Three more years of that same degree drop and we are in a drastic,dangerous global cooling.Or, look at it this way, what would all the GW supporters say if we noticed a one degree rise in the earth’s avg temp for the past year? LOL Yeah,you get my point.

If only people would look at the larger picture there have been many Ice ages on earth there have been as many global warmings It has gotten so warm on earth that there were tropical plants growing on the northern rim of Alaska ask anyone who has drilled for oil up there about the plants that were pulled up from underneath the ice. As a matter of fact there is proof that the temps on earth when Jesus was around were much warmer than they are now. Unless Jesus was driving around in a Porche I don’t think man had anything to do with that warming trend. Get over it this is nothing more than a con perpetrated by the leftists that want to control peoples every move and steal any wealth that a man may earn out of his meager existence.

The last time I checked to earth still rotates around the sun. The earth is only 1/10,000 size of the sun. Water covers 3/4 of planet earth. As the sun heats and cools the water vapor surrounding the earth so goes climate. None of the computer generated climate models used by the IPCC facter in water vapor. Therefore such models are useless as proving global warming. Due to high solar output until recently we have had global warming. The sunspot activity was the greatest in recent history. Now this sunspot activity and solar output has reduced to similar levels before the last ice age. Now temperatures world wide have been dropping rapidly for the last few years and the trend is accellerating. This has many scientist worried that we are heading into a new ice age. North pole ice cover has recovered to the levels they were in the early 80s. We have a choice listen to what nature has to say or continue to play computer games until we see it is to late as crops begin to fail worldwide due to global cooling. Also yes we should do what we can to save the enivironment. but we will save nothing if we freeze to death.

I see we have a lot of nut jobs here that believe what the UN and the UN based IPCC propaganda has been spewing. I don’t Understand how anyone cannot see How anyone can be so feeble minded as to agree with political propaganda and not face facts that have been presented for hundreds of years. They new the impact of solar activity centuries ago. This greenhouse crap is fairly new at least as far as carbon goes and its sources are suspect. the fact is it was warmer in the 30s and it was much warmer in medieval times. In Greenland there are whole towns that were covered by glaciers that are still under Ice gee I wonder how they got there, obviously it was warmer in the past than it is now with no anthropological warming. People should be praising god for the warmer temperatures and be glad they are not starving do to lack of food. Warmer temperatures mean more water vapor in the air hence more rain hence more food. More carbon in the air means more food for plants which need it for photosynthesis. Any body who dreads a warmer Earth should have their heads examined.

Uh oh, still no solar activity and a screamingly cold start to December. Did I just see Las Vegas got 4 inches of snow!

Can’t be Al it is getting colder and not warmer, look at the data for the last 10 years and if you include 2008 the last 20 years have had no warming.

When will the people believe that global warming has stopped?
When they get their heating bill after they nail us with the carbon tax and there is 4 feet of snow outside
Some love to want to save the world until they see how much they will have to pay to do it
Some will do what ever they are told because the government or environmentalists would not lie to us. Not for money
The rest know it’s a waste of time and money to worry about something no one knows wether we can even change it
Co2 is not the driving force in global climate change
Never has never will
Until you answer the following question, do not waste my time with your “arguments”:
“If you believe humans are creating a destructive warming trend,
Please first tell me exactly what caused the last Ice Ages.”

If you believe Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started the Great Chicago Fire, please tell me exactly what caused all the other fires before that cow was born and after it died…

Otherwise, I’ll answer your question with a question: When will you believe that global warming is real, and exacerbated by man? What would it take to convince you of this?

More evidence that the unwashed masses are unwilling and/or unable to think in terms of nuance and grey areas.

The notions of man contributing to/accelerating climate change is not mutually exclusive to the existance of macro, long-term climate trends. This should not be difficult to grasp.

Your obesrvation about the Ice Age is a rhetorical anecdote, not a real question. If you’d like to sit at the grown up table, you are going to have to refine your table manners.

Also, did you tap out that response on a Blackberry or something, what’s up with the formatting? Paging Stephen A. Smith*…

*TG- SAS infamously tapped out a Phil Enq. column on his BB while filming on-air spots for ESPN. (You know the Stephen A. Smith ESPN spots I’m talking about, the ones Jason Whitlock referred to as shucking and jiving. Yeah, all of them)

don’t you love it
Challenge AGW and reap the wrath being called every name in the book,told your IQ is close to zero, you work for some polluting company, and told to shut up!
whats wrong when global temperatures have plummeted the the last two winters with records being set all over, and many scientists and old farmers almanac predicting up to a 50 year cooling period, that we can’t question the “science” or “consensus”
hope you learn to love the “change” we voted ourselves into
with house, senate, and white house controlled by AGW supporters
pray the economy keeps the cap and trade taxes on hold
check the joint forces command link for energy supplies and climate change parts
russians figured it out see that link
they used pencils in space we spend millions to Develop a pen to use
stopping AGW is the worst investment for spending our money on for such a small if any results china is building 4 lane highways and they have less cars then we do. think they going to cut carbon emissions
build the nuke plants we need energy
wind mills & solar panels (1% of future power supplies)
and the wind don’t always blow and the sun don’t always shine bright
if it does get cold and there is a shortage of heating energy and we put carbon taxes on that energy we will put all of our people in poverty
keep your arrigance to your self you know nothing of me
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf
http://english.pravda.ru/print/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2008-09-09-farmers-almanac_N.htm

Ghostface Killah, is that you?

Stream of consciousness, FTL.

Again, it’s possible that we are contributing to global warming even if for a (relatively short) period we are experiencing a cooling stage. You know, like how it’s possible to play poorly but still win despite your own shortcomings. Or, how you can fight off a cold, while you are also developing cancer at the same time.

Plus, climate change also suggests that temps progress toward the more extreme in both directions. But, I’m not even trying to debate the science here, that would be granting more legitimacy to your posts than they deserve.

Don:

I’ll be glad to OK another nuke plant, if you’re willing to store the waste in your back yard. Anyway, as to your ostensible Aha! moment, let’s consider this excerpt:

Global warming does not by itself make bad weather. But it does heighten the chances of having bad weather. Bad weather certainly does not require global warming, but all computer models show that global warming should be accompanied by significant increases in bad weather — severe drought inland, severe storm systems and flooding near the coasts, both much hotter and much cooler weather locally, all driven by a relatively modest increment in the average planetary temperature. This is why extreme cold weather in, say, Detroit in January is not the telling refutation of global warming that some newspaper editorials pretend.

[Emphasis mine.]

Excuse-making in response to recent weather patterns, record cold spells, etc.? Hardly. That’s from Carl Sagan’s Billions & Billions, written back in 1996. Far from disproving global warming, your record cold spells and drought/storm cycles were actually predicted by the theory over a decade ago.

So whenever somebody points to a record cold spell here or there and pretends that this diminishes global warming theory, what they’re really saying is “I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about” — they’re attacking a strawman version of AGW, and not the real thing.

WELL WERE DO WE GET THE ENERGY?
DID YOU READ THE JOINT COMMAND REPORT?
YOU WANT TO SHUT DOWN COAL AND GAS PLANTS WERE DO WE GET THE ENERGY TO REPLACE THEM?
THE BEST WORLD ECONOMIST’S SAID SPENDING MONEY ON GLOBAL WARMING WAS THE WORST INVESMENT OF ANY OF THE MAJOR GLOBAL PROBLEMS WE FACE!
THAT IS MY POINT
SOLAR AND WIND WILL NOT POWER THIS COUNTRY
FIGURE IT OUT AND YOU WILL SEE THE REAL PROBLEM
WERE ARE GOING TO GET THE ENERGY?
YOU HAVE NO SOLUTION YOU ARE MAKING THE PROBLEM WORSE WITH OUT A SOURCE OF ENERGY
GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don:

I didn’t realize turning on the caps lock was the first step toward moving the goal posts.

Nobody’s suggesting that we should just stop using fossil fuels tomorrow. But it has to be a long-term goal. If I were emperor for a day, existing coal-fired power plants would be retrofitted with the latest efficiency enhancements to get us through until wind, tide, solar, and methane can provide a larger part of our power requirements.

In any case, you’ve fallen into the trap of poor thinking: because no one thing can completely replace fossil fuels, we should therefore not attempt to replace ANY of our fossil fuel use with renewable, non-polluting alternatives. That’s silly.

I COMMEND YOUR WISHFULL THINKING YOU MIGHT WANT TO STILL CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE THE ARMED SERVICE’S DO NOT SHARE YOUR OUTLOOK
NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO GET OFF FOSSIL FUELS FOR ALONG TIME
SO WHY RAPE THE PEOPLE OF THIER MONEY FOR CARBON TAXES (TO SAVE THE WORLD RIGHT)
SPARE ME THE BULL SH_T
YOU CONTROL ENERGY PRICES YOU’LL MAKE A KILLING
JUST REMEMBER THIS ENERGY WILL RISE IN DEMAND AND SUPPLIES WILL NOT KEEP UP THAT WILL MAKE THE PRICES TO RISE THROW THE TAX ON AND HOW DO THE PEOPLE KEEP THEM SELVES WARM IN THE WINTER
I GUESS THAT EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT CONTROL OVER WHAT WE DO BECAUSE THE RICH AND POWERFULL WILL NOT CHANGE JUST ALL THE REST OF US (GET IT YET ) DON’T PLAY THE FOOL

WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME? AND YOU’LL FORGIVE ME IF I DON’T LOOK TO THE ARMED SERVICES AS THE PRIMARY EXPERTS ON ENERGY POLICY.

OK, I can’t yell any more. In any case, if we’re entering a 50-year cooling period, how do you explain the fact that the 12 hottest years on record, dating back to 1880, have all occurred within the last 14 years? 2008 was the eighth hottest year on record.

yes they are only in charge of your’s and the rest of the people of the united states security
they have to look at all factors and see were we are weak
you may not like or agree with them
but i trust them more than i do Al Gore and his bunch
its far worse to leave our country with few options on energy
than try to save the world with an agenda the has very little reward if any and a high cost.
how do explain the last 2 years of record cold?
in the co2 modeling it can not happen if co2 is the driving force (we reduced nothing on co2 output so were did the cold come from)
any sane person at least has to question that!
if not question why you would not?

Last two years of record cold? The last two years have been in the top ten warmest years on record!

If you think that a regional cold spell, even a record one, tells us anything at all about global climate, you’re merely underscoring the fact that you simply don’t understand the difference between weather and climate.

As for the JOE document, I did look over the energy section, and they basically tell us that we’re screwed on the energy front no matter what we do. If we followed ALL of their recommendations, and did so immediately, both highly unlikely no matter what, then it would still be too little, too late.

get in the real world fool
there is nothing about this winter and last winter that is true in your statement
take some time to look things up before you open your foolish mouth
what a waste of time you are you brainwashed fool

Ooh, name-calling! Yeah, that will attract people to your way of thinking!

I did look it up, by the way, which is how I know last year was the eighth warmest on record.

[...] largely bemoaning their rice bowls are in danger of breaking) a certain intrepid blogger actually contacted Dr Tapping [...]

Here we are a year later after this article, and now, the 11 year global cooling trend continues. Which of the theories about global warming factor in the temperature and weather on the sun? “Global Warming” is a scam to get more money out of us through fear. Say “earth mother” and people jump on the religion-based (not fact based) band wagon.