Freddy

Why should an Objectivist care? This raises an interesting point about how an Objectivist should evaluate the society in which he lives beyond the formal criterias of respecting rights. Should an Objectivist care about whether people die in emergency rooms or whether large chunks of the population have their opportunities in life reduced due to lack of education and so on? An altruist would say that their concept of "man qua man" requires a sympathy for general human welfare beyond yourself and an ideal human being would therfore regard such societies as sub par, which would then imply action. What is the criterias by which objectivists can say that it is a problem that poor people cannot afford school for thier children? Is there any criterias beyond: If you feel that it's a problem. then it is a problem; if you feel that it doesn't matter to you, then it doens't matter. Does the objectivist "man qua man" ideal give any guideance for what preference is more "qua man"?

1) Co2 measurements are sensitive to local pollution of all kinds. Here is a link to a summary of the Beck study that gives the location of the measurements; there are loads of metropolitans. 2) The ice core contains atmospheric air bubbles from the most remote place on earth, thus the air in those bubbles are not polluted by local sources and they therfore record the wellmixed concentration of CO2. Why doesn't the CO2 swings show up in those air bubbles? The location Mauna Loa is specifically choosen to avoid local pollution. Why are there no swings in this data, and why does the Mauna Loa readings correlate with the ice core data? Isn't it reasonable to assume that this is because they measure the same thing, the well mixed value of CO2 concentration which contains no wild swings`? 3) In absolute terms, the swings represent huge amounts of CO2 which would leave all kinds of traces which have not been observed. What would account for this massive emission of CO2, and where did it all go? This is more than enough to discredit the Beck graph as junk.

If you measure CO2 in downtown Manhattan you get very high values. Look at your own graph at the correlation between Ice cores and Mauna Loa, that should tell you that readings from Mauna Loa is not dominated by local pollutions, they actually measure the well mixed value of CO2, which most certainly is not the case with the measurements making up your graph. Think about it, why does the violent swings stop when a proper measurements station is intalled at Hawaii?

The evidence are very solid. 1) The human emissions are twice the annual atmospheric rise, thus the earth currently works as a sink for human emissions. 2) Plants discriminates against C13 and thus a plant has a lower C13/C12 ratio than the atmosphere from where it draws its coal. Coal and oil is made of plants and therefore also have a lower C13/C12 ratio than the atmosphere. If the atmospheeric rise is due to fossil fuels you would expect the atmospheric C13/C12 ratio to decrease as well in a predictable manner. And this is exactly what is seen, thus the human contribution to the atmospheric rise leaves a finger print (this is only one of many finger prints) that you wouldn't expect if the rise had another source. 3) If you look historically, there is an odd look to the recent peak which just happen to coincide with the industrial revolution The studies by Jarowski and Beck are simply absurd. And I'm not sure how the rest relates to the points I make.

The rise is 100% manmade. The sinuspattern is seasonal variation. What I've written is accurate. And what does is matter that the human emissions are 3% of the natural exchange when this exchange contributes nothing to the rise of atmospheric CO2?

There is a natural exchange between the atmosphere and the earth, but this exchange leaves the amount if CO2 in the atmosphere unchanged (over a whole year). The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising fast, this rise 100% manmade and the greenhouse effect is a function of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, so this rise and its cause is the interesting factor here. In the sense that your fact is true, it has no implications for AGW. You compare the human contribution to this natural exchange, but how does that amount to an objection of AGW when this exchange contributes nothing to the increase of atmospheric CO2? What do you say here then: How should this be interpeted as to fullfill the crirterias of being both true and being a substaintial objection to AGW? Why do you think CO2 is called a greenhouse gas and Nitrogen is not? And how do you explain that the rise of atmospheric CO2 is about half of the human emissions, this implies that the earth is currently working as a sink for human CO2. To claim that the rise of CO2 has another cause than human emissions commits you to a theory that you will have a very hard time to find support for, even among sceptics.

What I say is this: the objection that the man-made contribution to the net increase of atmospehric CO2 is less than 1 % is, objectively, a joke; the correct figure is slightly higher, namely 100%. The 1% figure is the human addition in relation to the natural exchange between the earth and the atmosphere, but this exchange is a zero sum exchange and countributes nothing to the net increase (over the year). In the sense that the 1% figure is true, it has no implications for AGW, it's an argument that sounds powerful but is really worthless, and you would know it was worthless if you had taken the time to investigate what a climatolgist confronted with this fact would answer. Wouldn't that also be the objective approach, that driven by curiosity you would seek out the counterarguments from the other side until it was either obvious who was right or until you couldn't decide? This simple approach would weed out silly arguments like the one above (an argument that would be destroyed in the first round), and it requires no more than that you are able and willing to challange your preconceptions.

Do you really think that a climatologist confronted with this "fact", that the human net contribution to the atmospheric CO2-concentraion is less than 1%, wouldn't have an answer to it? If your objection is true, then it would be a very powerful argument against AGW that could be understood by a 5-year old. The implication is that those scientists who believe in AGW despite of your objection must be either stupid, massively uninformed about their own area of study or they must be part of an international conspiracy where they are told to avoid or deny the existence of this powerful "fact". But why would you expect any of this? There is also the possibilty that If you did confront a climatologist with this devestating "fact", maybe he would give you an answer that would make you realise that your objection is silly. And indeed he would. The interesting question is why you haven't bothered to seek out his answer. This is true of all your objections, they are in fact quite lame, which you would know if you took some time to study the other side. In the sense your objections are true, they consist of facts well known to every climatologist, and they are all taken into account.

I think the current issue regarding the surface temperature record is quite telling. On one side you have scientists who think that the urban heat island effect is a prefectly legitimate concern, they study the matter, they publish thier findings in peer reviewed jounals, the IPCC compiles the scientific literature and report the findings, and since the evidence (multiple studies over many years with different methods) happen to support the conclusion that the urban heat island effect has very little impact on the global trend that is what IPCC reports. On the other hand we have sceptics who claim to just "know" that the surface trend is totally dominated by urban effects. However, for some reason thier scientific output on the matter is close to zero, which is a bit odd given that they "know" that the signal is substantial and by what mechanism the signal is produced. Why not write up a scientific report and show how to extract the signal from the global trend and submit the findings a scientific jounal? I don't claim that IPCC is flawless or that there isn't room for doubt or disagreement, but I think you might benefit from reviewing your own biases, you should view IPCC with an open mind and show some scepticism about sceptics as well. The argument above is good example of a quite non-impressive claim by sceptics. I brought the isse up because I think that you and Bob Carter are cherrypicking your data. Why is Bob Carters single Greenland graph superior to multiple global multi proxy studies that all show that the current as warmer than the medival warm period? Look at the wikipedia graph and the references. If I were using the current warming trend on Svalbard as represenative for the global trend, then I'm sure you would object.

It's political in the sense that the question whether the earth is warming, whether it's due to man and whether preemption of some kind is beneficial, is a question for politicians. The compilation procedure seems pretty straightforward, the scientific literature is reviewd and general conclusion are agreed upon by the experts. Not everyone agrees, which of course isn't surprising. Let's look at the specific question at hand, urban heat islands. You will find a lot of sceptics claiming that the global surface trend is dominated by an urban effect. There is however a slight difference between making a bold claim based on the fact that it is conceivable that there is such a signal, and making a claim based on actual crunching of the numbers. What IPCC does is to review the work done by those who have crunched the numbers, and the evidence in this case is simply that the urban heat effect has a very small impact on the global trend. You also have to take into account that the surface record is consistent with a host of other observations like borehole temperatures, recession of the glaciers and changes in marine temperature. I suppose that you are familiar with the efforts of Anthony Watts, here is a quite interesting piece on the results of that effort. I did and I remember Bob Carter showing a proxy graph from Greenland. I can't remeber anything global though. Most global and northern hemispehere proxy studies I've seen show the present to be considerably warmer than the medival warm period. Manns hockey stick have been replaced by a goalkeeper's hockey stick, but there is still a long blade at the end. Here is a nice spaghetti graph from Wikipedia, there is also references to all the studies.

This is where IPCC comes in quite handy. An a priori concern for an urban heat island effect on the global trend seems perfectly sensible. The IPCC concludes the following: Thus, efforts to discern a substantial urban heat island signal on the global trend has failed. The surface record seem quite solid. Here is en extremely good blog post on MSU satellites describing the great difficulties to establish a reliable long term trend from the raw data. Which is why I provided a graph with three independent temperature estimates. Also, if you wanto check whether NASA is faking the science, feel free to do it, the data and source code for the estimations can be found here. You show one proxy for one site. Can you provide something more global?

Thales, your graphs aren't convincing. The first graph shows US surface temperature, USA is about 2% of the total earth area, thus it is hardly represenatative for the global temperature change. Here is a much better graph, using all the three major global temperature estimates, NASA GISS, NCDC and HadCRU. The trend lines are 1975-2000 regression fits, and they clearly show that "global warming stopped 1998" is a claim unsupported by facts (the graph is from here): Your second graph is even less convincing, showing a proxy for the sea temperature in the Saragasso Sea.

Isn't this just an empirical claim like: "As far as we know, voilition is the only exception to determinsm". Is there any reason why volition is the only mechanism consitent with different outcomes given identical initial conditions? I have no problem with someone making an empirical claim about what entities are subsumed under determinism. But Objectivists claim that philosphy is the base of science, and if your claim that determinism is a philosophical must at the level of electrons, then we can rule out certain scientific theories on those grounds. But I have seen no philosphical argument for why determinsm must be the case at all levels except humans and if you want to rule out scientific theories then you would need a rather powerful argument. Your post amount to an assertion where you pick some entities and based on your acquaintance with their natures you claim that they obey determinsm, and then you extend the claim to all entities except humans. That is not an argument poweful enough to rule out scientific theories who claim indeterminism on grounds of observations as well.

So he could have said: there are only one set of actions possible to an enity at any given instant, the set consistent with the entitiy's nature. This set might contain one action or many.? Then you agree that the law of idenity doesn't preclude that facts involving an electron (but no humans) could have been otherwise? Then, how does Peikoff support the following:

I quoted this: And you responded with this, which happens to be a perfectly valid restatement of determinsm, and your only premise is the law of idenity: Now you say this: It obvious that this is consonant with the quote from Franz Kiekeben and stands in contradiction with your own quote.