Global Warming

[Thales]

The link to the IPCC comments is very interesting! It is regrettable that science has been politicized in this way; what would have been better would be for all these experts to be locked in a room together, and asked to come out with an opinion for us, no matter how detailed and full of exceptions and convoluted the opinion may be.

With that said, where is the flaw(s) in their reasoning for the insignificance of urban heat to influence the results?

You'll get a partial answer if you start at about 5 minutes into part four of the Bob Carter lecture I referenced above.

[Freddy]

The IPCC is not a credible source. Do you realize it's a *political* document?

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 have. Watch the videos I referenced.

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 Manns hockey stick have been replaced by a goalkeeper's hockey stick, but there is still a long blade at the end.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.

Edited February 5, 2008 by Freddy

[Thales]

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.

I'll put it to you this way, since you continue to push this. At the very least you have to acknowledge that it is a complete fraud to claim there is anything near a consensus regarding the issue. There isn't. Hundreds, probably thousands, of qualified scientists don't agree with the claims, and I have provided video evidence of many top flight scientists disagreeing strongly with the AGW idea. That's another point, we aren't getting just your average scientist, we're also getting top flight scientists with long standing reputations. This is because some people have too much integrity to let their minds be compromised by others.

An excerpt from that article I referenced above:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/968

An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.

Two of these seven were contacted by NRSP for the purposes of this article - Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand and Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph, Canada. Concerning the “Greenhouse gas forcing …” statement above, Professor McKitrick explained “A categorical summary statement like this is not supported by the evidence in the IPCC WG I report. Evidence shown in the report suggests that other factors play a major role in climate change, and the specific effects expected from greenhouse gases have not been observed.”

Dr. Gray labeled the WG I statement as “Typical IPCC doubletalk” asserting “The text of the IPCC report shows that this is decided by a guess from persons with a conflict of interest, not from a tested model.”

Determining the level of support expressed by reviewers’ comments is subjective but a slightly generous evaluation indicates that just five reviewers endorsed the crucial ninth chapter. Four had vested interests and the other made only a single comment for the entire 11-chapter report. The claim that 2,500 independent scientist reviewers agreed with this, the most important statement of the UN climate reports released this year, or any other statement in the UN climate reports, is nonsense.

Science does not under gird this movement, propaganda does, and all I'm seeing is a lot of money pumped into a movement pushed by lots of dishonest and rationalistic people who attack anyone who disagrees with them. Smearing and ruining reputations is their primary means of getting things done. Well, my response to such bastards is to draw my sword and cut them down, because that's all they deserve. Take no prisoners.

As to the Greenland ice core, I brought that up in response to your dismissal of the Sargasso sea data and there are also tree ring proxies. The movie Doomsday Called off mentions this in passing (just have to listen to the first segment, about ten minutes, of that video). It's at the same link as the Bob Carter lecture.

For the really long term temperature trends, millions of years, deep sea cores are used, also in Professor Carter's lecture.

[Freddy]

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.

As to the Greenland ice core, I brought that up in response to your dismissal of the Sargasso sea data and there are also tree ring proxies.

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.

Edited February 5, 2008 by Freddy

[RationalBiker]

Well it looks like we may have a real global warming problem to worry about.

We only have a billion years or so. We better start trying to figure out how to get our sun in check or figure out where we are going to move.

[softwareNerd]

Even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists last year had to eat crow and revise its stance to say that man was contributing to it.

Do you have a reference to this? The "position statement" that comes up on their web-site says they have no idea what's going on:

In the last century growth in human populations has increased energy use. This has contributed additional carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other gases to the atmosphere. Although the AAPG membership is divided on the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO₂ has on recent and potential global temperature increases, the AAPG believes that expansion of scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate is important. This research should be undertaken by appropriate federal agencies involved in climate research and their associated grant and contract programs.

[Michael McGuire]

Do you have a reference to this? The "position statement" that comes up on their web-site says they have no idea what's going on:

What's noteworthy is the text of the 2007 statement compared to their position on AGW up until that point, which was that there was no evidence man was affecting climate change. The Wikipedia article noted some of the revisions, which, although still equivocating on the significance mankind's role, admits that is is a contributing factor.

2007 AAPG revised position

Acknowledging that the association's previous policy statement on Climate Change was "not supported by a significant number of our members and prospective members",[9] AAPG's formal stance was reviewed and changed in July of 2007.

The new statement formally accepts human activity as at least one cause of climate change and states that the remaining uncertainty among its members is limited to "the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO2 has" on climate. AAPG also stated support for "research to narrow probabilistic ranges on the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on global climate."[10]

AAPG also withdrew its earlier criticism of other scientific organizations and research, stating that "Certain climate simulation models predict that the warming trend will continue, as reported through NAS, AGU, AAAS, and AMS. AAPG respects these scientific opinions but wants to add that the current climate warming projections could fall within well-documented natural variations in past climate and observed temperature data. These data do not necessarily support the maximum case scenarios forecast in some models."

[Thales]

What's noteworthy is the text of the 2007 statement compared to their position on AGW up until that point, which was that there was no evidence man was affecting climate change. The Wikipedia article noted some of the revisions, which, although still equivocating on the significance mankind's role, admits that is is a contributing factor.

I'll preface this by noting that I've made it clear that I consider global warming to be a complete fraud, which has the purpose of harming harm mankind. I have given innumerable solid and reputable sources on this. I just think there is little excuse for believing the propaganda short of being new to the issue.

As to the Wikipedia, it is useless for this issue. There is a band of people out there who continue editing it in order to distort the truth and outright lie. I mean, they are very proactive about it. I've seen outright lies about people I know. I don't know them personally, but through a newsletter. There was a recent Washington Times article on the matter. It went something like this, the Wikipedia said a scientist (I forget his name, I'd have to hunt it down) now agrees that there is consensus on the GW issue. So, the guy with the Times checked the scientist himself, via email, and the scientist said that has not changed his position and that he doesn't agree with the claim of consensus. So, the Washington Times guy went and updated Wikipedia to reflect this. In no time it was changed back with the explanation that the scientist had changed his mind. Well, clearly the Washington Times guy had the most direct evidence you can have that the guy had not and he explained that. Didn't matter, it was changed right back again. He tried several times before giving up.

This is how useful Wikipedia is for the issue of global warming. I think it's great for checking specs on my graphics card, but it doesn’t work for highly charged political issues.

[softwareNerd]

What's noteworthy is the text of the 2007 statement compared to their position on AGW up until that point, which was that there was no evidence man was affecting climate change.

The wiki points to the same two-page position from which I quoted. Since, that's the primary reference, let's simply drop the wiki. Could you point to anything in that two page position paper that suggests that they now say that man is affecting climate change?

I cannot imagine them saying (in the supposed previous statement) that man was not affecting climate change. Given what they are, I would assume that they said that there was no evidence for it. If you have a link to the earlier position paper, that would help.

In other words, it sounds like they might have changed from saying that there was no evidence of man's role, to saying they did not know if man had a role... which is not change in position at all.

If you agree with this, then here's a follow-up question: what do you think of the way the wiki summarizes their position, versus their actual position.

(I fixed the article to be a more honest description of the position-paper. Let's see if the GW cultists let it stand.)

Edited May 14, 2008 by softwareNerd

[Thales]

Here is the article I was referring to. It was the Financial Post, not the Washington Times, and the author was Lawrence Solomon. The scientist was Benny Peiser.

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/s...=440268&p=1

Title:

Wikipedia's zealots

Published: Saturday, April 12, 2008

Here is a key excerpt:

When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe. CCNet daily circulates articles disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change. No publication better informs readers about climate-change controversies, and no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Peiser wrote back saying he couldn't see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them

after editing them, I wondered. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.

[Michael McGuire]

The wiki points to the same two-page position from which I quoted. Since, that's the primary reference, let's simply drop the wiki. Could you point to anything in that two page position paper that suggests that they now say that man is affecting climate change?

Okay here is the most relevant line to this discussion from the position paper:

Although the AAPG membership is divided on the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO2 has on recent and potential global temperature increases, the AAPG believes that expansion of scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate is important.

They are divided on the degree of influence. This is pretty vague but implicit in that statement is that there is general agreement among AAPG members that there is an influence from man on global temperature, i.e. climate, not just CO2 levels. In my judgment you have misread the statement.

I cannot imagine them saying (in the supposed previous statement) that man was not affecting climate change. Given what they are, I would assume that they said that there was no evidence for it. If you have a link to the earlier position paper, that would help.

No one said their previous position was a definitive "man is not causing it" stance.

If you agree with this, then here's a follow-up question: what do you think of the way the wiki summarizes their position, versus their actual position.

(I fixed the article to be a more honest description of the position-paper. Let's see if the GW cultists let it stand.)

Yikes, SN, you changed the characterization of the summary! Now the wiki says something completely different than what is in the AAPG position paper. I suppose it will get changed back now

[softwareNerd]

Yikes, SN, you changed the characterization of the summary! Now the wiki says something completely different than what is in the AAPG position paper. I suppose it will get changed back now

The previous version was an inaccurate description of the position paper. The previous wiki-author took the single word "degree" to mean that the AAPG now thinks climate change is man-made. The author took clearly-expressed doubt and used it to demonstrate acceptance. It was an excellent demonstration of the meaning of "spin".

What I mainly did was to replace the wiki-author's description of what they said with what they actually did say: i.e. by expanding the quote.

[SBP2009]

OK, suppose, just suppose, it to be incontrovertibly proven that Al Gore is right. The average global temperature is going to increase by--let me be very generous--5°F. So it's going to be 5 degrees warmer on an average day. Why exactly should I give a damn?

Given the length and harshness of Canadian winters, an average daily temperature increase of 5 degrees would be welcome!

[aequalsa]

Bad news! Global cooling may be just around the corner. Perhaps we should lobby for less fuel efficient cars.

I haven't read the whole of this thread(subject doesn't interest me much) so I apologize if this has been brought up, but some might find this interesting.

"Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says"

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...rs-warming.html

[Benpercent]

Wouldn't people like Al Gore just ignore evidence against global warming until it comes to the point their evasion is blatant? I mean, why stop the anti-man movement while it's popular?

[Michael McGuire]

Bad news! Global cooling may be just around the corner. Perhaps we should lobby for less fuel efficient cars.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...rs-warming.html

Surely in the face of this one scientist's evidence, which apparently no other scientist agrees with, public policy must be altered.

Wouldn't people like Al Gore just ignore evidence against global warming until it comes to the point their evasion is blatant? I mean, why stop the anti-man movement while it's popular?

Is Al Gore the problem, or all those pesky scientists?

[KevinDW78]

Yeah it's Memorial Day in the last week of May and I am sitting in my house in a sweater because it's 45 degrees outside. oh and by the way - I live in the desert climate of Utah.... Yup, definately global warming

[Thales]

Surely in the face of this one scientist's evidence, which apparently no other scientist agrees with, public policy must be altered.

The solar cycle? There are lots of scientists who believe it's the primary cause driving climate. It's not exactly old news and since a causal mechanism --for the cosmic ray theory -- was discovered about a year ago, the evidence for the link to cloud cover is extremely strong.

Is Al Gore the problem, or all those pesky scientists?

Well, if you want to get it down to that, then I'll stack the “I don't believe in catastrophic anthropogenic warming” scientists up against those who dot any day. Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, et.al., are the cream of the crop.

[TuringAI]

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier thread.  -sN ***
 

Why do people automatically concede that IF global warming exists and is caused by humans, something should be done about it, typically involving government or at the very least altruism? Is it really our right to an automatic good produced (not in the intentional sense, mind you) by nature? Nobody owns 'the environment in general' and in particular the atmosphere, so isn't the fact that we live by means of something which we don't control, such as the atmosphere, a matter of luck and not of principle?

Ayn Rand said that the issue of global warming is NOT a political issue. I agree with her. All humans are going to have an impact on the planet. Some of this impact is unintentional. Who's to say which human actions must be stopped to protect everybody's ability to derive a benefit to what technically isn't theirs? More importantly, even if we could pinpoint a cause, how would this cause be an infringement of rights?

Humans possess the capacity to alter nature according to whatever reason they may have. Shouldn't we be focused on either determining a system of property rights that would work with respect to atmosphere, or better yet, working on a technology that will enable us to live independently of the global environment?

That's just my two cents on the issue. Most people here don't believe global warming exists. My stance on it is that it does exist... but who cares?

Edited May 9, 2014 by softwareNerd

[EC]

Ayn Rand said that the issue of global warming is NOT a political issue.

I agree that it is not a political issue, but I would like to see where Ayn Rand said this about global warming, since up until about the time she passed "they" were more worried about global cooling and a new Ice Age happening.

Edited July 22, 2008 by EC

[01503]

Just because a majority of people say/believe in the same concept does not mean that it is necessarily true. Copernicus was in (as we all know) the overwhelmed minority when he proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and not the other way around. If I was in a room with a bunch of delusional people (9th grade, 2nd period), and they tried to convince me of something I knew to be false, does that make their idea true because of the arbitrary fact (as we tend to forget it is) that I stand smaller in number? Global warming shouldn't be a political issue, but that is exactly what it has become. Look up some prophesies (as they act as if these claims are) from 1970 Earth Day (the first one):

http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/pressroom/.../4_22_2008.html

My grandfather used to tell me that the world has almost ended over a hundred times within his lifetime. I think that holds just as true now.

[DavidOdden]

Why do people automatically concede that IF global warming exists and is caused by humans, something should be done about it, typically involving government or at the very least altruism?

They believe that the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare.

[KevinDW78]

I hope that 30 years from now, society will generally consider it a laughable joke to mention the title "An Inconvenient Truth" or the name "Al Gore".

[01503]

I hope that 30 years from now, society will generally consider it a laughable joke to mention the title "An Inconvenient Truth" or the name "Al Gore".

ARI's working on it

[D'kian]

I hope that 30 years from now, society will generally consider it a laughable joke to mention the title "An Inconvenient Truth" or the name "Al Gore".

Remember right after Rita and Katrina the media was rife with predictions of even more category 5 hurricanes for the 2206 and 2007 seasons? 06 and 07 passed and were milder than 05.

Well, a few days ago when there was a tropical storm outtering about the Atlantic, my father made some comment about it. I forget what. I answered, sarcastically, that at least we could hope for a respite from the terrible 06 and 07 seasons, which were of course much, much worse than Rita and Katrina combined.

His response? He told me it would get worse this year!

Last winter we experienced colder weather than usual. I made this joke at the office "If I'd known this Global Warming would get so cold, I'd have taken it more seriously." One of my coworkers said "You should. The warming will get us much colder winters and cruder storm yet." He was entirely serious and earnest about it (he bought Gore's DVD and ahs seen it a number of times).

So, don't get your hopes up. The best you can expect is that when the Global Warming/Climate Change fad passes, we'll move on to a different end of the world crisis, one that won't require government (planetary alignment, Y2010K, Halley's II, the Return of the 91 Eclipse, or something along those lines).