Global Warming. Fact or grossly exaggerated??

[AK-47]

No, just realized I have to up my bullshit detector when talking with you

You need to up your bullshit detector too when listening to all these global warming alarmists

I take it that you've given up your climategate bullshit line then

No, I already said my piece. I dont believe the explanations the investigative panel came up with, and I think they fudged the numbers. One very simple example is this email by Kevin Trenberth:

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".

Now if there's no global warming, dont you think they should be happy about that, instead of thinking its a "travesty"??

 

[GPIDEAL]

Creation science is junk science, and any proponent therefor is not credible when it comes to science.

 

[basketcase]

Yup, its called "common sense" groggy. When you get older you'll learn to see through people's bullshit better.
...

Common sense means ignoring the multitudes of climate scientists because you don't like their conclusion?

 

[basketcase]

Creation science is junk science, and any proponent therefor is not credible when it comes to science.

I find that offensive. Using the term science when dealing with creationism or intelligent design that is.


If AK wants to say he has FAITH that global warming is junk that's fine but it ain't science.

 

[GPIDEAL]

I find that offensive. Using the term science when dealing with creationism or intelligent design that is.


If AK wants to say he has FAITH that global warming is junk that's fine but it ain't science.

It definitely is an oxymoron. Sorry about that.

http://junkscience.com/what-is-junk-science/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience

 

[Moviefan-2]

Are you standing by your claim that creationism is science?

Given that I'm an atheist, I think you would have a difficult time convincing anyone that I said anything remotely resembling that.

What I said is that you accepted the terms of the bet, and the terms were fulfilled, in full.

You lost. Stop being a baby about it.

 

[groggy]

Given that I'm an atheist, I think you would have a difficult time convincing anyone that I said anything remotely resembling that.

You supplied a creationist as your example of a 'legit' scientist. It's obvious that you can't tell creationism from science and have lost the bet.

 

[Moviefan-2]

How was it crap?

Since it seems to mean so much to you and others, I will happily explain.

Let me begin by assuming I'm the only one who has actually read it. It would be too depressing to think that others may have read it and weren't able to determine that it is completely without merit.

Here's the link: http://www.jamespowell.org/

The person who put the post together (on principle, I refuse to call it "research" or dignify it with any other language that suggests it has merit) did a search of 10,885 articles that he said were peer reviewed. In his judgment, only two articles "rejected" anthropogenic global warming.

What did the rest say? We have no idea.

The person who crafted the post said the 10,885 articles were ones "with" topics or keyword phrases such as "global warming," "global climate change" and "climate change." No further details are provided regarding content.

The obvious questions for the guy who put the post together are:

-- How many of the articles "with" references to the climate were clearly addressing anthropogenic global warming, as opposed to changes in the climate that may have occurred through natural variants?: He doesn't say.

-- How many articles specifically support the premise of anthropogenic global warming?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that do support the premise, how many indicate that they believe the affect on the climate is significant enough to be a concern?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that support the premise, how many (if any) provide any evidence or valuable research into the matter: He doesn't say.

What can we conclude from this? Absolutely nothing.

To dismiss it as mere "propaganda" is an insult to people who produce propaganda. I honestly don't believe I can find the right words to effectively describe its utter uselessness.

Frankly, I find it a bit depressing that some of the people on here who claim to be believers in "science" would champion such extreme stupidity.

 

[Moviefan-2]

You supplied a creationist as your example of a 'legit' scientist.

The terms of the bet that you accepted included a precise definition of how "legit" would be decided: That the climatologists are employed and do research at recognized universities. All three met the conditions you accepted, in full.

It's too bad for you that you didn't actually read the details of the bet. But that's your problem.

This isn't skepticalscience.com. You don't get to rewrite the bet after you have already lost.

You lost the bet. Stop being a baby about it.

 

[blackrock13]

Since it seems to mean so much to you and others, I will happily explain.

Let me begin by assuming I'm the only one who has actually read it. It would be too depressing to think that others may have read it and weren't able to determine that it is completely without merit.

Here's the link: http://www.jamespowell.org/

The person who put the post together (on principle, I refuse to call it "research" or dignify it with any other language that suggests it has merit) did a search of 10,885 articles that he said were peer reviewed. In his judgment, only two articles "rejected" anthropogenic global warming.

What did the rest say? We have no idea.

The person who crafted the post said the 10,885 articles were ones "with" topics or keyword phrases such as "global warming," "global climate change" and "climate change." No further details are provided regarding content.

The obvious questions for the guy who put the post together are:

-- How many of the articles "with" references to the climate were clearly addressing anthropogenic global warming, as opposed to changes in the climate that may have occurred through natural variants?: He doesn't say.

-- How many articles specifically support the premise of anthropogenic global warming?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that do support the premise, how many indicate that they believe the affect on the climate is significant enough to be a concern?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that support the premise, how many (if any) provide any evidence or valuable research into the matter: He doesn't say.

What can we conclude from this? Absolutely nothing.

To dismiss it as mere "propaganda" is an insult to people who produce propaganda. I honestly don't believe I can find the right words to effectively describe its utter uselessness.

Frankly, I find it a bit depressing that some of the people on here who claim to be believers in "science" would champion such extreme stupidity.

It's not a case of meaning anything, but when you say something is crap, you at least have to explain what that is based on to be given some credit.

 

[blackrock13]

Given that I'm an atheist, I think you would have a difficult time convincing anyone that I said anything remotely resembling that.

What I said is that you accepted the terms of the bet, and the terms were fulfilled, in full.

You lost. Stop being a baby about it.

I have no doubt you didn't realize one or more of your research scientist was a creationist, but it's also clear you started off in this thread not knowing the background of most of them, especially their interrelationship with Heartland and such.

 

[Moviefan-2]

It's not a case of meaning anything, but when you say something is crap, you at least have to explain what that is based on to be given some credit.

It was late in the evening when I looked at it.

Although it only took me a few seconds to determine it was rubbish, I didn't have time last night to provide the details in a post.

I have no doubt you didn't realize one or more of your research scientist was a creationist...

I looked into his background before I added his name. I just didn't care.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought it was already remarkably generous of me to have agreed to Groggy's condition that the scientists had to be climatologists, since the scientists who have made the most important observations on this subject aren't climatologists.

I wasn't going to waste my Saturday looking for climatologists whose views I necessarily agree with.

As long as they were climatologists who don't support the IPCC's findings and were employees and researchers at recognized universities (fulfilling the terms of the bet), that was good enough for me.

 

[blackrock13]

It was late in the evening when I looked at it.

Although it only took me a few seconds to determine it was rubbish, I didn't have time last night to provide the details in a post.



Actually, I didn't care.

I think it was already quite generous of me to have agreed to limiting the search to climatologists, since the scientists who I believe have made the most important observations in this area aren't climatologists.

I wasn't going to waste my Saturday looking for climatologists whose views I necessarily agree with. As long as they were climatologists who don't support the IPCC's findings and were employees and researchers at recognized universities (fulfilling the terms of the bet), that was good enough for me.

So scientists who don't specialist in climatology know more than 10,000 climatologist ? Do you go to your dentist to get your car tuned?

 

[blackrock13]

Since it seems to mean so much to you and others, I will happily explain.

Let me begin by assuming I'm the only one who has actually read it. It would be too depressing to think that others may have read it and weren't able to determine that it is completely without merit.

Here's the link: http://www.jamespowell.org/

The person who put the post together (on principle, I refuse to call it "research" or dignify it with any other language that suggests it has merit) did a search of 10,885 articles that he said were peer reviewed. In his judgment, only two articles "rejected" anthropogenic global warming.

What did the rest say? We have no idea.

The person who crafted the post said the 10,885 articles were ones "with" topics or keyword phrases such as "global warming," "global climate change" and "climate change." No further details are provided regarding content.

The obvious questions for the guy who put the post together are:

-- How many of the articles "with" references to the climate were clearly addressing anthropogenic global warming, as opposed to changes in the climate that may have occurred through natural variants?: He doesn't say.

-- How many articles specifically support the premise of anthropogenic global warming?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that do support the premise, how many indicate that they believe the affect on the climate is significant enough to be a concern?: He doesn't say.

-- Of those that support the premise, how many (if any) provide any evidence or valuable research into the matter: He doesn't say.

What can we conclude from this? Absolutely nothing.

To dismiss it as mere "propaganda" is an insult to people who produce propaganda. I honestly don't believe I can find the right words to effectively describe its utter uselessness.

Frankly, I find it a bit depressing that some of the people on here who claim to be believers in "science" would champion such extreme stupidity.

He gave you the access to the abstracts and told you where to find the articles, wtf else do you want? A detail posted review of all 10,000 articles. I did much the same for the latest 2000+ articles. You say they are propaganda, but have not bothered to read an of them.

His methodology was quite solid for a boolean search of a data base of that size and gave him just what he wanted.

 

[Moviefan-2]

So scientists who don't specialist in climatology know more than 10,000 climatologist ? Do you go to your dentist to get your car tuned?

The workings of the climate are far more complex than is covered in the research done by climatologists.

Freeman Dyson would be an obvious example of a brilliant scientist who doesn't support the IPCC's reports but isn't a climatologist. I would definitely trust his views over the likes of Mann, Jones, Schmitt, Hansen, Trenberth, etc.

 

[Moviefan-2]

His methodology ... gave him just what he wanted.

Trash propaganda, and nothing more.

 

[blackrock13]

The workings of the climate are far more complex than is covered in the research done by climatologists.

Freeman Dyson would be an obvious example of a brilliant scientist who doesn't support the IPCC's reports but isn't a climatologist. I would definitely trust his views over the likes of Mann, Jones, Schmitt, Hansen, Trenberth, etc.

So we haveFreeman Dyson, whose area of expertise has nothing to do with climate science. Or Michael Mann, whose results have been independently duplicated, reproduced ad nauseum, and who happens to be a highly respected (yes, you heard me -- a HIGHLY RESPECTED, whether you like it or not) climate scientist.

Here's one of Dyson latest works from 2007, maybe his latest. http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf No need to copy it.

and here is a critique; http://initforthegold.blogspot.ca/2007/08/dyson-exegesis.html

Freeman Dyson starts an article with the words "My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models". Yet his article is hardly about climate models, or their relationship to experts or citizens, at all.

I personally have no disagreement with the "third heresy", the idea that the USA is at the end of its hegemony, by the way. I actually think this is occurring now, not 50 years hence as Dyson suggests. I have no idea what this has to do with the purported intent of Dyson's essay, though.

The primary practical (as opposed to theoretical) problem our field needs address these days is to identify specific regional trends and risks, to inform adaptation. This is as opposed to the mitigation question, whether and how much to change our behavior to reduce climate impacts.

The question of how much to mitigate or not is not primarily about climate science anymore, but about economics, ecology, and values. Dyson points out that this is not "a problem in meteorology", and on this point, it must be said, he is very much correct. We already know that the global temperature sensitivity to equivalent CO2 doubling is near 3 degrees C.

The fact that this is considered to be in doubt is a consequence of people using meteorological uncertainty as a diversion, in order to avoid the issue for as long as possible. Dyson fails to understand how this is happening. Like most older scientists he lives in an older, more civilized world than the rest of us occupy. So he misunderstands where the controversy comes from.

That said, his position seems to meander: carbon is a land management problem, but it isn't a problem anyway, and we might kick off an ice age and we might not and... Many of the common misconceptions and not uncommon hubris are scrambled together here. This isn't a serious article, it's an intelligent but essentially uninformed rant. Unfortunately I have to call it irresponsible.

It's also a bit incoherent. So I respond below to some of the individual points made without further summary.

Dyson's text is in blue, my responses in black. Hopefully people inclined to take Dyson seriously on this matter will come by here and think again.

PART I Paragraph 2

The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds.

Sure...

That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Um, I must have missed a step here... In fact climate model experts do not particularly "believe" models. Our skepticism is informed and consequently rather complex. Do we believe this, did we capture that... So here Dyson is completely off base.

Paragraph 3

the warming is not global

This is just confusion. He should read my realclimate article on the definition of "global warming".

Paragraph 4

The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are emitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one hundredth of an inch per year.

Per YEAR!!! On every piece of viable land, under economic use or otherwise... He certainly identifies a viable carbon sequestration sink, but the idea of an inch of graphite per century being redistributed on all land everywhere in soil restructuring is hardly a trivial matter to handwave away.

Anyway, notice he is already wandering away from climate modeling and has said very little about it.

Paragraph 5

Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology.

Well, it certainly isn't an EASY problem in land management. However, I agree with Dyson that the focus on meteorology is misplaced in the mitigation arguments. Climate science is crucial on the adaptation side, but all the focus on it on the mitigation side is a red herring and a vicious one.

What Dyson is proposing here seems at first blush unrealistic to me. Of course I'm always hopeful when a mitigation startegy is proposed that doesn't involve too much disruption. I don't know if he's talked to soil experts or agronomists. What it is, is a very coarse approach to a mitigation strategy.

Let's be pleased, at least, that Dyson acknowledges a problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Paragraph 7

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet.

Well, the topic has suddenly lurched to ecology. This has little to do with climatology. I think I can say that ecologists I know would tend to agree with this, but it has nothing to do with what is normally charitably described as "anthropogenic global warming skepticism". That's not the disturbing part, though. This is:

When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured.

Yikes! So should the patient keep ingesting the toxin meanwhile?

PART III Paragraph 3

If human activities were not disturbing the climate, a new ice-age might already have begun.

Maybe so.

We do not know how to answer the most important question: do our human activities in general, and our burning of fossil fuels in particular, make the onset of the next ice-age more likely or less likely?

Nonsense. (He wheels out the usual misinterpretation of Broecker's ocean-driven change scenario, but no scientist is expecting any ocean circulation changes to overwhelm the huge warming and kick off an ice age.) This is simply a layman's mistake and totally out of line with the evidence. Here he is simply substantively wrong, and repeating a common misconception.

PART IV Paragraph 2

First, if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? Second, if we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today? My second heresy answers yes to the first question and no to the second. It says that the warm climate of six thousand years ago with the wet Sahara is to be preferred, and that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help to bring it back. I am not saying that this heresy is true. I am only saying that it will not do us any harm to think about it.

It does no harm to think about it, but it can do a great deal of harm for a celebrated person to speculate in an uninformed and incorrect way. We are changing the overall forcing of the system much more than the shift from 6000 years ago to today. The extent to which this is the case is quantifiable.

Essentially the natural shifts on that time scale amount to moving solar input from one season to another. The climate system responds in interesting ways, ways which, by the way, are replicated by climate models operating from first principles.

Our present forcing operates at all latitudes in the same direction. The system cannot respond identically. Humans are focussed on climate at the surface, but physics cares about the entire depth of the atmosphere; surface conditions are an important but not a dominant component. We cannot replicate a prior natural climate with an atmosphere whose radiatively active components are different than those seen in nature.

The idea that we will drift smoothly into and settle down to a lusher more convenient climate is a fantasy and a rather stupid one. Yes, a blundering near unconscious drunk could, in fact, blunder into a wonderful jet-setters party and be celebrated for his wit and plied with champagne and caviar. This is no reason for him not to sit down and recover his wits; the champagne thing is rather a long shot.

Pretty much sums it up.

As Jim Hogan puts it;

Dyson might be forgiven such late-in-life contrarianism. He is a hugely accomplished physicist who deserves to be treated with respect. But that doesn't mean he deserves to be taken seriously - at this point in his unrelated career - on an issue on which he has never conducted research or published in legitimate scientific journals.

 

[Moviefan-2]

Or Michael Mann, whose results have been independently duplicated, reproduced ad nauseum, and who happens to be a highly respected (yes, you heard me -- a HIGHLY RESPECTED, whether you like it or not) climate scientist.

I heard you. I just can't believe what I'm reading.

Perhaps you can explain to us why the fake "Nobel laureate" refuses to make his computer codes and raw data available, to determine whether his results actually can be replicated (and whatever happened to the Medieval Warm Period)?

And why did Keith Briffa, the Deputy Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, warn his colleagues not to let Mann push them "beyond where we know is right" (Pages 3 to 4): http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/2011.02.18-IG-to-Inhofe.pdf

And if his research is so sound, why does he insist on attacking anyone who disagrees with him as being "anti-science," a "denier," etc.?

 

[groggy]

The terms of the bet that you accepted included a precise definition of how "legit" would be decided: That the climatologists are employed and do research at recognized universities. All three met the conditions you accepted, in full.
.

I asked for a legit climatologist and you gave me a creationist.
And you still think he's a valid source?

Are you really that stupid?

 

[groggy]

I looked into his background before I added his name. I just didn't care.

So you knew he was a creationist and still thought he was a legit climatologist?
I know that you can't understand the writings of the IPCC or the actual science, but I had no idea you that couldn't tell the difference between religion and science.

Finding a book that's simple enough for you to read is looking like a harder and harder challenge.