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Some help in battling the deniers

Their second favorite tactic is to point to the current weather and say "how can it be the worst snow in recent years and still be global warming".

That is just indicative of how their thought process works. The same people that make that argument also will say things like "If we evolved from monkey's why are their still monkeys?"
 
You are correct, Deuce did not change your words. It was quite sufficient for him to simply refute the validity of your statements.

Except he didn't refute anything I said. I made no comment about the veracity of scandals, etc. I simply stated that the debate has been tainted by scandal.

It would really help if you would learn to ****ing read before you start yammering out the crap you post.
 
The warming in recent years did slow, on a very small scale. (ten years or so) It can be attributed to a slight dip in solar irradiance (the sun's output fluctuates up and down very slightly on a couple-decade cycle) as well as La Nina. (El Nino and La Nina are a cyclical oceanic event in which the ocean releases or absorbs heat) In 1998, we had a peak in solar output combined with the largest El Nino event we've ever recorded, which conspired to create an exceptionally hot year. I think 1995 was also quite hot. This gave the appearance of a slowed warming, but the underlying forcings are still there. (CO2 and water vapor have not decreased, global cloud cover hasn't changes significantly, the earth's orbit doesn't change noticeably on such a small timescale, etc)

Models and measurements show we're entering a new El Nino phase, so 2010 or 2011 are likely to set a new record high temperature.

Getting to your A/B/C. I'll focus on the first two since they pretty much are the heart of C.

A: ) Is a CO2 increase being a major participant in this warming?
Most definitely!


B: ) Is the CO2 increase our fault and not natural? (paraphrased)

spectrographic analysis of CO2 in the atmosphere can actually tell the difference between naturally released CO2 and CO2 released as part of burning fossil fuels. Most of the "new" carbon in the atmosphere comes from us.

The thing I don't trust is how they come up with a list of causes, which may be incomplete due to not understanding elements of climate, and arriving at CO2 as the culprit through the process of elimination. That is not positive evidence.

I will be moire inclined to accept that a major portion of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by fossil fuels, given that they can distinguish isotopes of the Carbon.

None of this approaches the discussion of what ought to be done, if it is in fact true. I don't think anything should be done. I think the earth will adjust and compensate. We should not radically change our economy. We are not even the worst offender. It is a policy issue.
 
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Except he didn't refute anything I said. I made no comment about the veracity of scandals, etc. I simply stated that the debate has been tainted by scandal.

It would really help if you would learn to ****ing read before you start yammering out the crap you post.

I wasn't trying to refute your statement. I know climate science is tainted by scandal. What I was trying to show is that the scandals have no grounds in reality. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't know and doesn't care enough to go find out. You don't seem intent on being any different. If that's the case, perhaps this thread is not for you. Feel free to link some skeptics arguments though, just make sure it's not one I've already addressed.

The thing I don't trust is how they come up with a list of causes, which may be incomplete due to not understanding elements of climate, and arriving at CO2 as the culprit through the process of elimination. That is not positive evidence.
It is possible that there are additional variables that we're not aware of, but it is clear at this point that any new variables will not be very powerful. The reason we know this is that the climate models are very accurate: if you run the computer model backwards against known temperature values, we find that it matches very closely.



Temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years. The black line towards the end is the directly measured temperatures. You'll see a couple of the lines terminate partway back because those measurements were not taken prior to those dates or the method doesn't allow for it. (good luck finding enough 1500 year old trees, for instance) The reason I show this graph is to show that temperature reconstructions are done with a lot of methods, and they all pretty much match.

CO2 was not discovered by elimination. Its absorption spectrum has been known for more than a hundred years, and we fine-tuned that knowledge down to the exact wavelength in the 1950's thanks to the USAF. (they were working on heat-seeking missiles) The theory that this might have a greenhouse effect came more than a hundred years ago as well, but at the time our fossil fuel usage was very small, so it was little more than a curiosity. Still, scientists love those experiments. You can experiment easily on a small scale to prove whether CO2 makes the air absorb more heat. Once that is done, you look for historical evidence that global temperatures have correlated to global CO2 levels, and that has also been established.

None of this approaches the discussion of what ought to be done, if it is in fact true. I don't think anything should be done. I think the earth will adjust and compensate. We should not radically change our economy. We are not even the worst offender. It is a policy issue.

The earth will adjust, certainly. We're in no danger of harming the earth. We are, however, in danger of harming ourselves. We can adapt to changes, but if those changes are too rapid there will be a significant human cost. Crop yields will suffer, increasing hunger issues. Melting ice caps will increase sea levels, slowly taking away usable land. Extreme weather events will increase in frequency. Animal species can only adapt so quickly also. It's not going to kill us all or end human civilization, but it's going to hurt like hell.

Plus, we're going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway. We've already seen how much we depend on the price of oil, with some of the spikes in price over the last couple years. Gas prices in the long term will never go down. We need to move ourselves off this black gooey crap that we pull out of the ground, and while we're doing it we can take care of that carbon issue. Gradual changes are always easier, and the sooner you start the more gradual it can be.
 
Except he didn't refute anything I said. I made no comment about the veracity of scandals, etc. I simply stated that the debate has been tainted by scandal.

It would really help if you would learn to ****ing read before you start yammering out the crap you post.

I wasn't trying to refute your statement. I know climate science is tainted by scandal. What I was trying to show is that the scandals have no grounds in reality. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't know and doesn't care enough to go find out. You don't seem intent on being any different. If that's the case, perhaps this thread is not for you. Feel free to link some skeptics arguments though, just make sure it's not one I've already addressed.

The thing I don't trust is how they come up with a list of causes, which may be incomplete due to not understanding elements of climate, and arriving at CO2 as the culprit through the process of elimination. That is not positive evidence.

It is possible that there are additional variables that we're not aware of, but it is clear at this point that any new variables will not be very powerful. The reason we know this is that the climate models are very accurate: if you run the computer model backwards against known temperature values, we find that it matches very closely.



Temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years. The black line towards the end is the directly measured temperatures. You'll see a couple of the lines terminate partway back because those measurements were not taken prior to those dates or the method doesn't allow for it. (good luck finding enough 1500 year old trees, for instance) The reason I show this graph is to show that temperature reconstructions are done with a lot of methods, and they all pretty much match.

CO2 was not discovered by elimination. Its absorption spectrum has been known for more than a hundred years, and we fine-tuned that knowledge down to the exact wavelength in the 1950's thanks to the USAF. (they were working on heat-seeking missiles) The theory that this might have a greenhouse effect came more than a hundred years ago as well, but at the time our fossil fuel usage was very small, so it was little more than a curiosity. Still, scientists love those experiments. You can experiment easily on a small scale to prove whether CO2 makes the air absorb more heat. Once that is done, you look for historical evidence that global temperatures have correlated to global CO2 levels, and that has also been established.

None of this approaches the discussion of what ought to be done, if it is in fact true. I don't think anything should be done. I think the earth will adjust and compensate. We should not radically change our economy. We are not even the worst offender. It is a policy issue.

The earth will adjust, certainly. We're in no danger of harming the earth. We are, however, in danger of harming ourselves. We can adapt to changes, but if those changes are too rapid there will be a significant human cost. Crop yields will suffer, increasing hunger issues. Melting ice caps will increase sea levels, slowly taking away usable land. Extreme weather events will increase in frequency. Animal species can only adapt so quickly also.

Plus, we're going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway. We've already seen how much we depend on the price of oil, with some of the spikes in price over the last couple years. Gas prices in the long term will never go down. We need to move ourselves off this black gooey crap that we pull out of the ground, and while we're doing it we can take care of that carbon issue. Gradual changes are always easier, and the sooner you start the more gradual it can be.
 
I wasn't trying to refute your statement. I know climate science is tainted by scandal. What I was trying to show is that the scandals have no grounds in reality. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't know and doesn't care enough to go find out. You don't seem intent on being any different. If that's the case, perhaps this thread is not for you. Feel free to link some skeptics arguments though, just make sure it's not one I've already addressed.

I think we understand the exchange we had. Now if Catawba would take a moment to go back and make sure he understands what happened, we could all be on the same page. :lol:
 
I think we understand the exchange we had. Now if Catawba would take a moment to go back and make sure he understands what happened, we could all be on the same page. :lol:

I understand the appearance of scandal did nothing to change the consensus of mainstream scientists regarding ACC.
 
Do not return to this thread. Pretty simple. People unwilling to discuss the topic do not belong in this thread. Or in this forum, really. You come to a debate forum and post stuff like that?

Since it bugs you so much I have returned to this thread.As long as religious nuts such as your self who try to spew the man made global warming fairy tale religion I will give it the only respect it deserve(which is none).
 
Moderator's Warning:
Stop the attacks and stay on the topic.
 
Of course it wouldn't, it doesnt foward the idea of big environmnt...:shrug:

Oh yes, I forgot there were those that still believed all the world's major scientific academies have been in a conspiracy for decades and that the only accurate source on science now were right wing bloggers. :roll:

I'll just stick with the scientific consensus myself.
 
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Oh yes, I forgot there were those that still believed all the world's major scientific academies have been in a conspiracy for decades and that the only accurate source on science now were right wing bloggers. :roll:

I'll just stick with the scientific consensus myself.





You do that, just don't trust the e-mails. :ssst:

I'll stick with natural climate cycles. :shrug:
 
Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.
 
You do that, just don't trust the e-mails. :ssst:

I'll stick with natural climate cycles. :shrug:

We've been tracking those and this one isn't natural.

Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.

Not really, no, because that's not how it works. And yes, NASA and the IPCC have employees who are skeptics. Some of them have even published papers. As far as factually objective, you don't seem to understand the peer review process. Some guys publish some data, and a journal of peers goes over the data as a "second opinion." You can't argue the numbers.

Is it a 100% slam dunk? No. There's always the possibility that we discover some new variable, but so far they've managed to address each argument made by skeptics while the data in favor of AGW piles up. This isn't some giant pool of opinions, science isn't about opinions.

Maybe you should turn this around. A thousand scientists tell you AGW is real, and a dozen tell you it isn't. Why do you accept the word of the dozen? Have you read their papers? Read about what other scientists have done to either support or detract that paper? Where did you get this idea that the skeptics are right? Was it science-based, or did you just make your opinion from the start and selectively apply skeptics' arguments to support your preconceived notion?

As my old ethics professor would have said, it's a self-assessment question. I encourage everyone with an opinion FOR OR AGAINST to ask themselves how they came to that conclusion. How they really came to that conclusion.
 
The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community.

No scientific body of national or international standing has held a dissenting opinion on ACC since 2007.
 
Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.

I don't think it's a matter of it being completely false or fabricated. It's a fact that the earth goes through cyclic rises and falls in median temperature, arctic caps expand and recede.

What this all means is very cryptic. Doomsayers will paint a picture of rising oceans and mass extinction but the fact of the matter is they don't know. They just don't know. And the earth and all its diversity of life has survived warming periods where the earth was covered in tropical terrain and it has survived ice ages. Theories are it even survived a huge meteor impact that blacked out the skies for extended periods with debris. Yes, during this period of warming polar bears might go extinct but guess what? They're ****ing polar bears...they live in an environment where no one else really lives and if they don't adapt and move on to dry land when the ice melts, then that's just Darwin blowing his lifeguard's whistle and calling them out of the gene pool. It's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
 
Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.
There is a modest consensus that AGW is at work. The predictions associated with the same are outside all realms of the rational, for anyone who has followed them all. I recall another now infamous scientific "consensus" that was pushed not too long ago. It was based upon research, modeling and supported by peer reviewed research papers. According to it, the world quite literally would by this date be over populated and famine running rampant across the globe. Go figure.:roll:

The doom and gloom 'the sky is falling' approach has failed. Utterly and by all manner of measure. Period. Thankfully.;)

The majority of the charges and issues many so called "deniers" have pointed to for some time now, have been proved and legitamized this last year. Particularly as related to the IPCC. So much so that some voices of reason, from the pro climate change side of the equation, have recognized the obvious and began to suggest the AGW acolytes smell the coffee as it were................;)

Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger: Yale Environment 360

Except:
Freeing Energy Policy From
The Climate Change Debate
Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to “Climategate” and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.

While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.

The Endless Weather Wars

The habit of overstating the current state of climate science knowledge, and in particular our understanding of the relationship between global warming and present-day weather events, has been difficult for environmentalists to give up because, on one level, it has worked so well for them.

Global warming first exploded into mass public consciousness in the summer of 1988, when droughts, fires in the Amazon, and heat waves in the United States were widely attributed as warning signs of an eco-apocalypse to come. Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth held the first widely covered congressional hearing on the subject that summer and admits having targeted the hearing for the hottest day of the year and turned off the air conditioning in the room to ensure that the conditions would be sweltering for the assembled media.End excerpt.



BTW- The backlash against Nordhaus and Shellenberger has been very predictable too. Go figure.:roll:
Nordhaus and Shellenberger: Two Environmentalists Anger Their Brethren

In fact in a delicious twist of fate, precisely who it is that are actually "deniers" or laboring under a sense of denial, has been made quite clear. Much to their chagrin. In fact, I recall several threads with former DP Asshat Champ jfuh about all the issues highlighted by the Yale piece, about two years ago or so. Chuckle.
 
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there is an old saying--"everybody talks about the weather, but no body can do anything about it"
 
And I am supposed to take your word for it? :ssst:

What Deuce is suggesting is that we look at the science of it.

"While it is undoubtably true that there are some cycles and natural variations in global climate, anyone who wishes to insist that the current warming is purely natural or even just mostly natural has two challenges. Firstly, they need to identify just what the mechanism is behind this alleged natural cycle, because absent a forcing of some sort, there will be no change in global energy balance. So natural or otherwise, we should be able to find this mysterious cause. Secondly, a "natural cause" proponent needs to come up with some explanation for how a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not itself affect the global temperature. Theory predicts that the temperature will rise given an enhanced greenhouse effect, how is it possible this is not happening?

In other words, the mainstream climate science community has provided a well developed, internally consistent theory that predicts the effects we are observing. It provides explanations and makes predictions. Where is the sceptic community's model, or theory whereby CO2 does not affect the temperature? Where is the evidence of some other natural forcing, like the Milankovich cycles that controlled the ice ages, a fine historical example of a very dramatic and very regular climate cycle that can be read in the ice core records taken both in Greenland and in the Antarctic?

Is this a candidate for today's warming? A naive reading of this cycle indicates we should be experiencing a cooling trend now, and indeed we were very gradually cooling over the length of the pre-industrial Holocene, something around .5C averaged over 8000 years. Not only is the direction of the change wrong, but it is informative to compare the speed of those fluctuations to today's changes. Leaving aside the descents into glaciation, which were much more gradual, the very sudden (geologically speaking) jumps up in temperature every ~100Kyrs actually represent a rate of change roughly ten times slower than the rate we are currently witnessing.

So could the current change be natural? Well, there is no identified natural cause (and they have been looked for), there is no theory of climate in which CO2 does not drive the temperature and the natural cycle precedents do not show the same extreme reaction we are now witnessing.

(That would be a "No") "

This is Just a Natural Cycle : A Few Things Ill Considered
 
What Deuce is suggesting is that we look at the science of it.

"While it is undoubtably true that there are some cycles and natural variations in global climate, anyone who wishes to insist that the current warming is purely natural or even just mostly natural has two challenges. Firstly, they need to identify just what the mechanism is behind this alleged natural cycle, because absent a forcing of some sort, there will be no change in global energy balance. So natural or otherwise, we should be able to find this mysterious cause. Secondly, a "natural cause" proponent needs to come up with some explanation for how a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not itself affect the global temperature. Theory predicts that the temperature will rise given an enhanced greenhouse effect, how is it possible this is not happening?

In other words, the mainstream climate science community has provided a well developed, internally consistent theory that predicts the effects we are observing. It provides explanations and makes predictions. Where is the sceptic community's model, or theory whereby CO2 does not affect the temperature? Where is the evidence of some other natural forcing, like the Milankovich cycles that controlled the ice ages, a fine historical example of a very dramatic and very regular climate cycle that can be read in the ice core records taken both in Greenland and in the Antarctic?

Is this a candidate for today's warming? A naive reading of this cycle indicates we should be experiencing a cooling trend now, and indeed we were very gradually cooling over the length of the pre-industrial Holocene, something around .5C averaged over 8000 years. Not only is the direction of the change wrong, but it is informative to compare the speed of those fluctuations to today's changes. Leaving aside the descents into glaciation, which were much more gradual, the very sudden (geologically speaking) jumps up in temperature every ~100Kyrs actually represent a rate of change roughly ten times slower than the rate we are currently witnessing.

So could the current change be natural? Well, there is no identified natural cause (and they have been looked for), there is no theory of climate in which CO2 does not drive the temperature and the natural cycle precedents do not show the same extreme reaction we are now witnessing.

(That would be a "No") "

This is Just a Natural Cycle : A Few Things Ill Considered

Nothing about that changes the fact that climate does change in a cyclic fashion, that it is unmeasured how much man actually influences it, or whether the change is going to be catastrophic.
 
Nothing about that changes the fact that climate does change in a cyclic fashion, that it is unmeasured how much man actually influences it, or whether the change is going to be catastrophic.

It has been measured how much man has influenced the climate:

"The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. In fact, human emit 26 gigatonnes of CO2 per year while CO2 in the atmosphere is rising by only 15 gigatonnes per year - much of human CO2 emissions is being absorbed by natural sinks.

Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.

About 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20.000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.

Additional confirmation that rising CO2 levels are due to human activity comes from examining the ratio of carbon isotopes (eg ? carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) found in the atmosphere. Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occurring (Ghosh 2003). The C13/C12 ratio correlates with the trend in global emissions."

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

Now, let's see your scientific evidence of natural only causes for this climate change?
 
Now, let's see your scientific evidence of natural only causes for this climate change?

I would answer that question had I made any indication whatsoever that climate change in this instance was natural only. Reading is FUNdamental.
 
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