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  1. #2976
    e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0 MannyIsGod's Avatar
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    WC is the king of trying to beat people over the head with meaningless jargon.
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  2. #2977
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    WC is the king of trying to beat people over the head with meaningless jargon.
    I thought you had something about me testing you? I am curious as to what the incident was over. Don't assume I am denying such a thing. It is not outside my character to "test" someone. It's just not something I commonly do.
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  3. #2978
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    This debate is really not worth it.

    There is A LOT of factual scientific evidence for global warming and from anthropogenic causes. The data and studies contrary to this endpoint generally violate fundamental thermodynamic and physics laws.

    The direction of the change is well established, what should be concentrated on are what are the exact effects (even climate researchers are not exactly sure) and what should be done.

    If anyone isn't at this point, I don't know the point of debating. It's simply arguing either with a stupid, ignorant or biased person. For the record, having a bias for factual evidence that is satisfies laws of physical nature is not best described by having a bias. That's called objectivity.

    Citing a figure form Al gore and Climatologist as different and therefore labeling everything else is completely wrong is a misnomer. Below that level you might as well debate whether Adam and Eve cooked with or ate dinosaurs.

    What do I know though, I'm just an internet user.
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  4. #2979
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    Below that level you might as well debate whether Adam and Eve cooked with or ate dinosaurs.
    You mean like combustion in the troposphere causing 40 continual days of rain? Don't you know what a CME is?

    /stupid
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  5. #2980
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    You mean like combustion in the troposphere causing 40 continual days of rain? Don't you know what a CME is?

    /stupid
    I missed that one. I'm begging to think some people in this thread would be better off worshiping the Sun. The Sun does bring life after all.
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  6. #2981
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    Well, thank God you found a problem. I was beginning to worry.


    Good idea; I'd only mock you with my lack of critical thinking skills.
    I am honestly puzzled why someone who is so obviously intelligent buys into what is, in essence, a conspiracy theory about scientists.

    You have put forth a few arguments that I know are logically flawed, and do so in a way that suggests to me you are unable to overcome your own confirmation biases. It is frustrating for me. Sorry if this sounds critical.

    I allow for the possibility that the scientists may be wrong, but do you allow for the possibilty that they may be right about the ultimate risks posed?
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  7. #2982
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    You've been doing so much dissembling in this thread that you try and take multiple positions. The only real consistent take that i have seen is the "IPCC AL GORE AGCC SCIENTISTS LIE AL GORE!!!"

    First time I noticed it on this particular discussion is when you went from FL was supposed to be underwater to the they didn't report what my blogs have told me after they mocked you about the hundred years.

    After RG posted their citations you went straight back to the AL GORE IPCC AGCC AL GORE thing then back to the its supposed to be flooded by now.

    I will play along and guess that when you said in reference to the insurance industry "I've made my point" you were doing the 'witty' routine along the lines of lawyer jokes. I didn't work in policy service, they didn't work on commission anyway, and I do not have the sense of humor to find cliche funny unless its over the top.

    Regardless humor like that in the form of 'sarcasm' typically has a point. I was just asking for one which has been a similar wonderment of mine the entire time. You just seem to be in a pissing contest rather than have a point to how risk assessment should be handled regarding climate change.


    You don't have to believe anyone to figure out what to do.

    Risk management. If you work in insurance, you probably will understand this a bit better than most.
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  8. #2983
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    This guy seems to be a good candidate for a credible proponent that Yoni seems to want.

    (edit)

    Here is what actual scientists say:

    http://www.issues.org/climate.html

    http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/...0%2fhighlights
    Last edited by RandomGuy; 04-19-2012 at 05:38 PM.
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  9. #2984
    Just Right of Atilla the Hun Yonivore's Avatar
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    I am honestly puzzled why someone who is so obviously intelligent buys into what is, in essence, a conspiracy theory about scientists.

    You have put forth a few arguments that I know are logically flawed, and do so in a way that suggests to me you are unable to overcome your own confirmation biases. It is frustrating for me. Sorry if this sounds critical.

    I allow for the possibility that the scientists may be wrong, but do you allow for the possibilty that they may be right about the ultimate risks posed?
    Let me get back to you on this because I don't have any time for much more than snark right now and this deserves as thoughtful a response as the question.

    I will say, I don't believe there is some grand conspiracy of global climate change scientists.
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  10. #2985
    Just Right of Atilla the Hun Yonivore's Avatar
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    This guy seems to be a good candidate for a credible proponent that Yoni seems to want.
    He needs more tin foil
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  11. #2986
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    He needs more tin foil
    Heh, his presentation is decidedly low budget.

    It is, however, good risk management. Any CRO would instantly recognize it as such.
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  12. #2987
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    You don't have to believe anyone to figure out what to do.

    Risk management. If you work in insurance, you probably will understand this a bit better than most.
    Before i went back to school I did. i just couldn't see myself working at a desk at USAA for the next 25 years. But yeah that the insurance industry is saying what they are saying and more importantly doing as they are doing has huge weight for me.
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  13. #2988
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    I missed that one. I'm begging to think some people in this thread would be better off worshiping the Sun. The Sun does bring life after all.
    That's because Fuzzbot is a chronic liar. It was never said.
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  14. #2989
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    Idiot.

    First of all, I said "There could be some truth to the forty days and forty nights of rain, the Bible speaks of."

    I never said the earth was covered. I intended to convey 40 continuous days of rain. The rest is your delusional prejudiced.

    I corrected exosphere to thermosphere, and mentioned it reaches 2500 C when your 1000 degree units wasn't specified. Did you know there is a difference between kelvin, Celsius, and Fahrenheit? Must I assume you don't since you didn't specify? Am I suppose to read your mind and guess?

    I only mentioned this as one of several ways the ocean rises.

    I mentioned proxy evidence tells us the oxygen content of our atmosphere used to be greater. i forget what it was, but the link that Manny used jokingly say it was 50% more. The hydrogen would have combined with the oxygen already in the atmosphere... My God... Just how stupid are you?

    Fuzzy...

    It is obvious to anyone being honest that you are a joke.
    LOL...

    No ing way. That would be like a research paper.

    I do wonder however how much water we possibly gained, by maybe a CME that the earth's orbit went through. There could be some truth to the forty days and forty nights of rain, the Bible speaks of. Proxy evidence tells us that the earths oxygen level use to be higher, which would likely be required for dinosaurs to have existed.
    I'm pretty sure it's clear to most that you are talking out your ass.

    The disk of the earth covers about 0.0000000453% of the solar radiation based on a sphere of our orbit. The emission of particles from the sun is about 1.3 E36.second. this mean the earth will collect about 1.86 E34 particles/year, most of which protium. If it were all protium, this would yield to as much as 9.3 E33 molecules of water per year, or 2.78 megatonnes.

    Now this is very small as a normal increase in the earths water. Not even measurable. However, if we did go through a large ejection of stellar matter in the past, it could become a very large increase in total water volume.
    Never said huh?

    You calling me a liar has as much merit as calling me stupid.

    The above is proof that you are dumb.
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  15. #2990
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    WC is the king of trying to beat people over the head with meaningless jargon.
    How does anyone even know if that statement is serious, when you are full of laughing fits or lies.

    Have any truth to offer?
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  16. #2991
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    Manny... You never answered my questions with this exchange:

    Manny...

    You are something else.

    I never indicated warming was not real. Why can't you get facts strait?

    I didn't know they were BEST's records. Are they? I thought they were using other people's records, which I have some su ions about. I thought I clarified that.

    I am sick and tired of people like you and ElNono making the incorrect argument out of my words. You are effectively lying by doing that.

    Do you have any integrity?

    Comparing sea ice against sea ice seems reasonable to me. Not land ice vs. sea ice like you are changing to.

    Please...

    Show an ounce of integrity.
    Comparing sea to sea ice is reasonable given they are under the same conditions. They are not. Would you care to take a stab at what could possibly be different about the North and South Poles?
    They are at least far closer than comparing land to sea ice.
    I can't keep track of how quickly your arguments change.
    My arguments are pretty consistent. Maybe you should read my words instead of assuming things I don't say. Pull out a dictionary if some are too difficult for you.
    I think I know what you are trying to get at, but you are being elusive and want me to assume. I prefer not to when you are so antagonistic and stupid at the same time. I try to have debate, but you come in and start with the put downs. I would rather not go that route, but you have me going there too.

    How about just saying what you have to say and be done with it, so I can respond with a reasonable answer, and not assume and be wrong of your intent..
    Someone as bright and as informed as you doesn't know what I'm talking about? I'm shocked.
    Sorry... I'm not a mind reader. That's why I asked for clarification.
    How about the reasons for loss of these ice sheets? You were too chicken to answer my question [clarification] some posts back. Did you know a leading cause of glacier loss... moving faster... breaking up faster... is because of changes in geothermal temperatures? Not temperatures on top of them, but below them.
    How about it Manny. What say you?
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  17. #2992
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    Before i went back to school I did. i just couldn't see myself working at a desk at USAA for the next 25 years. But yeah that the insurance industry is saying what they are saying and more importantly doing as they are doing has huge weight for me.
    USAA is a good place to work, IMO. It consistantly ranks as one of the top employers in the US, and they have full-company profit sharing where employees get a share of the profits if there is a good year.

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/business...in-2675546.php


    The San Antonio financial services and insurance company has awarded employees a bonus equal to 18.4 percent of their annual base salary.
    Being a full-service financial company, with banks, investment funds, and a full range of insurance companies, (except health), they can offer one a VERY good retirement.

    I could go on.
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  18. #2993
    Just Right of Atilla the Hun Yonivore's Avatar
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    I am honestly puzzled why someone who is so obviously intelligent buys into what is, in essence, a conspiracy theory about scientists.

    You have put forth a few arguments that I know are logically flawed, and do so in a way that suggests to me you are unable to overcome your own confirmation biases. It is frustrating for me. Sorry if this sounds critical.
    No need to apologize; I get what you’re saying. The problem with the criticism is that you fail to take into account I’m not a climate science geek and this is an anonymous internet forum where none of us – you, me, mouse, or anyone else – has any credibility whatsoever. Zero. We don’t know each other well enough for me to take what you say here as truth. Even if I believe you’re being sincere – and I do – there is no guarantee you’re not just suffering from your own confirmation bias with relationship to the information you post here on climate science.

    You say you’re smart about these things and the papers you post represent the best science out there on the climate. How do I verify that without engaging in a tedious exercise to research the paper, the author, and the organizations through which they are peer-reviewed and presented. None of us has that kind of time. So, instead, we consume media. And, if you’re honest, much of the information finding its way into the media about the papers (maybe not the papers you post here), the authors, the processes, and the organizations through which the science has passed have been revealed to be corrupt, disingenuous, prone to error, mis-representative of data, and yes, conspiratorial in a way that, almost 100% of the time, biases the science to the side of the equation that confirms the existence of anthropogenic global climate change. I never hear about mistakes in the data that underestimated the effects of humans on climate. And, you don’t need to demonstrate they exist for me to say with absolute certainty, they haven’t made it to the places where I consume my information about climate change.

    I think the point being; it’s all well and good that you and Manny and others can find white papers that illustrate the science you believe confirms the validity of anthropogenic global climate change. But, if you look at the wide, wide, world of information consumption – outside anonymous internet forums – your information doesn’t get much play. What makes it for public consumption is the alarmist, sensational, and hyperbolic extremes of climate science. What makes it to my eyes and ears are the scandals, misrepresentations, and mistakes. What makes it into the news are the Al Gores with his faux concern and his overwrought videos that earn Nobel Prizes. In essence, what is consumed by the vast majority of people makes your position look like a farce.

    Frankly, lay people are tired of being told we’re killing the planet and only have X number of years to change our ways before it’s too late. We’ve been told that about population, food, cold, hot, asteroids, volcanoes, and aliens. And, as I illustrated with the UN Memo from 1989, we’ve been told that for decades with various deadlines for actions coming and going without any of the cataclysmic results we were promised, if we stood by and did nothing, occurring. And, yes, we’ve been told before, “But this time it’s real!” “This time we know the science better.” “This time, the science is settled.”

    Combine that with what I find to be reasonable counter arguments (Lindzer’s comment being a good example) regarding climate science; whether man has an impact or whether it’s even a bad thing and I’m left where I sit with all the other existential threats we’re told we face going into the next 100 years. The same place we were 50 years ago when we were told we face some of the same existential threats. Do the costs of averting this predicted apocalypse justify the predicted benefits we would possibly achieve? I mean, look at the Kyoto protocol. If I’m not mistaken, world governments were supposed to sign on to economically draconian measures (many of which have never even been close to being achieved by the various countries) in order to realize modest (some say insignificant) reductions in temperature that wouldn’t even make a dent in the march to warming that was being predicted. Why put a Trillion dollar bandage on a Quadrillion dollar problem? It doesn’t make sense unless you consider hey, maybe they’re just trying to make money on the deal. That’s what makes sense to me.

    That’s when one would become cynical about all the global conferences to which all the global warming congregants take their limos and jets to decide how best to bilk us out of more money in order to modestly affect something I’m being told we are already too late to change. That’s when one would become cynical about the few public faces of anthropogenic global climate change appearing to work so hard to control a message they claim enjoys the consensus of tens of thousands of scientists. That’s when one would become cynical about a cadre of public proponents that refuse to openly and publicly debate the issue with skeptics and critics – saying instead, the science is settled and therefore doesn’t need to be debated.

    I allow for the possibility that the scientists may be wrong, but do you allow for the possibilty that they may be right about the ultimate risks posed?
    I do. But not only have they yet to prove man is affecting the change that presents the risk, they have also yet to demonstrate we have the ability to reverse them.

    I would advocate, instead, that we throw our resources at adapting to change that, arguably, we will be unable to affect.

    After all, that seems just as likely -- to me -- to be effective.

    I hope that all makes sense.
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  19. #2994
    Veteran DarrinS's Avatar
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    http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenme...arming-debate/


    Likely you have heard the sound bite that “97% of climate scientists” accept the global warming “consensus”. Which is what gives global warming advocates the confidence to call climate skeptics “deniers,” hoping to evoke a parallel with “Holocaust Deniers,” a case where most of us would agree that a small group are denying a well-accepted reality. So why do these “deniers” stand athwart of the 97%? Is it just politics? Oil money? Perversity? Ignorance?

    We are going to cover a lot of ground, but let me start with a hint.

    In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak at Northeastern University. In the Q&A period afterwards, a woman asked Ms. Rand, “Why don’t you believe in housewives?” And Ms. Rand responded, “I did not know housewives were a matter of belief.” In this snarky way, Ms. Rand was telling the questioner that she had not been given a valid proposition to which she could agree or disagree. What the questioner likely should have asked was, “Do you believe that being a housewife is a morally valid pursuit for a woman.” That would have been an interesting question (and one that Rand wrote about a number of times).

    In a similar way, we need to ask ourselves what actual proposition do the 97% of climate scientists agree with. And, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that the deniers are denying.

    It turns out that the propositions that are “settled” and the propositions to which some like me are skeptical are NOT the same propositions. Understanding that mismatch will help explain a lot of the climate debate.



    The Core Theory

    Let’s begin by putting a careful name to what we are talking about. We are discussing the hypothesis of “catastrophic man-made global warming theory.” We are not just talking about warming but warming that is somehow man-made. And we are not talking about a little bit of warming, but enough that the effects are catastrophic and thus justify immediate and likely expensive government action.

    In discussing this theory, we’ll use the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as our main source. After reading through most of the IPCC’s last two reports, I think it is fair to boil the logic behind the theory to this picture:



    As you can see, the theory is actually a chain of at least three steps:

    1.CO2, via the greenhouse effect, causes some warming.
    2.A series of processes in the climate multiply this warming by several times, such that most of the projected warming in various IPCC and other forecasts come from this feedback, rather than directly from the greenhouse gas effect of CO2.
    3.Warming only matters if it is harmful, so there are a variety of theories about how warming might increase hazardous weather (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts), raise sea levels, or affect biological processes.
    In parallel with this theoretical work, scientists are looking for confirmation of the theory in observations. They have a variety of ways to measure the temperature of the Earth, all of which have shown warming over the past century. With this warming in hand, they then attempt to demonstrate how much of this warming is from CO2. The IPCC believes that much of past warming was from CO2, and recent work by IPCC authors argues that only exogenous effects prevented CO2-driven warming from being even higher.


    This is just a summary. We will walk through each step in turn.

    CO2 as a Greenhouse Gas

    The first step in the theory is the basic greenhouse gas theory — that CO2 will raise the temperature of the Earth as its concentration increases (through a process of absorption and re-radiation that we will not get into).

    Its probably irresponsible to call anything in a science so young as climate “settled,” but the fact that increased atmospheric CO2 will warm the Earth by some amount is pretty close to being universally accepted.

    More debatable is how much warming will occur. We have measurements of warming from laboratory experiments, but these are hard to translate directly to the complex climate system. The generally accepted value for direct greenhouse gas warming from CO2 is something like 1-1.2C per doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and most past IPCC reports have settled on a number in this range.

    While some of the talk-show-type skeptics have tried to dispute this greenhouse theory, most of what I call the science-based skeptics do not, and accept a number circa 1C for the direct warming effect of a doubling of CO2.

    So what’s the problem? Why the debate? Isn’t this admission a “game over” for the skeptics? Actually, no. To understand this, let us do a bit of extrapolation. Current CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere today are around 390ppm, or about 0.039%. But even if we were to hit a relatively pessimistic level of 800ppm by the end of the century, this would, by the numbers above, imply a warming of about one degree. While potentially undesirable, a degree of warming is hardly catastrophic. The catastrophe comes from the second chained theory.


    The Positive Climate Feedback Theory


    As the Earth warms, we expect there to be changes that may further accelerate or decelerate the warming. These are called feedbacks. Take one example — as the Earth warms, there will likely be less snow and ice coverage of the Earth. Snow and ice tend to reflect heat back into space more than does bare land or water, so that this loss could add additional warming above and beyond the initial warming from CO2. On the opposite end of the scale, many plants grow faster with warmer air and more airborne CO2, and such growth could in turn reduce atmospheric carbon and slow expected warming.

    It turns out the critical feedback involves water vapor. While CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas, it is a weak one when compared to water vapor. Rising temperatures may increase evaporation and therefore the amount of water vapor in the air, thus adding powerful greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and accelerating warming. On the other hand, water evaporated by rising temperatures may form more clouds that shade the Earth and help to reduce temperatures. Whether future man-made global warming is catastrophic depends a lot on the balance of these effects.

    The IPCC assumed that strong positive feedbacks dominated, and thus arrived at numbers that implied that feedbacks added an additional 2-4 degrees to the 1 degree from CO2 directly. So in the IPCC numbers, at least two thirds of the future warming comes not from the basic greenhouse gas effect but a second independent theory that the Earth’s climate is dominated by strong positive feedbacks. Other more alarmist scientists have come up with feedback numbers even higher. When Al Gore says that we will see a tipping point where temperatures will run away, he is positing that feedbacks will be nearly infinite (a phenomenon we can hear with loud feedback screeches from a microphone).

    But the science of this positive climate feedback theory is far from settled. Just as skeptics are probably wrong to question the basic greenhouse gas effect of CO2, catastrophic global warming advocates are wrong to over-estimate our understanding of these feedbacks. Not only may the feedback number not be high, but it might be negative, as implied by some recent research, which would actually reduce the warming we would see from a doubling of CO2 to less than one degree Celsius. After all, most long-term stable natural systems (and that would certainly describe climate) are dominated by negative rather than positive feedbacks.


    Nice Theory, But What Do We Actually See Happening?

    At some point, theorizing becomes stale unless the theories are supported by observations. And the most important single observation relative to catastrophic man-made global warming theory is that the world has indeed warmed over the last century, by perhaps 0.7C, coincident with the period mankind has burned a lot of fossil fuels.

    Some skeptics have tried, relatively futilely I think, to deny that the world is warming at all. Certainly skeptics have a lot of evidence that this measured warming may be exaggerated — there are some serious flaws in our surface temperature measurement system today and almost certainly much worse flaws in the numbers from, say, 1900 to which we are comparing current readings. But radically new technologies, such as satellites, that are not susceptible to these same flaws and coverage gaps have still measured an upward drift in temperatures over the last 30 years.



    When looking at the historic temperature record, skeptics today tend to focus more on the fact that temperatures have leveled off over the last 10-15 years. Both sides of the debate play annoying games with cherry-picked end-points and graph scales to try to support their arguments, but most reasonable people look at the graph above of the last 15 years and will agree temperatures have been relatively flat. Even more important for scientists (since the oceans are a much larger heat reservoir than the atmosphere) is the fact that the new ARGO floating temperature stations have measured little or no increase in ocean heat content since they were put in service in 2003.

    These facts actually lead to one of my favorite examples of the two sides in the debate talking past each other (this example actually played out in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal over the past several weeks). Skeptics will say, “temperatures have been flat for 10-15 years.” Global warming advocates will respond, “the last decade has seen some of the hottest temperatures in the last 100 years.” Both statements are actually correct. Imagine spending all day climbing to the top of a tall plateau. Walking around on the plateau, with every step, it is correct to say that you are at the highest point you have been all day, but it is also correct to say you are no longer climbing.

    Whichever the case, the flat surface temperatures and ocean heat content create a real problem for the man-made catastrophic global warming theory. There is no reason why warming should take a break, and we are starting to hear more frequently, even among catastrophic global warming supporters, discussion of “the missing heat.”



    Attributing the Action of Complex Systems to Individual Inputs


    A couple of years ago, the Obama Administration was tasked with figuring out how many jobs, if any, were created by the stimulus. Just adding up jobs at firms that had received government cash was not good enough — the theory of the Keynesian stimulus is that there is a multiplier (similar to the positive feedback in climate) that creates far more jobs than just the ones that can be directly measured. But how do we count these jobs? We don’t have any sort of measuring device to tell us that one job would or would not have existed if, say, Solyndra had not gotten stimulus money.

    What the Administration did was this: they took a computer model, the same one that originally said the stimulus would be effective, and plugged in the actual spending numbers to get a modeled job creation number. As political messaging, this made perfect sense. As science, the notion of checking a theoretical model’s output with additional runs of the same model, rather than observational data, certainly leaves something to be desired. But to be fair, it’s a tough problem – how does one sort out the effect of changing one variable in a complex system where hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of other variables are changing simultaneously?

    This is the problem scientists face in trying to determine the causes of the 0.7C warming over the last century. And, ironically, the IPCC’s main argument was very similar to the way the stimulus was scored. They took computer models, which by their own admission left out a lot of the complexity in the climate, and ran them with and without manmade CO2 in the 20th century. Their conclusion: only man’s CO2 could have caused the measured warming. Skeptics like to describe this logic slightly differently: the IPCC says it had to be CO2 because they couldn’t think of anything else it could be.

    So could it be anything else? Skeptics will argue that the period of rapid temperature increase the IPCC studied was relatively short, basically the 20 years from 1978 to 1998. Skeptics will point out that the world experienced a near identical pace of temperature increase from 1910-1940, well before our modern society began emitting CO2 in earnest, casting into doubt whether the more recent increase was truly unprecedented and only possible given manmade CO2.

    Further, skeptics like to point to at least four other climate factors that might reasonably have contributed to the 0.7C of warming:

    * Solar output, which was higher in the second half of the 20th century than the first

    * Ocean cycles, like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which were in their warm period during the critical warming period from 1978-1998 that so worried the IPCC
    * Continued recovery from the Little Ice Age, which bottomed out world temperatures in the 17th and 18th centuries

    * Man’s land use, including agriculture and urbanization
    All told, there is no doubt that CO2 is helping to warm the planet, but skeptics are reluctant to ascribe all of the last century’s warming to this one cause when there were so many other forces working in the same direction.

    The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.

    To defend the hypothesis of strong positive climate feedback, global warming supporters must posit that there are exogenous climate effects that are in fact holding down the increase due to CO2. Thus has been born the theory of man-made sulfate aerosols, basically pollution from burning dirty fuels, that is keeping the Earth cool. When the rest of the world gets around to reducing these emissions as has the US, the theory goes, then we will see rapid catch-up warming. Skeptics point out that no one really has any idea of the magnitude of the cooling from these aerosols, and that, ironically, every global warming model just happens to assume exactly the amount of cooling from these aerosols that is needed to make their models match history. Skeptics call this their “plug variable.”



    Hurricanes and Tornadoes and Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My


    Certainly changing atmospheric temperatures, and perhaps even more importantly, changes in ocean temperatures, can be expected to have knock-on effects, both negative and positive (yes, I know the suggestion of positive effects borders on heresy, but don’t you think folks in higher la udes might appreciate longer growing seasons?) Skeptics argue, however, that too often the studies of these effects suffer from one of four types of mistakes:

    1. Measurement Technology Bias – Improvements in our ability to accurately count or measure a phenomenon is mistaken for a real underlying change in the frequency of the phenomenon. A great example is tornadoes. The count of annual tornadoes appears to have increased over the last fifty years, but this increase is almost entirely due to Doppler radar and other technologies identifying previously unrecognized twisters. If one looks solely at larger tornadoes (class F3-F5) that were unlikely to be overlooked even with older technologies, annual counts are flat to slightly down over the last fifty years.

    2. One sample makes a trend – This is less a flaw of any particular formal study and more a flaw in media coverage and among catastrophic global warming advocates (e.g. Al Gore). Individual extreme weather events are pointed to as proof of climate shifts, even when summary statistics show no such thing. For example, individual hurricanes like Katrina are pointed to as proof that global warming is increasing hurricane frequency and severity, when in fact measures of hurricane frequency and total energy (e.g. total cyclonic energy) have actually been decreasing over the last several years, to near all-time lows.

    3. What is normal - Trends in certain variables are labeled as “abnormal” or “unprecedented” or “not natural” despite our having an extraordinarily short history of measurements such that it is almost impossible for us to say with any confidence exactly what “normal” is. In some cases, recent trends are labeled abnormal or unprecedented even when that trend appears to be long-standing and pre-date man-made CO2. A great example is glacier retreat. We have good measurements showing substantial retreats in glaciers dating all the way back to the late 1700s (at the end of the little ice age). However, recent retreats in these same glaciers are portrayed as new and shocking and man-made, rather than in context of a longer-term trend (the exact same situation obtains with sea levels).

    4. Everything looks like a nail - Climate is an extremely complex system with many, many variables changing simultaneously. It’s a big, complicated engine we really don’t understand that takes all these inputs and spits out certain outputs (e.g. snow in Washington today). Like a religious zealot that sees the face of God in his piece of toast, some observers seem to be able to magically attribute particular weather outcomes to the action of one single variable out of these millions. Even more amazingly, time after time, it seems to be the exact same variable, man-made CO2, that is unilaterally creating the result.


    Conclusion

    So let’s come back to our original question — what is it exactly that skeptics “deny.” As we have seen, most don’t deny the greenhouse gas theory, or that the Earth has warmed some amount over the last several year. They don’t even deny that some of that warming has likely been via man-made CO2. What they deny is the catastrophe — they argue that the theory of strong climate positive feedback is flawed, and is greatly exaggerating the amount of warming we will see from man-made CO2. And, they are simultaneously denying that most or all of past warming is man-made, and arguing instead that the amount that is natural and cyclic is being under-estimated.

    So how about the “97% of scientists” who purportedly support global warming? What proposition do they support? Let’s forget for a minute a variety of concerns about cherry-picking respondents in studies like this (I am always reminded by such studies of the quote attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Pauline Kael that she couldn’t understand how Nixon had won because no one she knew voted for him). Let’s look at the actual propositions the 97% agreed to in one such study conducted at the University of Illinois. Here they are:

    1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

    2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

    The 97% answered “risen” and “yes” to these two questions. But depending on how one defines “significant” (is 20% a significant factor?) I could get 97% of a group of science-based skeptics to agree to the same answers.

    So this is the real problem at the heart of the climate debate — the two sides are debating different propositions! In our chart, proponents of global warming action are vigorously defending the propositions on the left side, propositions with which serious skeptics generally already agree. When skeptics raise issues about climate models, natural sources of warming, and climate feedbacks, advocates of global warming action run back to the left side of the chart and respond that the world is warming and greenhouse gas theory is correct. At best, this is a function of the laziness and scientific illiteracy of the media that allows folks to talk past one another; at worst, it is a purposeful bait-and-switch to avoid debate on the tough issues.
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  20. #2995
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    How do I verify that without engaging in a tedious exercise to research the paper, the author, and the organizations through which they are peer-reviewed and presented. None of us has that kind of time. So, instead, we consume media.
    Then listen to what the scientific organizations themselves are saying.

    Bypass the media.

    You don't even have to do that with every research paper.

    Argh... time's up. I will get to the rest of the post.
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  21. #2996
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak

    Stopped there.




















    ok, so I skimmed the rest of it. But hey I can dismiss it because I don't agree with it.

    The source is obviously biased, so I can't accept any of his conclusions.

    That's the way it works, right?
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  22. #2997
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak

    Stopped there.



















    ok, so I skimmed the rest of it. But hey I can dismiss it because I don't agree with it.

    The source is obviously biased, so I can't accept any of his conclusions.

    That's the way it works, right?
    That's how it appears you, Manny, and others operate, then accuse us of the same thing.
    Last edited by Wild Cobra; 04-20-2012 at 02:34 PM.
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  23. #2998
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    I got throught he Ayn Rand part all the way which said that the person that questioned her had not given her a fair premise. I then went to there little flowchart where they 'recreate' the AGW argument. Thats a strawman but lets lecture people on how Rand demands a reasonable premise. You know when you characterize what the other sides argument and then argue that instead of addressing what the argument is.

    He at least that the Earth is warming but then hegdes it with the UAH stuff.

    He then brings back the old arguments from 10 years ago about solar output and climate variations as if BEST and various other sources did not investigate, quantify and then discard those notions.

    They then mischaracterize the risk assesment by acting like we cannot count how many tornadoes, floods and hurricanes that there have been and creates a strawman about a baseline.

    And of course my favorite part, bringing up Obama and jobs, and Al Gore in transparent attempt to be inflammatory. The UAH graphs being used is fair but not showing the other major work especially by BEST is egregious especially when it is the lionsshare of whats out there.

    Its a hatchet job and pretty transparent. Thanks Darrin!
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  24. #2999
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    And Yoni, you keep on with this 'we poor lay people are just not presented with anyone we can trust' but its pretty transparent that you will claim this incredulity towards anything that doesn't support your viewpoint.

    You still going to discount my comments about the insurance industry out of hand. Tell me I cannot read and the like?
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  25. #3000
    Just Right of Atilla the Hun Yonivore's Avatar
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    And Yoni, you keep on with this 'we poor lay people are just not presented with anyone we can trust' but its pretty transparent that you will claim this incredulity towards anything that doesn't support your viewpoint.

    You still going to discount my comments about the insurance industry out of hand. Tell me I cannot read and the like?
    For the last time, and I truly mean it this time, your comments about the insurance industry were not germane to the conversation in which I was engaged.

    It was irrelevant. I didn't even read the comments.

    Your comments about the insurance industry said absolutely nothing about whether or not the media and the White House misrepresented or exaggerated what was said in the report in question.

    Let go, man.
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