Nova: decoding climate change

Anyone else watch nova this evening? It did seem to make a somewhat good case though at the same time seemed to duck confronting skeptic arguments directly or at least so it seemed to me. I am not following this at a level of detail that I feel competent to debate one way or another so I am curious for others' reactions.

Did anyone notice that the ‘graph’ they showed repeatedly (with a red zigzag line allegedly showing the increase in co2 from 1960 to the current) DID NOT have a Vertical Axis marked in values or units ?

Submitting a ‘science’ graph like that in a jr high general science class (at least in the old days) would earn you a ‘F’ Grade (and worse in any advanced class).

Without the scale and values the ‘marked’ line could be simply a trivial increase (note how their expert mouthpieces also refered to it as accelerating which even with that line was still largely linear).

Another graph going back much longer (the one showing patterns over more than a million years) which they ‘correlated’ CO2 with temperature - did you notice a ‘lag’ effect in a significant part of the pattren where the CO2 increase *FOLLOWED* the temperature increase (there is a REAL climatologist (a scientist not some academic) who has mentioned this effect - that the CO2 appears to go up AFTER the Earth warms up and I spotted that very pattern on the graphed data the show displayed (several times in the repeating patterns they showed).

I had to turn it off for a while when they got all Algorish with the ‘showing whats gonna happen stuff’ - DID THEY EVER MENTION Sun activity at all ??? Remember years ago it was mentioned that the planet Mars was heating up at the same time there was the recent warming trend on Earth (and it was pointed out that there is no manmade-CO2 increase there - totally ignored by the chicklittle-warmists.

Basically they attempt to demonstrate their theory with very bad unqualified data presentation, counting on a carefully picked short interval of only one bit of the much longer climate patterns, and alot of supposition for their conclusions.

The simplest counter to all of this is the very same people made predictions 20 years ago which have not come true (remember the ‘hockey stick graph ?).

What we must ask loudly is WHY are they going to such efforts to falsify all of this.

“Another graph should be how much money Al Gore has made over the years from lying about the weather.”

Remember (and tell everyone you know) that Algore was one of the founders of the “Carbon Credit Exchange” and he was going to make 100s of mission $$$ every year off of that scam. Anyone using energy was going to have to buy these ‘credits’ and it was the perfect middleman scam (manipulators who add no value but drive up the prices via ‘speculation’).

Remember also that Algore uttered one of the stupidest things said in the last Century : his “The Debate Is Over” statement about manmade global warming.

Its one of the basic tenets of science that ‘the DEBATE IS NEVER OVER’ but Algore made himself the authority about it.

He is either a complete ‘scientific’ moron, or more likely his GREED was driving his outright lies.

BTW, the Carbon Credit Exchange was disbanded a few years ago when it was apparent (to virtually everyone) that Algore’s global warming prediction wasn’t happening, and after all those scandals came out of the academics (NOT SCIENTISTS) who made up most of the MGW supporting materials were caught emailing each other on “HOW TO MANIPULATE THE DATA TO GET THE DESIRED RESULTS” (falsifying data they were submitting to the analysis projects the socialist governments were seeking to support this theory).

I recall some of the people doing thse MGW supporting studies, when seriously questioned, REFUSED to supply the data they used (even saying they had destroyed it), nor disclose the analysis METHOD they had used to reach their conclusion (nor the methodology to collect the data in the first place). That is not ‘science’ using any conventional meaning of that term.

you make good points imho.

however, i noticed the same thing about some of the graphs. it bothered me until they presented other graphs which appeared to show atmospheric CO2 levels increasing from ~350 PPM to ~400 PPM over the last few years. I am not certain it showed the PPM units of measure. However, that unit of measure is well known in the weather science community wrt atmospheric CO2 levels, apparently perhaps to the point that it is almost assumed in atmospheric CO2 level graphs.

Still, what is the intended target audience? If one wants to be precise, if one’s target is scientists or college educated people, my own belief is that one should always include quantities and units of measurement on graphs.

I think their target audience was (deliberately) the average TV viewer. I am not sure about that demographic but I think it can be presumed that it precludes a college education and also precludes any exposure to high school math above first year algebra, and no focused HS science courses (biology, physics, etc). If so, then that viewing audience would probably not even have sufficient education to know what to do with the quantities and units of measure. Then they would get bored and turn the channel.

It may not be altogether fair to the program to require that it present all data with the rigor of a high school science course.

Others have mentioned other troubling omissions which are perhaps equally if not more important.

My graph units/scale comments was simply merely an example of not actually presenting anything particularly concrete - with vague presentation the truth can get lost (I recall that years ago the basic ‘science’ class at the local jr highschool was a half week of science and the other half PE) so any ability to interpret has been dumbed down.

The CO2 increase of that one graph still needs to be looked at more critically (where do the numbers come from ...). I don’t doubt that the CO2 has gone up some, but that it may be more due to deforestation and desertification and possibly ocean pollution (algae die-offs turn into a net CO2 generator) to eliminate/hinder ALOT of the ‘would-be’ natural CO2 absorption they mentioned in the program (and not the excess burning of fossil fuels as their theory goes).

The show was the typical propaganda effort - showing a token detractor from the ‘theory’ early (to pretend to be fair) and then have 95% of the show trying to negate that contrary opinion with dubious evidence.

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