Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/04/2011 9:02:13 AM PST by Signalman
n recent years anyone daring to question the imminent reality of catastrophic global warming has risked being labelled a denialist with implicit, and sometimes even explicit, reference to holocaust denial as well. Ironically, over the past year in the face of a cooling climate and collapsing scientific credibility, climate alarmists have themselves begun to increasingly express opinions that can only be seen as denialist.
Even though exposure of the Climategate emails and other material from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit was unequivocally a major blow to the credibility of AGW science, warmists reacted by trying to downplay the significance as being only an academic spat with no relevance to the scientific validity of any of the research involved. However, as it became apparent that serious breaches of scientific standards and ethics were involved, basic honesty should have called for a clear condemnation. By opting to attempt to dismiss such serious matters as only trivia, damage to credibility with the public was compounded.
Then, to make a bad situation even worse, investigations that were obvious shams were conducted. Predictably they announced finding nothing of any real concern. Instead of resolving suspicions about a few researchers this only served to widen them to the institutions themselves and even to the government.
At the same time, the Climategate scandal also turned public attention onto various other false or doubtful claims about climate change. The result has been a large increase in mainstream media coverage for climate scepticism and a significant decrease in stories promoting climate alarmism. Unable to effectively refute all of the doubts being presented, the proponents of dangerous warming have responded by ratcheting up the level of proclaimed threats. Without any convincing new data, everything was suddenly claimed to be much worse than previously stated.
For persons purportedly committed to reason and evidence, the response of climate change researchers would be more than a little incongruous. It is however, fully in keeping with the politically correct, postmodern perspective which now dominates in academia. In this view objective truth is only a delusion and basic research a bourgeois elitist indulgence. In environmental research in particular, advancement of basic understanding has been largely abandoned in favour of that having “relevance” to “problems” and only findings which support a politically correct agenda may be publically presented. Even researchers strongly committed to the AGW hypothesis have found themselves viciously attacked for offering opinion or findings not fully in accord with alarmist dogma.
When confronted by reasonable doubts or conflicting evidence, the warmist response has been to refuse debate and to instead proclaim authority, expert consensus and moral virtue while attacking the knowledge, standing and motives of any who question the threat of catastrophic climate change. While this kind of denigration may be an accepted practice in academia, to the broader public it only looks like juvenile schoolyard bullying by adults who haven’t grown up. It certainly has not aided the alarmist cause.
Although the climate change bandwagon may appear to roll on unstoppably regardless of all doubts or discredit, it has in fact suffered a serious loss of momentum in public acceptance. It has lost power and is now only coasting while trying to maintain a face saving facade for those so deeply committed that any graceful retreat is unthinkable.
Worse still from the alarmist perspective, has been the painfully obvious failure of climate itself to cooperate. For the past three years all over the world savagely cold winter weather has repeatedly set new records for snow and low temperatures. Time after time global warming conferences have been greeted by record and near record cold weather. Trying to dismiss this as merely coincidence or just weather, not climate, has lost all credibility; especially after it has happened repeatedly amidst a background of extreme winter conditions over large areas. Continuing to offer this increasingly lame excuse has only made it look more like a lie or delusion than an explanation.
Regardless of the ongoing hype and spin of the diehard proponents of AGW, the attitude of a large majority of the electorate has turned decisively against the idea of any imminent threat. This shift in sentiment is unlikely to reverse anytime soon. It developed over time and involves not just the Climategate emails but a much wider shift in the balance of public awareness as well as a sense of betrayal and dishonesty by researchers claiming certainty and righteousness. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Once a belief is abandoned, few people readily return to something they have decided was false. All the spin and hype is now achieving is to exacerbate the discredit. For supposedly intelligent people, this kind of behaviour does not indicate it.
Meanwhile, as the warmists continue their doomscrying and seeking further hundreds of billions of dollars to carry on their vast charade, the whole economic structure upon which everything depends is teetering on the brink of disaster with little effort to address or to even recognise the very real and present dangers which confront us.
All over the developed world, governments have committed to unfunded liabilities and fostered a proliferation of bureaucracy which their increasingly uncompetitive productive sectors cannot sustain. Most are now running on empty with no credit left, no plan B and no apparent recognition that the path they are on leads only to the edge of a cliff. Read more here.
Let's try this one more time:
The data that was analyzed was not "some data I'm citing", or "some data cooked up by warmests" it's the same data that is being cited by the proponents of a recent flatting of the warming trend.
The. Same. Data.
The disagreement is not over whether the data is accurate, it's over how the data should be analyzed.
Like another commenter noted, you can't trust the people that produce the numbers. The whole establishment has been exposed as willing to do what it takes to get the desired result. That they would come up with yet another "warmest ever" after Climategate was as predictable as the sun rising in the east.
Ok so what length of time does not amount to ‘cherry picking?’ The point is there is always interpretation. you seem to know something about this. Tell me, what is the dependent variable in these models? E.g. 1,000 measurements of temperature at 1000 locations at ground level on 25 days of the year? 30,000 feet in a ring around the equator?
Don't look at me; I've never denied that the Earth has a climate.
Watts, McIntyre, et al have exposed numerous and repeated errors in the data collection and statistical manipulation of NASA and other alamrists. That these people stand there and say "Well, our data, that we have hand picked and manipulated to support our hypothesis, really does show a trend, contrary to those that say it doesn't" is indicative of nothing. Their data, and their machinations are suspect at their core.
The very idea of some mythical, tidy average global temperature, in all the planet's heights and depths, is suspect to begin with. The notion that these characters have divined that number, and can tell us it means anything, is laughable. What is further laughable is some blind squirrel test, where statisticians examined said data and discerned a trend; as if that proves anything about the thousands of assumptions and intentional omissions (who needs whether stations in Siberia when we have tree rings?) that went into producing said data set.
From my understanding there has been plenty of disputes over the accuracy of temperature data. From stations being set up in areas where they would give obvious warmer temps to outright manipulation of temperature data as well. I have seen source after source during the past five to ten years of this so I am highly doubting your claims. I also take it that you are a AGW believer (greenie) is that correct?
Nor is the basic atmospheric physics and chemistry the issue - serious skeptics agree that all other things being equal, there ought to be "global warming" as a result of increases in greenhouse gasses, so the focus of their research is in identifying other possible drivers (cloud cover interactions with the general climate, solar activity etc.) of climate change. (The problem with this approch is that the atmosphere is warming roughly as fast as is predicted by greenhouse driven warming, so you have to hypothesize some other combinations of forces that account for the observed trends including "greenhouse" effects, which begs the question of which end of Occam's razor they have got a hold on).
So IMO the contribution of serious "skepticism" increasingly revolves around such questions as:
Where does AGW fit into the larger picture of climate variation - both in terms of the variation present in the short term (centuries, for example the MWP) and mid term (thousands to tens of thousands of years, for example, periods of glaciation).
For example, human activity is warming the earth (on a geologic time-scale) very rapidly, what are the likely short-term results on climate? What is the likelihood we will perturb the climate system in novel ways, with novel and dramatic results?
Assuming that we are not creating such novel effects, what are the relative economic costs and benefits of a warmer earth - say, a rise of 2-4C by the century's end? Suppose it's 5-6C?
Assuming that we decide that the cost of continued reliance on carbon based fuels at current rates of increase are ecologically and/or economically undesirable or unsustainable,what is the best mix of alternatives.
IMO, based on current evidence the overwhelming likelihood is that by 2020, or 2025 by the latest, the trends will be so clear that the only people left in denial that substantial AGW is occurring will be the people standing there stamping their feet and announcing that "I just don't believe it, whatever the evidence".
And I have to say, though I understand some the "reasons", I'm still a bit surprised that on this issue so many conservatives - who are supposed to be the people following the evidence wherever it leads us - are so often in what seem to me to be in just this foot stamping mode on the issue of AGW.
The warming is not a "political" issue, as has been understood (by scientists) for at least 150 years, it's just the inevitable result of a certain set of choices made in every case (at least until very recently) on a reasonable basis given the options and realities apparent at the time they were made.
What to do about it now is a political issue, but IMO an enormous amount of conservative political energy is expended in trying to deny that it's an issue at all, except in do far as the best option is presumed to be continuation of the status quo, as though the world was not undergoing an enormous and accelerating economic and technological upheaval.
Ok so we can see that you have swallowed the AGW kool-aid and are a greenie. I guess you also have explanations for the other periods of earth’s history whereas we know that the poles and other areas were ice –free or much warmer as well?
You do know that climates vary and that there has of course been a warming trend considering that we have been moving away from an ice age?
The BS that you are floating here that there is a consensus (even among scientific skeptics) that mankind is warming the planet is simply not true. There also is no science that even remotely proves any of the claims made by AGW alarmists but instead to the contrary that they are full of their own agenda.
Even granting this dubious assertion, and ignoring the 10,000 warming trend, and the nearly 50/50 odds getting things right when predicting a directional trend: Where are all the other things these very smart people have predicted? Rising seas? No. There's really no credible evidence of it. Any place claiming rising seas is more than offset by places where they are receding. Plates move up and down, you know. Melting Polar caps? Not really, nothing out of the ordinary. Snow free Europe and Virginia? "Well, actually what we meant to say is that heat makes cold, and if you give us a minute we'll come up with some plausible sounding thing or another."
And what was the very learned man, Phil Jones, talking about when he confessed to no trend?
While you claim that in a few short years it will be the skeptics "standing there stamping their feet and announcing that 'I just don't believe it, whatever the evidence'. " It will, in fact, be the warmies forced to either face reality or stamp their feet in the face of evidence. They have undertaken a fools task: To promulgate a theory that is not falsifiable, nor confirmable, while demanding a jarring reordering of society that conveniently looks just like the reordering of society they were pushing before their theory became fashionable.
To make matters worse (for them) they have boldly predicted 9,495 catastrophic consequences for when their infallible theory comes to fruition. Even if their theories about CO2 are correct (right), their claimed knowledge about feedback and the inevitable catastrophe (as opposed to perhaps a golden age of warmth and prosperity), is absurd to the the point that no reasonable person can take any of their pronouncements seriously for two reasons: 1) Nobody dumb enough to predict the distant future with precision is to be taken seriously. 2)Nobody as deeply invested financially and emotionally as they all surely are, is to be trusted. Worse still for them: even if the world and, climate and the dire consequences for life look somewhat like they predict 50-100 years from now, there is a real decent chance it was going to happen regardless; that old ice age ending thing.
They have taken on an endeavor not unlike Sisyphus. That boulder is going to just keep rolling back down on them, it is and will be a delicious spectacle to savor. Other than living to see my children and grandchildren grow and prosper, the greatest benefit of hopefully living a long life will be to see them squirm, stew, and make excuses for their foolishness.
The fact of AGW in no way negates the fact that other factors have affected climate in the past, may be doing do in the present, and will certainly do so in the future.
Nor is AGW in any fundamentally different from other such mechanisms save in one respect: it is the direct result of human activity.
And I suspect that if some "natural" mechanism had raised greenhouse gasses along the same curve, with the same results, these facts would be completely non-controversial here and everywhere else, your own view included.
Jones was talking about the difficulty of achieving a 95% confidence level over any short period. (For example, neither a relatively small but constant increase or decrease in global temperature over a decade would be significant at the 95% confidence level)
Here's the actual quote, in context:
BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Q: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
A: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
Q: Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
A: This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
Q: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
A: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
(Underline mine)
http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/global-cooling-for-last-10-years/
Now that the full quote has been provided, in the interest of fruitful discussion, may I assume that you will provide it in future discussions of Jone's opinions on this question?
Jones was talking about the difficulty of achieving a 95% confidence level over any short period. (For example, neither a relatively small but constant increase or decrease in global temperature over a decade would be significant at the 95% confidence level)
Here's the actual quote, in context:
BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Q: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
A: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
Q: Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
A: This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
Q: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
A: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
(Underline mine)
http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/global-cooling-for-last-10-years/
Now that the full quote has been provided, in the interest of fruitful discussion, may I assume that you will provide it in future discussions of Jones' opinions on this question?
Well, it's not "confirmable" in the sense that we don't have additional similar planets available on which to run the experiment. But we can certainly "confirm" the underlying atmospheric physics and chemistry experimentally (and have).
Let me ask you a serious question: if the rise in greenhouse gases had a "natural" rather than a human cause, do you honestly believe that you would be as skeptical of the same explanations?
I don't mean in terms of there being other (and perhaps more powerful) "natural" causes of global warming and cooling operating as well, I mean in terms of this level of skepticism about the pretty straight forward (and long understood and appreciated at a basic level) atmospheric physics and chemistry of the "greenhouse effect".
You've labeled yourself with that statement.
AGW is not remotely a fact, it's a theory propounded by a few.
Unfortunately, the basis for that theory is some extremely suspect research by some dishonest "scientists" using totally flawed methods.
And they were caught with their pants down in front of the entire world. Their theory has more evidence against it than for it.
The “Hockey Stick” graph was proven to be bogus.
Also, many of the data stations are set in spots guaranteed to have skewed results, surrounded by blacktop and stones, some with internal lighting that is left on [incandescent bulbs].
Until they design the stations better and place them better, many of those stations are giving garbage data.
“we don’t have additional similar planets available on which to run the experiment.”
Mars, Venus.
And AGW is a fraud, perpetrated by scam artists on the gullible.
The e-mails that were brought to light prove a pattern of deception and outright fraud by the ‘global warming scientists’, and those e-mails were RELEASED in a packet of informtion legally released via a FOIA request.
Once it became apparent what they held, the globull worming ‘scientists’ had to squirm, twist, decieve, and outright LIE to cover their butts.
And the media let them off the hook.
There is no fact to AGW but just a belief system. That is why I asked you to explain past extreme changes in climate which are known to have happen. You seem to spout the leftist AGW propaganda fairly well though. When presented with an inconvenient fact that makes your beliefs look bad you just breeze right past them and go on blaming mankind’s achievements. Pathetic.
Now what about the many warming trends that have been observed on other planets in our Solar System? Are they also just caused by ‘other factors’ that also do not negate your belief that mankind is causing this with our achievements?
“And I suspect that if some “natural” mechanism had raised greenhouse gasses along the same curve, with the same results, these facts would be completely non-controversial here and everywhere else, your own view included.”
Now this statement of yours is what I find to be controversial in that is a sort of smear to many conservatives here at FR.
It is not a scientific opinion of any kind that any conservative here at FR finds controversial except one that is being used to promote a leftist political agenda.
If leftists started claiming any ‘natural mechanism’ was the cause of the destruction of the planet (based on this type of flimsy science and fraud) while also claiming that we had to pass a score of global legislation in regards to any aspect of life that they deemed fit (controlling the economy, lifestyles, wealth redistribution,etc...) then yes you guess it.... it would be controversial to conservatives here at FR ?(and conservatives anywhere).
Yet you made this statement (and others) critizing conservatives here and everywhere. Yet you call yourself a conservative? But of course your profile says you are a special kind of conservative, a more modern and enlightened one I guess. And your a greenie.
Most greenies I know have very fascist views on life. They speak of global legislation. They speak of controlling industries and the markets. They try always to tell you how to live your life (what to drive, eat, products to use, lifestyle, etc...)
Since you think that mankind is changing the earth’s climate and possible putting all of us in danger then could you share with us what your ideas and perspective is on what to do about it?
If the amount was as trifling as the man's contribution, absolutely. But nature has a tendency to deal in quantities that matter, when it decides to; Like at times in the distant past when CO2 levels were many times higher than today.
It's all about scale. If you park your car in the garage, close the door, and start up your 5 liter V8, you have cause for concern. If, on the other hand, you fire up your Testers one cylinder model air plane engine, the urgency of the situation is different, isn't it? If you could invent little engines two molecules across, you could conceivably run millions of them safely in the garage indefinitely. What physics says about the dangers of combustion and CO in enclosed spaces just wouldn't apply. The poison is all about the dose.
That's why the "It's all about physics, you ignorant cretin, and CO2 causes a greenhouse effect, so we are doomed" argument is so spectacularly unpersuasive. Let's grant your point. CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a warming effect. So what? It's a monumental stretch from that point to the point where you've demonstrated that the change from a trace gas to a trace gas with a slightly concentration does anything significant.
The claim that the modelers "understand the basic chemistry"and therefore have crunched the numbers and settled everything is dubious, given all the other things they tell us that just are not so, and their complete reliance on the assumption of uniformly positive feedback, and the dubious character of those writing and running them. Did you not read all the Climategate source code comments? Do you really think that was an aberration? Those that claim they have figured it all out with their models and formulas are liars. Those that latch onto the dubious output produced and authoritatively cite "the physics" are posers that lack enough sense of history to recognize another ridiculous end of the world prophesy when they see one.
And in your scenario do you believe anybody would be sounding the alarm about the end of life as we know it, due to naturally occurring CO2 increases? Doubtful. In some scientific journal you'd see a dispassionate discussion about whether a small increase in a trace gas has any significance, and speculation about the benefits of longer growing seasons. Nothing would be on the news. It is the appeal of controlling lifestyles and extracting money from people that drives all else. Without buckets of money, and a vested interest in finding a greenhouse effect, nobody would bother.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.