The Most Extra New Super Global Warming Thread

[TheFatKidDeath]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

Easy. Here is Richard Lindzen's bio and this covers a little of his scientific opinions on the subject, as well as his opinions concerning why more scientitsts who disagree fear to speak up about it. It's a must-read.

Why stop with him? I'm reasonably certain that we can find more scientists who call man made global warming "junk science". We can also find plenty of scientists who believe in safe cigarettes, bigfoot, UFO's and creationism.

It's ironic that scientists who deny man made global warming are now claiming to be victims. Thank goodness The Wall Street Journal is there too give voice to the oppressed!

[bkelly]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

Way to move the goal.

Not my intention. It's been said in this thread that "global warming" implies "man-made global warming" and I used the two terms interchangeably in my last post.

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

And in your last post, that little "snip" you cut out seems pretty major.

I don't see why as I don't argue that there isn't uncertainty in climate science. The second part of the quote illustrated that he did not disagree with the theory of man-made global warming (the main issue) and I needed the first part to explain to what "consensus" he referred.

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

And on the same page he SPECIFICALLY says that while the some portions of the draft version of the IPCC Third Scientific Assessment weren't "too bad" he questions the honesty of the way it was ultimately presented.

Of the "Summary for Policymakers", yes but not the technical portions. I think this article that he wrote in The Hill Times Ottawa explains his position well:

The full IPCC report, most of which is written by scientists about specific scientific topics in their areas of expertise, is an admirable description of research activities in climate science. It is however not directed at policy. The SPM is, of course, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. As a consequence, the SPM has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.

So, as I said:

Originally Posted by bkelly

He's quick to point out that there are still unknowns and has expressed a strong distaste at using current climate science as a basis for government policies but he does believe global warming is happening.

bkelly

[Switchcraft]

Originally Posted by bkelly

Not my intention. It's been said in this thread that "global warming" implies "man-made global warming" and I used the two terms interchangeably in my last post.

Okay, but even if that's how you choose to conflate those two subjects, to Lindzen there is obviously a difference, and that's what I was citing. And you should really get yourself out of the habit of using the phrases "global warming" and "man-made global warming" interchangeably, if you want to be taken seriously. It implies that you believe that the only reason the planet would EVER get warmer is through human influence, which is ridiculous on its face. The only reason it seems to me you would WANT to use the terms interchangeably is to setup scenarios like this discussion about Lindzen, where you try to imply that Lindzen agrees with the consensus on "man-made" global warming when he obviously and emphatically has stated to the cotnrary.

[Kerostasis]

To expand on what Switchcraft said:

There is a sizeable segment of popular culture that uses "global warming" and "man-made global warming" interchangeably, such that whenever you see a media report mentioning one, you should mentally ask yourself whether they really mean the other. However, they have significantly different meanings, and using them interchangeably only serves to promote confusion of the type evidenced by your mis-quote of Lindzen.

The ultimate question of what policies should be undertaken in response to Global Warming requires a crystal clear distinction between universal "global warming" and specifically "anthropogenic global warming", so lets try to preserve that distinction in this thread. Answering that question also requires deciding whether the results of climate change are actually a net negative impact on humanity or a net positive one, and there has been precious little actual scientific study of that question yet.

[GlobalWarmin]

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

I mean, do scientists usually oppose political positions or do they usually try to come up with a theory that is more sound?

This is still a perplexing question for me. It's not the traditional place of scientists to oppose or conform to political positions. Instead, political positions should logically be taken based on scientific knowledge. Politics shouldn't be allowed to influence science in almost any way, because then the science would no longer be unbiased, and therefore not even true science. Why should a politician's opinion on science ever be taken above the position of scientists? And why should a theory ever be abandoned or considered unsound because it is politically unpopular for a certain group?

Sure, politics and science have a history, but I believe it's only because politics keeps sticking its nose in science's business--when it doesn't belong there.

[GlobalWarmin]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

And you should really get yourself out of the habit of using the phrases "global warming" and "man-made global warming" interchangeably, if you want to be taken seriously. It implies that you believe that the only reason the planet would EVER get warmer is through human influence, which is ridiculous on its face.

Global warming and man-made global warming are completely interchangeable terms. For Rush Limbaugh they probably aren't, but for the human race they are. Where did you ever get the idea they were not?

I'll try to explain... what does "global warming" mean? Global warming is the phrase used to describe the current warming that has happened and will continue to happen. It just so happens that "global warming" is being caused in part by human activities. Therefore, they are the exact same thing. Even the GOP construct "climate change", actually means "man-made global warming", because climate change is a substitute for global warming.

Furthermore, if you yourself realize that a claim is ridiculous, why would you assume that other people are implying that same thing? Never was there modern scientific opinion that all warming was being caused by humans.

[GlobalWarmin]

Originally Posted by Kerostasis

To expand on what Switchcraft said:

There is a sizeable segment of popular culture that uses "global warming" and "man-made global warming" interchangeably...

Pop culture uses the term global warming? Is that the new Brittany Spears song? Did Paris Hilton use the term "anthropogenic global warming" when she really just meant "universal global warming"? Is there an MTV show on now about global warming? Hard science and pop culture are not interchangeable terms.

Answering that question also requires deciding whether the results of climate change are actually a net negative impact on humanity or a net positive one, and there has been precious little actual scientific study of that question yet.

There has been little scientific study of that question? Where do you get your science news from, because there has been a ton of it...

http://www.livescience.com/environme...ern-water.html
http://www.livescience.com/environme...w-insects.html
http://www.livescience.com/environme...-gw-costs.html
http://www.livescience.com/environme...urricanes.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0207171703.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0207140809.htm

and those are just from the past couple weeks.

[Kerostasis]

See, theres your pop culture right there. How many of those studies have ANY validity at all? For example, take the one about Atlantic Hurricanes: The general scientific consensus is that global warming leads to LESS hurricane activity, not more. And here we have another random article telling us that Global Warming will kill us all through more hurricane activity. Snide comments about Britney Spears notwithstanding.

[GlobalWarmin]

Originally Posted by Kerostasis

See, theres your pop culture right there. How many of those studies have ANY validity at all? For example, take the one about Atlantic Hurricanes: The general scientific consensus is that global warming leads to LESS hurricane activity, not more. And here we have another random article telling us that Global Warming will kill us all through more hurricane activity. Snide comments about Britney Spears notwithstanding.

Again, I'm not sure you understand what is pop culture. Do you know who Mark Saunders, professor of climate prediction at the University College London is? Of course not, that's because he's not part of pop culture. The journal Nature is where his study is published though, and, it's not random, lacking ANY validity at all, or pop culture either. Try to use a joke about Mark Saunders and Nature, and see if anyone gets it. Not pop culture.

Please, show evidence you've read that there is a consensus that global warming leads to less hurricanes. And even if that were true (which it is not), why would you believe what a consensus of climate scientists say?

Also, I'm not going to quote it here so you have to read the articles to see it yourself, but the words "man made global warming" and "global warming" are used interchangeably.

[Kerostasis]

Yes, I know they are used interchangeably. They are used interchangeably by people who want to take advantage of the confusion caused by that interchanging to convince the public to accept their alarmism more easily.

Just because people use two scientific terms for the same purpose doesnt mean they actually have the same scientific meaning. Even if its scientists who are making the mistake.

[GhostintheShell]

Global Warming's Senseless Consensus

Thursday, November 8, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Is there a “consensus” on global warming among the scientists participating in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.

In early October, I e-mailed a six-question survey on climate change to 345 U.S. scientists involved in the IPCC’s 2007 report. By month’s end, I had received responses from a surprising 95 scientists (28%).

Some of the responders claimed that the survey questions were flawed and declined to participate. Some wanted to know, ironically enough, what was meant by the term “climate change” even though the term is part of the IPCC’s name.

One IPCC-er declined to participate because, he said, the climate science debate was over. Another who acknowledged that current climate had probably just resulted from a “just a geological wiggle,” declined because it was wrong to deny that humans are “adding undesirable stress to natural systems.” Another refused to answer claiming that the IPCC report “is a much more powerful statement than any individual scientist can make.”

One survey refuse-nik said, “Science is not a vote or survey. It is not democratic. It is not debatable.” Another said he didn’t “see the point of frequently uninformed free-for-all style debates about topics that require diligent study instead.” Others accused me of having a biased agenda, being “reckless and irresponsible,” and wanting to misrepresent the IPCC’s work.

One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist responded simply by dropping an f-bomb-laced insult into an e-mail. This particular response and any institutional intolerance for climate skepticism, so I am informed, is being investigated by NOAA chief, Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher.

... continues below advertisement:

In the end, 54 of the IPCC-ers completed the survey, including such alarmist big-wigs as the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley. Trenberth and several other survey participants are lead authors of the IPCC report.

The survey results are quite illuminating about the much-touted “consensus.”

The responses to the survey’s first four questions were predictable -- 83% to 90% of the respondents favored the view that manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are driving global climate to unprecedentedly warmer temperatures and that limiting manmade CO2 emissions would reduce such climate change.

The responses to the last two questions, however, raise questions about the consensus’ credibility.

Less than 50% of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1-degree Celsius -- twice the level of warming occurring during the 20th century -- is flatly undesirable. Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others, or too difficult to assess.

Only 14% said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate.

But if there’s no agreement on whether a target climate even exists, what precisely is the point of taking action on global warming?

Other notable results include the 20% who bizarrely said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change. So was climate a static phenomenon before the arrival of man? And if there was natural climate change before man, why not now also? And 44% percent don’t think that current global climate is unprecedentedly warm.

The survey indicates that when asked routine questions about the role of manmade CO2, the IPCC-ers respond in the Pavlovian fashion seemingly demanded of them by the global warming establishment. But when asked questions off the usual script, the supposed consensus falls apart.

Don’t forget that many scientists don’t participate in the IPCC because they perceive it as biased. The Pasteur Institute’s Dr. Paul Reiter, for example, resigned from the IPCC because he and a colleague found themselves “at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our specialty.” There’s also the Petition Project, where 19,000 scientists have endorsed a statement questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism.

The whole idea of a consensus in science is dubious. As economist John Kay recently wrote in an op-ed entitled “Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus” (Financial Times, Oct. 9), “Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them.”

This week, Al Gore attacked IPCC-er John Christy for a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Christy questioned the global warming orthodoxy. Appearing on NBC’s Today, Gore described Christy as an “outlier” who no longer belonged to the IPCC and who is “way outside the scientific consensus.” Gore also said that it was wrong for the media to pay any attention to opinions outside the consensus.

Christy told me that, as far as he knows, he remains part of the IPCC process. As to being an outlier, it just so happens that Christy’s survey responses were within the 50% who didn’t think that a 1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature was uniformly undesirable and the 86% who didn’t think there was any such thing as an ideal climate.

The “climate consensus” notion functions primarily as a marketing tool for converting the public to a political viewpoint, rather than as a valid scientific approach toward understanding global warming. But even then, the survey indicates that the claimed IPCC consensus is not nearly as monolithic as we’ve been led to believe. That alone is good reason for demanding that the IPCC scientists declare and defend their positions in a public forum.

[GhostintheShell]

Bray and von Storch, 2003

A survey was conducted in 2003 by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch [32] [33] Bray's submission to Science on December 22, 2004 was rejected, but the survey's results were reported through non-scientific venues.[34][35] The survey received 530 responses from 27 different countries. One of the questions asked was "To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?", with a value of 1 indicating strongly agree and a value of 7 indicating strongly disagree. The results showed a mean of 3.62, with 50 responses (9.4%) indicating "strongly agree" and 54 responses (9.7%) indicating "strongly disagree". The same survey indicates a 72% to 20% endorsement of the IPCC reports as accurate, and a 15% to 80% rejection of the thesis that "there is enough uncertainty about the phenomenon of global warming that there is no need for immediate policy decisions."

The survey has been criticized on the grounds that it was performed on the web with no means to verify that the respondents were climate scientists or to prevent multiple submissions. The survey required entry of a username and password, but this information was circulated to a climate skeptics mailing list and elsewhere on the internet.[36][37]. Bray and von Storch have recently defended their results[38] and accused climate change skeptics of interpreting the results with bias.

[GlobalWarmin]

Thank you for again posting the wisdom of Fox New's Steve Milloy! Brilliant man, and highly respected for lobbying against human evolution, second hand smoke, and pollution controls, including being against the ban on DDT and the Clean Air Act. I would love to know about another creature who is a bigger shill for evil. This guy take being a scum-bag and idiot to new levels. And, how many times is someone going to post what this guy says? This has to be the 10th time someone has used him as evidence to support their claims (for some reason, because I don't think anyone ever asked: Show evidence that Steve Milloy is against global warming). He has quite a following on this forum...

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

Also, by the way, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations", meaning that in fact/reality/literally "anthropogenic global warming" is synonymous with "global warming" and "man made global warming".

And, do you really still claim that there is even moderate support against global warming theory from scientists?? Did you even read what you posted? The second sentence says it was rejected by the journal Science. It was conducted on the web, where there were no means to verify that respondents were climate scientists. Wow. So, you think an anonymous web survey and one anti-environmental lobbyist are more credible and reliable than the statements from 30 leading international scientific organizations, or the conclusions of over 900 peer reviewed papers from one period? And you had to cherry-picked all of Wikipedia for those little gems too. I think you should re-read that wikipidia article, and pay attention to the bulk of it that is saying there is overwhelmingly a definitive consensus that global warming is mostly man made. In fact, you should re-read this part in particular:

At least one survey of the scientific community has found the opposite problem -- New Scientist notes that in surveys a much larger fraction of U.S. scientists consistently state that they are pressured by their employers or by U.S. government bodies to deny that global warming results from human activities [16] or risk losing funding.

What else... The Petition Project and 19,000 signatures:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

from wiki:

In 2005, Scientific American reported:
“ Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.[16]

And that was in 2005, before the 2007 IPCC report.

Further reading about this (NY Times 1998):

http://www.heatisonline.org/contents...8)&Cache=False

[bkelly]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

Okay, but even if that's how you choose to conflate those two subjects, to Lindzen there is obviously a difference, and that's what I was citing.

I don't see why you say there is a difference to Lindzen. The second sentence in his publication that I referenced says:

Weather and climate catastrophes of all sorts are claimed to be what one expects from global warming, and global warming is uniquely associated with man’s activities.

How can global warming be associated with man's activities if it doesn't refer to anthropogenic global warming?

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

And you should really get yourself out of the habit of using the phrases "global warming" and "man-made global warming" interchangeably, if you want to be taken seriously.

Okay, I'll be more cognizant of the two terms in the future.

bkelly

[bkelly]

Originally Posted by GhostintheShell

Global Warming's Senseless Consensus

Thursday, November 8, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Is there a “consensus” on global warming among the scientists participating in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.

This whole sruvey is one big staw-man argument. It claims to challenge the "consensus on global warming" but then ask questions that only illustrate differences in scientists' perspective, values and summaries.

I found the actual survey at http://www.demanddebate.com/ipcc_survey.htm. Below are the questions and results:


Question #1. Which best describes the reason(s) for climate change?

[ ] Human activity is the principal driver of climate change. 20%
[ ] Human activity drives climate change, but natural variability is also important. 63%
[ ] Natural variability drives climate change, but human activity is also important. 11%
[ ] Natural variability is the principal driver of climate change. 4%
[ ] No opinion. 2%

Question #2. Which best describes the role of manmade CO2 emissions in climate change?

[ ] Manmade CO2 emissions are the principal driver of climate change. 17%
[ ] Manmade CO2 emissions drive climate change, but other natural and human-related factors are also important. 70%
[ ] Other natural and/or human-related factors drive climate change, but manmade CO2 emissions are important. 6%
[ ] Other natural and/or human-related factors are the principal drivers of climate change. 6%
[ ] No opinion. 2%

Question #3. Which best describes the impact on global climate of controlling manmade CO2 emissions?

[ ] Limiting manmade CO2 emissions would have a strong impact. 72%
[ ] Limiting manmade CO2 emissions would have some impact. 19%
[ ] Limiting manmade CO2 emissions would have no impact. 0%
[ ] It would be impossible to discern the impact. 7%
[ ] No opinion. 2%

Question #4. Current mean global temperature is:

[ ] Unprecedentedly warm and getting warmer. 56%
[ ] Within natural variability but moving to unprecedentedly warmer levels. 31%
[ ] Within natural variability and stable. 4%
[ ] Not a useful metric. 4%
[ ] No opinion. 5%

Question #5. The climatic impacts of a mean global temperature that is 1-degree Celsius warmer than today are:

[ ] Undesirable. 48%
[ ] Desirable. 4%
[ ] Desirable for some and undesirable for others. 39%
[ ] Too difficult to assess. 7%
[ ] No opinion. 2%

Question #6. The ideal global climate is...

[ ] Warmer than the present. 2%
[ ] Cooler than the present. 13%
[ ] Occurring today. 17%
[ ] There is no such thing as an "ideal" global climate. 61%
[ ] No opinion. 7%


Now are any of the choices above incomptatible with the "concensus on global warming", that manmade CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm?

bkelly


P.S. - GhostintheShell, I still await a name of a global warming denier from the orginizations listed.