Global Warming

[rmnunez]

I don't know the scientific community's evolutions well enough to tell whether anyone has been laughted out of it. Graphs were posted on this thread showing alternative centimetric sea level rises prognosticated over multi-century spans. Al Gore's movie "Inconvenient Truth featured multi-meter tidal waves sweeping over Manhattan's skyscrappers. Al Gore wouldn't be a member of any scientific community, but his movie purportedly represented accurate scientific estimates of the impact of global warming.

[Mr. Jaggers]

Most people are egocentric - they are only concerned about things that affect them personally. Most will come to grips with the effects of global warming at the grocery store when they are fighting in the isles for the food on the shelves. Others will be concerned about it when they see their beachfront property under water.

[xyzer]

I have repeatedly expressed doubts about the runaway course of the global warming hype? Speaking of running, I ran across this site(discussion) of the subject and it is a worthwhile read for any interested in the truth of the matter.
Science and Public Policy Institute - Fallacies about Global Warming

The false "hockeystick" graph and the inversion of data indicating global warming preceding C02 rise is addressed? The frequent claims by Pooey that thousands of scientists concurred with the IPCC conclusions is debunked and so on. Read it and understand the facts of the matter!

[Mr. Jaggers]

The Science and Public Policy Institute is a shill of ExxonMobil headed up by Robert Ferguson to promote its interest in Congress.

[rmnunez]

From that "shill":

The IPCC has often said words to the effect "We don't know what else can be causing warming so it must be humans" (or "the climate models will only produce the correct result if we include man-made influences"), but at the same time the IPCC says that scientists have a low level of understanding of many climate factors. It logically follows that if any natural climate factors are poorly understood then they cannot be properly modelled, the output of the models will probably be incorrect and that natural forces cannot easily be dismissed as possible causes.

[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: xyzer I have repeatedly expressed doubts about the runaway course of the global warming hype? Speaking of running, I ran across this site(discussion) of the subject and it is a worthwhile read for any interested in the truth of the matter. Science and Public Policy Institute - Fallacies about Global Warming The false "hockeystick" graph and the inversion of data indicating global warming preceding C02 rise is addressed? The frequent claims by Pooey that thousands of scientists concurred with the IPCC conclusions is debunked and so on. Read it and understand the facts of the matter!

Ooh boy, lots to laugh about here. But for the sake of brevity I'll just touch upon one or two points.

1 - Scientists have accurate historical temperature data

Yeah, so, first of all, the direct surface temperature records isn't the only record of the climate we have. So, there goes that argument.

But even if it were, it's perfectly fine, and has been independently verified. It was independently verified by none other than the community of Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudti Blog. You can read about it here. Looks like my predictions about SurfaceStations.org being a waste of time were spot on, eh?

2 - Temperature trends are meaningful and can be extrapolated

Of course, no one's extrapolating anything from the temperature trend. So this entire section is bunk. I think I made a few posts a while back detailing how global warming theory was not a statistical theory, but a physical one.

Although the article was right that clouds are still a source of uncertainty in climate models.

3 - The accuracy of climate models can be determined from their output

Meaningless. The accuracy of climate models can be determined by how well they match reality.

4 - The consensus among scientists is decisive (or even important)

No one ever said it was. They just said it was there.

5 - The dominance of scientific papers on a certain subject establishes a truth

Again, no one ever said this. Scientists will study whatever they can get funded to study. If there is a large portion of grant money going toward climate research, it will be reflected in the scientific literature.

6 - Peer-reviewed papers are true and accurate

More meaningless stuff. The peer review process works just fine. Scientists don't play favorites with other scientists. They gain standing and prestige in the scientific community by proving other scientists wrong. They aren't about to go easy on them.

7 - The IPCC is a reliable authority and its reports are both correct and widely endorsed by all scientists

"There is strong evidence that the IPCC is being very selective of the papers it wishes to cite..." Strong evidence eh? Well where is it? I like how the article never once cites any claims like this one. It just expects us to believe them.

All in all, the article is amazingly deceitful and doesn't contain a single ounce of scientific integrity. it's obviously a propaganda piece meant to discredit the science behind global warming theory. It certainly isn't an objective analysis of it.

Most of the other arguments in the article are as bad or worse than the ones I mentioned, I just didn't want to waste the time required to go through and debunk them all, especially since it's been done several times over in this thread.

One last note about the "Hockey Stick" graph though. The controversy surrounding the graph (the issue was settled over a decade ago, just so you know) is amazingly technical and very complicated. I say that any nonspecialist who has "taken a side" on the issue has done so for purely ideological, not scientific, reasons. So in the interest of keeping my half of this debate honest, I will refrain from referencing the Mann graph in the future.

[rmnunez]

I thought the note on how temperatures were taken only once, later with maximums and minimums and now at timed intervals, did hit upon something that ought to play a role in estimates of past temperatures and furture forecasts. I also found the few dozen scientists endorsing one or another section of the IPCC's reports surprising when these are portrayed as a consensus among thousansds.

[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: rmnunez I thought the note on how temperatures were taken only once, later with maximums and minimums and now at timed intervals, did hit upon something that ought to play a role in estimates of past temperatures and furture forecasts.

It has absolutely nothing to do with future forecasts. The projections of future temperatures are based on physical models, not historic climate data.

I also found the few dozen scientists endorsing one or another section of the IPCC's reports surprising when these are portrayed as a consensus among thousansds.

There are thousands of scientists who endorse the IPCC's view. In fact, every single major scientific and acedemic institution on the planet endorses it.

[rmnunez]

I get the impression scientists don't endorse things the same way the rest of us do. For them to endorse a scientific conclusion requires they review it, verify the scientific premises it rests on sometimes testing them and checking with colleagues profering such data.

Now we have an IPCC report that tells us with a great deal of certainty, mankind must reduce pollution (particularly CO2 emissions) because these are the most significant contributor of greenhouse gases causing global warming. However the article says just a few scientists in the IPCC ever read the portion of that Panel's report relating to anthropogenic causes while we are told thousands of scientists support the conclusion.

When calculating what effect climate change could have, computer models are used wherein current and past data is applied to estimate effects in the future. Current data is more complete than it was in the past, for example we now have regularly timed recordings as well as maximums and minimums. We didn't have this data in the past, so we need to estimate what it was. My contention is that the estimates of maximum and minimum temperatures and those for timed intervals in the past play a role in forecasting what they might be in the future.

[xyzer]

rm...
The last couple of posts show just how hard it is to convince believers who have been hit with a barrage of unproven contentions and theories for so long they have lost sight of logic?
The most obvious bit of playground logic is the immediate attack on any source as biased.
An example..

The Science and Public Policy Institute is a shill of ExxonMobil headed up by Robert Ferguson to promote its interest in Congress

What nonsense? If the author bothered to check he/she would find funding for much of the research used for scientific studies comes from subjectively influenced sources? Grants from various institutions? This contention would cloud any scientific endeavor as biased because most if not all have funding sources?

Parrot immediately shows evidence of not understanding the difference between the words 'climate' and 'temperature'? There was little if any coordinated collection of globaltemperatures before the 1970s. What climate indications we have are derived from proxy studies which relate to major climate changes and don't indicate any sort of short term temperatures in the globalm sense. As a matter of fact ground temperatures are most frequently recorded from sites easily accessable to humans and there lots of places in Africa, antarctica, South America, etc which don't have widespread ground temperature recording sites.

And then there is this brilliant deduction?

Temperature trends are meaningful and can be extrapolated

Really? But only if climate remains the same? And the record over the eons show climate changes. Proxy records show that natural factors are the primary drivers for such change. I can only ask if C02 was increasind during the 1950-70s how come temperatures decreased during that same period?


And this one?

The accuracy of climate models can be determined from their output

I'm scratching my gourd on that brilliant observation. I don't know what it means? A model is a function or what the author thinks will influence his hypothesis. It containes a limited supply of subjectively inserted influences which will be subjected to computer iterations to give a trend...given all the pertinent factors are included and there are no ensuing changes to the input data? As rm points out there is no certainty to scientific conclusions. As a matter of fact many such conclusions have been overturned by subsequent investigation and studies? Thats why conclusions(even those of the IPCC) are carefully couched in uncertainty with words like ,if, could, might ,would, etc!

[rmnunez]

The accuracy of climate models can be determined from their output

Yes, this left me nonplussed as well, I think it means that if the models are confirmed we'll see how accurate they were.

I see these IPCC forecasts as the product of accurate data obtained now, compared with less accurate estimated data for the past, used to project what the data will look like in the future. This should be simple enough when we're applying a single recording at the location, but if the data used to calculate what the temperature was in the past applies an average of a maximum and minimum or of a set of timed temperature recordings -this will impact on the resulting figure. When that figure is compared with the current accurate data and then projected into the future, whatever variation resulted from the averaging will be multiplied when projected.

[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: xyzer Parrot immediately shows evidence of not understanding the difference between the words 'climate' and 'temperature'? There was little if any coordinated collection of globaltemperatures before the 1970s. What climate indications we have are derived from proxy studies which relate to major climate changes and don't indicate any sort of short term temperatures in the globalm sense. As a matter of fact ground temperatures are most frequently recorded from sites easily accessable to humans and there lots of places in Africa, antarctica, South America, etc which don't have widespread ground temperature recording sites.

I don't think this has anything to do with what I said...

And then there is this brilliant deduction? Really? But only if climate remains the same? And the record over the eons show climate changes. Proxy records show that natural factors are the primary drivers for such change. I can only ask if C02 was increasind during the 1950-70s how come temperatures decreased during that same period?

Round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows.

I think we've discussed this, what, five or six times now? The temperature dropped (or, to be more precise, remained stable-there was no downward trend during the time.) from about 1940 to 1970 because some other forcing overwhelmed the warming from the CO2. CO2 isn't the only thing capable of forcing the Earth's temeprature.

Also, read my entire post please, don't just glance at snippets of it. The parts of my post in bold came from your article (which you apparently didn't read). I didn't write that.

And this one? I'm scratching my gourd on that brilliant observation. I don't know what it means? A model is a function or what the author thinks will influence his hypothesis. It containes a limited supply of subjectively inserted influences which will be subjected to computer iterations to give a trend...given all the pertinent factors are included and there are no ensuing changes to the input data?

Again, read my entire post next time please. That also came from your article.

As rm points out there is no certainty to scientific conclusions. As a matter of fact many such conclusions have been overturned by subsequent investigation and studies? Thats why conclusions(even those of the IPCC) are carefully couched in uncertainty with words like ,if, could, might ,would, etc!

No scientist will ever tell you that something is definite. They know that no theory is perfect, and that no observation is without flaw (that doesn't mean the observations are wrong!). So scientists will always say things like, "Is probable," or, "Is likely."

[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: rmnunez Yes, this left me nonplussed as well, I think it means that if the models are confirmed we'll see how accurate they were. I see these IPCC forecasts as the product of accurate data obtained now, compared with less accurate estimated data for the past, used to project what the data will look like in the future.

Again, I didn't write that. It came from Xyzer's article.

Anyway, I think I've all ready made several posts on this in another thread. Climate models are not based on historic temeprature data, they are based on the laws of physics. They are not extrapolating trends from temperature data. Read this article on Simple Models Of Climate to learn more about them. This one point is so vitally important, that I feel the need to put it here in bold to make sure no one forgets it: Climate models are physical, not statistical.

[rmnunez]

What a fascinating site, quite interesting, all sorts of cross-references, quite thurough.

Whether the computer models used to promote the scare of global warming rely more on physics than on statistics is beyond me.

I'm just concerned the Heritage Foundation article noted effects I know apply mathematically when making projections and if the results are then used to produce a forecast for the future, any effect will be magnified.

[rmnunez]

What a fascinating site.

Whether climate modelling is more about physics than mathematics is beyond me, I'm just concerend with the effect improvements in temperature recordings now have to have on calculations of what they were in the past, and how this would affect the forecasts.

The aip site highlights the interactive relationship between factors and diversity of scientific groups highlighting one or another factors' role and effect.

Where's the delete button?

[Mr. Jaggers]

The politics of the global warming debate is short-sighted; it doesn’t see beyond the next election. For the powers that be, the true test of science is not empirical evidence but political correctness. As to the latter, one can be confident that, if need suit purpose, our political leaders would fund a study to show that the moon is made of blue cheese.

[xyzer]

Hey parrot, are you reading the original reference?

Also, read my entire post please, don't just glance at snippets of it. The parts of my post in bold came from your article (which you apparently didn't read). I didn't write that.

The points listed were titled fallacies of the global warming argument? I haven't figured out whether you were agreeing with or disputing these fallacies? Have you?
Suggest you unhinge your brain and re-read the discussion of the fallacies that the article covers. That might change your contentions?
Plus it might give a rational person some idea of what you are posting about?

[xyzer]

Yay Verily Jaggers!

The politics of the global warming debate is short-sighted; it doesn’t see beyond the next election. For the powers that be, the true test of science is not empirical evidence but political correctness. As to the latter, one can be confident that, if need suit purpose, our political leaders would fund a study to show that the moon is made of blue cheese.

You show a very perceptive and coherent view of modern politics and politicians! Unfortunately there are no term limits so that some of these idiots wont just go way!

[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: xyzer Hey parrot, are you reading the original reference? The points listed were titled fallacies of the global warming argument? I haven't figured out whether you were agreeing with or disputing these fallacies? Have you? Suggest you unhinge your brain and re-read the discussion of the fallacies that the article covers. That might change your contentions? Plus it might give a rational person some idea of what you are posting about?

The parts I put in bold were the "myths" in the article claimed to be "debunking". I was responding to what the article had to say about each of those points, not the points themselves. For example, what I wrote underneath the, "1 - Scientists have accurate historical temperature data" part was my response to the article's "debunking" of the statement, not the statement itself. And no, I wasn't agreeing with the article a bit.

I apologize for any confusion this caused, I should have organized it more clearly.

[xyzer]

Here is another recent article on a more meaningful reason for climate change..Book Review: 'The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change'

I've referred to it before. More evidence that natural forces are not always addressed in climate studies, and they are much more inportant?
From the article...

Currently the solar magnetic field is more than twice as strong as it was 100 years ago, which is the likely cause of the 0.6C warming during that time. The sun goes on directly regulating our climate by modulating cosmic radiation rates of the Earth, which had not been appreciated until recently. The real effects of man’s activities have to be reassessed, since the new findings can explain warming without invoking man-made CO2. For these reasons as author Nigel Calder states, grand computer forecasts of the climate are not to be trusted. These are exciting times in cosmoclimatology and galactic physics. To suggest that the “climate science is settled” is premature with no place in honest science.