[FutureSDguy]

Lovely strawman. Bleat on.

[FutureSDguy]

If it took an economist to “break” the hockey stick analysis, wouldn’t that be a case of extremely sloppy climate science? Seriously, this was my first observation upon hearing about the Mann hockey stick: that a layman exposed its flaw so easily. Even more disturbing is that the whole initial Kyoto campaign rode upon it and that IPCC (to relax my earlier statement) included it in its earlier reports.

“So there, gotcha” is sufficient in sending a paper back to the drawing board. Again, the burden of proof is upon the author, especially when it comes to trillion-dollar policy making.

Your dependence on realclimate.org is also disturbing. That’s an advocacy site that parrots anything IPCC. Its bias is nauseating. (I’m also turned off by knee-jerk anti-AGW bias also.)

Of course people make mistakes. That’s no excuse for forever ignoring all sides of the issue, which seems to be what you would prefer to do. (People do not like to be given data that conflicts with belief, and people who can’t handle that shouldn’t be scientists.)

Thanks for the list. It may come in handy someday. I have a feeling that in 5 years or so–however long it takes for IPCC’s credibility to fall apart from its own weight of inconsistencies and false predictions–that several of these authors are going to have difficulty looking for a job.

[FutureSDguy]

“They are, you are just too blinded by your own biases to accept it.”

And you’re not blinded and unbiased?

“The IPCC gets routinely criticized in the science circles for being *too* conservative, if they are criticized at all.”

Most of the criticism of IPCC is that they make too many assumptions in their data, and do not follow the usual rigour in scientific methodology (including peer-reviews.)

“Speaking of routine scientific integrity, you do realize that the sites you often reference, such as climateaudit and junkscience.org, have exactly none? No original research, no peer review?”

In a proof by contradiction, one only needs to point out a flaw in reasoning. That’s not a publication, just of critique of one. The burden of proof is with IPCC, not the critics.

[FutureSDguy]

“Oh, so we should discard the peer-review process in favor of a mass appeal to popularity?”

Congratulations, you’ve just described IPCC!

[FutureSDguy]

I think people give humans too much credit for its ability to affect the climate. First, I am yet to see a completely definitive reason for ice ages: is it due to Milankovich cycles, or a combination of things? Second, whatever the cause, I’m extremely skeptical that man can do anything about it, unless he really wants to mess up the environment.

There is a book coming out called Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, that talks about cosmic rays and the suns magnetic fields as the primary cause of this century’s global warming. Ever since I started digging for a more sensible explanation for GW, the sunspot cycle has always occured to me as the most meaningful piece of evidence. Who knows, this could be the nail in the coffin? I fully expect a lot of heated discussions about this, and I’m sure the authors are going to undergo unfair and unprofessional treatment. That’s truly unfortunate, since the best science comes from evaluating ALL possible theories with professionalism and neutrality.

Antarctic ice is another big area of debate that I believe will become clearer over time. While calving of ice off of its shores has occurred at a higher rate, thermometers inland show colder temperatures. In 2009, hopefully the second attempt in putting up CyroSat (CyroSat 1’s launcher crashed) which will measure the thickness of the ice with high accuracy.

DrChaos, I’m very much impressed with your ability to cover the GW topic, but I also do get the impression that you’re trying to overwhelm the audience with science-talk as a means for validation, either consciously or subconsciously. Most things in science actually do have simple explanations–feedbacks, forcings, and the arcane physics of atmospheric CO2 might help in a more accurate model of climate, but I suspect the longer-term cycles ultimately must have extra-terrestial causes. The impact of man-made CO2 has been dutifully argued by AGW skeptics as negligible. But I’m content with it being a continued topic of debate–but I do think it’s distracting resources from the ultimate resolution of the puzzle.

Hmmm, what else. Oh yes, I think this issue of CO2-induced GW is to many just a proxy for the ongoing battle against burning fossil fuels, hence the heightened vitriol. I’m for reduction in pollutants (including CFC’s), but I think people are ultimately better off with impartiality and cold-objectivity (no pun intended) in science, which is most lacking in climate science. This is so that real workable solutions can be obtained, regardless of the social agendas going into characterizing the problems.

I hope that this IPCC fiasco falls flat on its face for the sake of separating science from politics. It’s a extremely toxic combination that (in my skeptic opinion) is causing the wrong steps to be made. Its attitude that “the science is settled” is insulting to scientists who oppose. This is not unlike what happened to Galileo when it came to characterizations of the solar system.

My view of AGW in no way unique, so continuing character attacks upon me and calling me ignorant needs to come to a rest. Those who think the majority of scientists is in agreement in AGW (either sincerely, or just joining in on the lie) need to look again and start reading the views from the other side. Not only is consensus science bad science, but in the case of AGW, the consensus is illusory anyway: it is a result of cherry-picking, unequal research funding allocation, intimidation, and fear of skeptic climatologists from speaking up (just look at the treatment of people like me in this thread). Furthermore, there is sufficient evidence of data tampering and misrepresentation within the works of IPCC that would make most scientists cringe. I believe that scientific results that are tainted should be thrown away and completely started over by someone else.

My final question that I find worth asking, if at least rhetorical: if AGW is obviously true, then why isn’t the IPCC acting with the same routine scientific integrity expected of any science body? In science, results are supposed to speak for themselves.

[FutureSDguy]

Long thread. I think it has at least served to get people to talk about what they truely believe and challenge each other on those beliefs.

This morning, I read an interesting blog post where US temperatures might not have risen after all, if subsequent changes to temperature record are faulty.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1142

According to the raw (“uncorrected”) data, US temperatures in the 1930’s were warmer than the present. This happens to coincide with the “dustbowl” climate which contributed to the great depression.

The comments are very interesting. In that thread, someone laments on how the IPCC summary has been released to the public (Summary for Policy Makers), before the public has a chance to scrutize the underlying science. I agree with that objection. To me this seems like a classic case of propaganda: solidify public opinion on the matter, making the actual scientific data secondary, and when rebuttals are made on the release data in May, they won’t make the headlines because public sentiment has already been “fixed” (i.e. it’s too late to roll back the wave).

[FutureSDguy]

You sure have this obsession with “wrong!” There are lots of feedback mechanisms to be sure. I was merely listing the top energy inputs into the ocean surface itself.

[FutureSDguy]

“Huh? So if Venus’ atmosphere was replaced by Argon or Nitrogen at the same pressure it would be at the same temperature?”

No, it would be at a different pressure due to different densities, and as a consequence, a different temperature.

In general, I see how aghast some of you are that I dare challenge “scientific establishment.” I understand that. Remember, it wasn’t long ago when the favorite scare was that there was going to be another ice age due to CO2. I think it’s better to question prevailing science in this case, especially when it comes to the IPCC which is policy-driven, not truth-driven.

“See kewp’s response about short term fluctuations. More generally, the correlation over the last 650K years is very, very solid.”

Yes, very solid in favor of temperature rising before CO2 does. This supports the theory that the ocean is absorbing less of it due to temperature.

My point was that in the past 120 years, CO2 has risen monotonically, but temperature has not; most of the temperature rise occurred before the bulk of CO2 occurred. This greatly weakens AGW, and the best hand-wave that you can do about it is to say “well, it’s a delayed action.” This is not hard evidence. I find it funny how AGW supporters choose time frames that suit them. Give them 8000 years of cycical evidence (that what is happening today happened before), they reject it. Give them 30 years of cyclical evidence (it got cooler then), they reject it. But how about exactly since 1942, now they’re convinced that man is the culprit.

[FutureSDguy]

“There is no controversy that there is a natural greenhouse effect, because otherwise the Earth would be a frozen snowball at this radius from the Sun.”

Of course not. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be -18 C (by one estimate), too cold for life to evolve. Don’t oversimplify my assertions here. The crux of this debate is whether man-made CO2 is causing the sea-level to rise, polar bears to die, and all kinds of other problems. There is ample evidence that CO2 *cannot* cause the kind of temperature changes that are claimed by IPCC.

“Consider that the surface temperature of Venus is hotter than that of Mercury despite the fact that it’s farther away and hence the solar flux is lower.”

Venus’ surface is hot due to atmospheric pressure (rather than greenhouse effect, which was once supposed). The Earth is the same way: something like 1 deg C for every 100 m? You can’t argue any clean relationship between AU distance and temperature without taking the composition of atmospheres in account.

[FutureSDguy]

On point2). I think you’re trying to say that oceans don’t create CO2, but that is not my claim (the biology in the oceans might, but not the chemistry of the ocean itself). The level of CO2 absorption from the atmosphere depends on temperature, and when temperature trends warmer, CO2 is re-released.

Would you agree that IF the ocean received more solar energy, then less CO2 would be absorbed, hence a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels would occur?

What is your explanation of the correlation between sunspots and global temperatures? (Review with http://capnbob.us/blog/?p=610).

By the way, half of your energy in typing (very eloquent, I’ll admit) would be saved if you recognized that I don’t dispute that temperatures are increasing. It might even cause the catastrophic results that you say. It’s the role of CO2 in this that I’m disputing.

[FutureSDguy]

DrChaos, your scientific arguments looks reasonable and it passes the sniff test, but the underlying problem I have with what you said is that there’s no hard evidence of anything you stated. It’s the usual hand-waving and assumptions where absense of hard evidence falls into favor of anthropogenic warming.

“Real scientists have thought of all the possible complications, years and decades before any of the debunkers knew abou them. The effects have been investigated very thoroughly and seriously, and the current conclusion reflects those investigations. ”

I wholeheartedly disagree with you on that. Climate science is full of controversy and misrepresentations. The largest trend I seem to notice is that the younger scientists, the one who enter the field with an environmentalist agenda, are contradicting the older generation of climatologists, who only had the agenda of understanding climate.

If something is true, then it should withstand the test of time and the scrutiny of skeptics whose interests are not anti-environmental, but rather for rigorous adherence to sound scientific methology.

As far as the logarithmic growth of CO2, I was hasty in formulating a reply. My point really was that IPCC predictions of future temperature assumes a linear relationship in increases CO2 versus increases in temperature, leading to overly-high estimates of 5.8 C warmth. But having said that, my faith in the IPCC in having any kind of accurate model that relates CO2 to temperature is very low, because it is based on exaggerated assumptions about the warming-capacity of CO2 in the first place. The correlation between CO2 and temperature (which can be adequately explaned by oceanic chemistry) was taken to be a causal one when it came time to create computer models.

(As a humorous aside, it has been found that pirates cause global warming: http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.jpg).

[FutureSDguy]

(dup post)

[FutureSDguy]

kewp: “What I find hilarious about you nuts is you think you are the first person in history to ask this question.”

I never claimed I was the first person to ask it. I find it strange that this anomaly *hasn’t* helped to tame the global warming hype.

Getting your information solely from realclimate.org is a terrible mistake to make. That site is as biased as slashdot is in the computer industry. I do read that site, because there are going to be *some* good material, but the site is mainly about scare-mongering and maligning the characters of global warming skeptics.

I should have been clearer. Greenland always had glaciation, but the amount of non-iced over land during 1000-1200 enabled Vikings to settle it and grow food. The cooling that occurred afterward (The Maunder Minimum) forced the Vikings to flee. The point here is that there are dramatic changes in climate that happens on a sub-century scale, and to believe that the one happening now *has* to be man-made seems to gloss over historical parallels.

Now, for the further education of Climate Science amateurs (like myself), the topic of this post is the solubility of CO2 in water. Ever noticed how cola, uncapped, tastes flat when you take it out of the refrigerator, and as it warms up, it tastes more fizzly? There’s a reason for this, and the same phenomena applies in the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the temperature of the ocean: the colder the ocean is, the more CO2 is it is able to dissolve and hold. Read: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/CO2.htm

The natural question that should arise as a consequence of reading this is: what warms the ocean in the first place?

Sunlight. There are two other minor factors that come to mind: geothermal energy, and energy absorbed and reemitted as infrared radiation by greenhouse gasses (yes, that’s what you guys are going to jump on). For an accessment of just how strong this latter effect is on ocean temperatures, read http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html (skip down to How Oceans Get Warm.) If you consider the fact that 95% of greenhouse gasses is water vapor, the proportional contribution to CO2 becomes very very small.

So if sunlight is what primarily drives ocean temperature, it stands to reason that the sun is responsible for the long-term variations that we’re seeing.

[FutureSDguy]

I’m not a CC doubter. I’m a AGW doubter. (Let’s get our terms straight. :))

I hold two degrees: Math, CS, and have a graduate degree in bioinformatics pending. This does not qualify me as a climate expert, but it does qualify me as one who can reason and evaluate the scientific works of others.

Math: lots and lots. Chemistry: basic. Physics: basic.

Evolution: yes

[FutureSDguy]

Today’s reading. A nine-year old article about sunspots and its correlation to temperature. I find it very interesting that the sunspot theory is still as strong today as it was then (but unfortunately not stronger, but I attribute that to the lopsided attention to CO2).

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA203.html

There are more in-depth articles elsehwere. I chose this because it’s easier reading.

[Author]

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