[ucodegen]

it’s not whether or not you use junkscience as your sole source, it’s the fact that you use it at all. it’s creator is politically funded. it’s not scientific. it’s garbage.

Unsupported statement. I can use it because it draws upon earlier work. You can’t condemn a publication because you don’t like the publisher. You have to condemn it because it is incorrect.. and have to prove it in the process.

see the problem? similarly, junkscience refers to the swed’s study on sun spot activities and then jumps to the conclusion that sun spots are responsible for all the recent warming. there’s no reason to believe that, there’s no evidence provided in the reference to support that claim

This is a better technique to invalidating a statement. Show that the derivation is not supported by the underlying research.. only one problem. He makes no such claim. He just states that it is significant and point that in 5 years the cloud effect was responsible for a 2% decrease….

He also points to the weakness in the data “While we are hesitant to extrapolate from very short data series (always a dubious procedure) it… “. It could be that you mistook this statement as saying categorically that all warming attributable to AGW is attributable to Cosmic Rays.. the problem is that the author used the word could. This is not a categorical statement.. it is speculative by its wording.

[ucodegen]

Sort of chiming in here..

2) The amount reradiated is increasing. This is observed fact.

Please state reference/paper as to this measurement over time.

4) Laws of electromagnetism and thermodynamics say that when there’s more atmospheric emissivity the temperature will go up.

Not exactly. The correct statement would be; as the atmospheric temperature goes up, atmospheric emissivity goes up (basic physics of black body radiation). The opposite is not true. If a black body is radiating, then it is losing energy, thereby its temperature would be dropping (unless energy is being supplied to it at the same time it is emitting). Now using my corrected statement, if observed black body radiation is increasing w/o any change in the body’s ability to radiate, then one might say that the atmospheric temperature has increased. The best way though is to look at the center frequency of the black body emissions, this is directly correlated to temperature. The center frequency of black body emissions shifts to the right(higher freq) with higher temps. If center frequency does not shift but emissivity ‘flux’ has increased, no temperature change has taken place, but the body has improved its ability to radiate.

ie. chrome on a car under the sun can get very hot even though it is very reflective. This is because its ability to emit as a black body is very poor. On the other hand, dark painted metal will gain a considerable amount of thermal energy but will not get as hot under the same conditions because it is a much better black body emitter. (ignoring for certain types of paint that have odd characteristics)

My personal opinion is that correlating emissivity directly to AGW is too simplistic a far as the earth’s processes. There are both positive and negative feedbacks, with the negative feedback having the ability to shut down/block a large forcing factor(sun). Some of the feedbacks are also affected by the atmospheric emissivity.

[ucodegen]

If you want to have something which is completely sourced with close to definitive information, the 900+ page IPCC report is it,

We already went there.. the IPCC report is not the penultimate reference because they are rewriting the underlying scientific work to be compliant with their summary. I already referred to the reporting guidelines from the IPCC. One of the other posters also submitted a reference to one of the PhDs that pulled out because they felt that the IPCC was pushing their agenda ahead of and to the detriment of the real science. BTW: This was not a junkscience.com reference either. I am not going to bother to repost the above.. it is already here on this blog.

But the web blogs aren’t intended as primary literature, but as explanations to laymen of what the meaning of the results are.

From the perspective of realclimate.org, yes. Realclimate.org can not claim to speak for other climatologists until it does.. and yes I found some references… compared to junkscience.com, they are kind of thin. I am bothered that the ‘debate‘ here is on the two websites as opposed to the underlying references. If the underlying references are used, then the quality of the discussion improves because we are dealing direct with research papers (though it is harder and slower to do).

When you go to a cardiologist, do you demand citations justifying his diagnoses? No, but said cardiologists certainly use them when they publish papers on research results to other ones.

Bad analogy. If the cardiologist uses a non approved procedure, the cardiologist can lose his license to practice. The way a procedure becomes approved is through published procedures and clinical trials. Right now on A-CO2-GW, we are on the publish/research phase.

The reference:

Recent Warming But No Trend in Galactic Cosmic Rays

is pretty good but old (prior ref cited – most recent is 2004) I would double check to see if there are more current papers considering the rate of change/knowledge growth. I think there are, and they may contradict these results. Won’t claim them until I find them (Note: Russia has some pretty good hard science, guess those guys don’t have much else to entertain them during the winter)

where ‘controversial big ideas’ (like anthropogenic global warming once was) get

Hate to inform you, but AGW is still controversial, as well as the magnitude involved. (no effect .. to .. Armageddon)

BTW: I didn’t bring up cosmic rays.. so you have to be replying to someone else’s post..

And asserting a hypothetical solar mechanism does NOT turn off the obvious, and experimentally demonstrated mechanism of GHG.

How could it? How do you turn off known physics? The physical connection from galactic cosmic rays is tenuous (but it may influence cloud formation) and the physical connection from GHGs is primary and obvious.

Huh on the first one (must not be replying to one of my posts) On the second one (influence cloud formation), this is one mechanism that I much mentioned much earlier, that would cause H20’s positive feedback to switch to a negative feedback as far as AGW would be concerned. I will not link it directly to Cosmic Rays though, until I had read the literature.

[ucodegen]

I find it incredible that people accuse scientists of having a financial motivation while ignoring the fact that many of the “debunkers” do too.

The truth is, they both have financial motives. Too often scientists are shown w/o any financial motives while “debunkers” are claimed to have financial motives. People have only been exposing that scientists have the same motives as the debunkers.. to put respective motives in perspective (Publish or perish) (Bring in grant money or not get tenure)..

[ucodegen]

I tend to agree with PC, the other thing that your Realtor friend may be doing is trying to make it look like houses are going for more than they actually are.. (ie: see, this is what houses like this are really listing for.. and here is another house that is more in your price range). Yes, I also believe that this reflects badly on Realtors too..

[ucodegen]

Realclimate, to me, is a handbook for countering AGW skeptics, not unlike what religious cults have to counter outside influences and criticisms. Junkscience is the same in the opposite direction. I don’t think citing either one proves anything other than establish whose side we are on, and one must read between the lines to sense bias and scientific validity. In the end, only one side can be right:

Actually, I tend to believe that the truth is somewhere in between with special interests pulling on the poles at both ends.

[ucodegen]

@1jrp1

To FutureSDoilguy:

Ohhh.. another proof by attempted character assassination, name calling.. doing real good there!!

@bigtrouble

I remember a couple of years ago, Pres. Bush stated that evolution was a “theory” and that creationism should be taught along side natural selection in schools. The next day he gave a big speech talking about the threat of avian flu mutating very quickly, and soon would include human to human transfer.

If you don’t get the absolute stupidity of this inconsistency, there is no way you will be able to judge the scientific evidence of ANYTHING.

And this has relevance how?? Non sequitur..

[ucodegen]

@Borat
Here’s the Source Watch entry about junkscience.com, as well as the background about it’s creator, Steven J. Milloy.

Humm, proof by character assassination.. good!!! real science there!! That reference does not prove whether what he has said is correct or incorrect. It only tries to impugn the author. This is not how science is done!!

@drunkle
In addition, any scientist would know that doing all your references from one site, a blog no less (realclimate.org) would get you laughed out of the scientific community.

and yet you point to junkscience? huh?

I don’t use him as sole source, and if you had paid attention I pointed out that he refers to other sources in support of his contention, while realclimate.org doesn’t!. In fact, using your reference (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Cosmic_rays_and_climate.html), within the first paragraph, junkscience.com/Milloy has referenced at least 6 background articles (both pro and con to his position). This is how real science articles are written. Personally, I do not support all that Milloy states, but the method he uses is actually scientifically sound, while the method that realclimate.org uses is not scientifically sound.

[ucodegen]

Wow.. a lot of ‘stuff’ posted since I checked..

Ok, real quickly. I have noticed how realclimate.org has been put up as an example of truth while junkscience.com has been put up as a site that misrepresents the truth. Big problem though. realclimate.org does not footnote or show references for the underpinnings of its statements. On the other hand, junkscience.com has a considerable number of references as its underlying work. As far as how scientific papers are really written, junkscience.com is doing it right and realclimate.org is doing it wrong. It has to do with strength of evidence.

Because realclimate.org references or derives from very few if any underlying scientific papers in its statements, it is easy to argue against the points made by realclimate.org because they are not supported by presented evidence (ie: if no derived papers, need actual unfiltered source data and any filters applied and why).

Because junkscience.com heavily footnotes its pages with references to the original work, the only way to invalidate its statements is to do one of the two following: 1) must show that the derivation or conjecture derived from the underlying work is incorrect and how it is not supported by the underlying work OR 2) must prove that the underlying work being referenced is itself incorrect. If the underlying work also further references more underlying work.. that may also have to be proven to be invalidated. The key word is prove… using similar reference techniques to support the counter arguments.

It is like chess where the checkmating queen is supported by a rook and knight. To prove the queen can be taken, you have to also prove the rook and or knight are not there (or have already been taken).

In addition, any scientist would know that doing all your references from one site, a blog no less (realclimate.org) would get you laughed out of the scientific community.

I am waiting to see if anyone can counter the references that junkscience.com has used(with more recent scientific papers that directly contradict the papers that he used, and prove them false)…

[ucodegen]

A brief summary on background knowledge needed to understand global warming:
Climatologists do not have the full knowledge to understand the inter-relations.
Neither do people with training in physics, and chemistry.
They each have a piece of the puzzle. The global warming issue requires true interdisciplinary knowledge.

Of all these groups, politicians, musicians etc probably have the least background knowledge. They also tend to be the most vocal (with the except of a few scientists).

NOTE: this is a continuation of the previous post..
Most of the simulations on C02 induced global warming involved models of the class “single column”, meaning it treats the section on earth as a single column of gas and does not differentiate between temperatures at altitudes very well, and therefore can not model thermal transport very well either. There is ongoing work (now) to improve the model with segmenting the gas column..
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/sccm/sccm.html
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/ccm3/source.shtml

http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/climate_modeling.html
As with all things, you add more variables to the model, compute time goes through the roof!!

[ucodegen]

First off: The scientific method does not mean continually repeating something as fact, and then coming up with a disaster scenario for emphasis (to get people motivated without thinking it through). Scientific method entails forming a hypothesis and then testing it.

Second: The use of the term disbelivers/naysayers is highly loaded. It presupposes that the supposition is true without proving it. It also attempts to shut down all discussion (in violation of the scientific method). This is the reason I personally call the groups “pro” and either “anti or con”, and I get specific to “man made CO2 induced global warming”, as opposed to “global warming”.

Ok, now to the more major points: Lets take on the Vostok-ice-core: Take a look at the graph indicated, remember that it reads right to left (not left to right in time.. see scale on bottom).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
There was a real rise in CO2 before temperature occurred 350K years ago (remember right to left). The interesting part is the temperature correlation to particulate matter (dust). It is stated higher dust levels are believed to be caused by cold dry periods, but this in part is already known to be false. Higher particulate levels are already known to reduce global temperature (see temperature results after volcanic eruptions – global dimming). One of the biggest problems is discerning the temperature of the earth over the same period. Most methods have been proven to be horribly inaccurate. I would like to know how they came up with the temperatures.

Forth: I, personally, find it insulting that those who disagree with the forced consensus that man made CO2 is the cause of current global warming are immediately labeled as ‘industry puppets’. This again, is the use of inflammatory words to try to prove ones case by default. Since people brought up the issue of $10,000 offering by the oil industry, I would also like to counter with the Heinz award going to James Hansen for work on global warming..(Hansen is very strong advocate for humans as being the cause).. Heinz awards are unrestricted cash amounts up to $250,000.
http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients.asp?action=detail&recipientID=9
I also throw into the mix, Branson (Virgin Airlines) throwing some $25Million for solutions to sequestering C02. To the unproven claims that Bush is suppressing pro human caused global warming statements, I again bring up Hansen who works for NOAA (a governmental body). I also bring up as counter:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14924286/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99627,00.html
Lawsuits are the opposite of giving money (they take money away from someone.. even just to defend oneself and come out even). Point summary: The pro global warming camp have proven themselves to be more aggressive financially than the con, the pro camp likes to hold out the simple 10K.. but compared to the awards and lawsuits being brought about.. and the scale of these.. the pro human cause global warming camp have proven the opposite to be true. Just leave the scientists alone and let them do their work in peace, whether they are pro or con. They know how to debate science, politicians and flamboyant CEOs don’t

Fifth; Since people have brought up the IPCC.. I will now point to where they are going to ‘re-write’ science:
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf
search on grammatical (should end up being on page 4 of 15). Quoted:

“Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.”

Is that how we conduct science? If the research is not consistent with the intended summary, change the research papers to put them in line? This is not exactly the behavior of a responsible scientific body. Summaries should always be derived from the underlying research, not the other way around.

Sixth: of 1jrp1 analogy, that is just plain ridiculous; What about the actual happening with respect the MTBE? We now have a carcinogen in our water supply because of the eco mandate for oxygenated fuel. This stuff does not go away, and is not going to break down for a considerable amount of time. Don’t even try to say that it was forced by the oil companies. It wasn’t. They don’t like the stuff. It is a ether, and a super solvent. That means that it dissolves the seals in the fuel processing plants (driving up the oil companies costs and causing plant fires), and you know they don’t like things that drive up their costs. Summary: doing something, just to prevent what is perceived as a problem, may be much worse than doing nothing at all until the full/real truth is figured out

I may get back to this with more.. but because I could not find my previous post w/respect to global warming.. I am going to start capturing what I am entering (fun fun fun). I don’t live for this blog.. I got a life elsewhere.. but to put it generally, my background is science (physics) but ended up working in the computer field(pay in expensive SD), and I used to work for SIO. When I see things distorted in the manner of the pro global warming group, I have to speak up. I do track the papers (computers for pay, physics because I like/want to). I am going to close for now with some little factoids and a link:

Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.

CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth’s oceans.

CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient to plant life, and is an essential gas not a pollutant. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide (to the greenhouse).

At 360+/- parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere, less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. (This is why kewp’s experiment at http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/LearnNet/jesei/co2green/home.htm is a flawed example (the sample of C02 gas was 1,000,000ppm not 360ppm). In addition, the setup is flawed (lamp output is not guaranteed to be the same(should use same lamp with an apparatis setup forcing same distance, same type of glass). I also have problems with the ‘typical results. From time sample 2 to time sample 3, air shows a rapid drop in temperature.. even under continuous IR input?? somethings goofy here!! and also contradicts kewp’s earlier assertion that CO2 reflects.. kewp, it absorbs and then re-emits.. and it is very band (wavelength) specific. In addition, light transitioning phase changes refracts, not reflects.. big difference) Absorption is done in many ways: energies of ionization (moving an electron to an outer orbit), translational/rotational/vibration between chemical bonds of carbon and oxygen atoms as well as translational (brownian motion) of the whole.

And now the link:
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm
This paper does not detail the effect of evaporation and condensation of water. When water evaporates, it takes 1000 Calories to accomplish this (vs 1 Calorie to heat one degree Celcius). To condense, that heat has to be given up. Gaseous water has a very light atomic weight (approx 10) compared to oxygen gass(02 = 16) nitrogen (N2 = 14) Carbon Dioxide (C02 = 22). This means that when condensation occurs, it will likely be in the upper atmosphere (troposphere?). When gaseous water condenses to a vapor, its global warming feedback goes from a postive feedback to a negative feedback. It is also a very strong heat/thermal energy transport mechanism.

[ucodegen]

I already buried this subject in a previous post on Piggington.. do I need to locate that post again? Should I throw in the additional info I have? How about the IPCC policy letter for their findings (ie: the scientific work will be adjusted to be consistent with the summary.. all in black and white!).. making the entire IPCC document a political, not scientific document? How about prelim, not yet released copies of the scientific work before editing by the IPCC? How about a letter from 60 scientists (none of them slouches in the subject) indicating that CO2 has very little to do with anthropogenic global warming (against the 20 that the IPCC used..).

Man, will this stupidity never end? First it was global warming (60s) global cooling (70s).. now global warming again!. Global warming conspiratists, give it a rest! Most of you come up with claims of fact, but no scientific basis behind it. Most of the statements are ‘Pavlovian’ in nature; ie I see X and Y, therefore they must be correlated.

[ucodegen]

Those that blame Bernake or Greenspan for all of the problems with real-estate or all that ‘ails’ in this economy, basically have it wrong. CONCHO got things very close.

Basically, the federal reserve has three mechanisms to effect the economy.
1) Federal Reserve rate (underpinning interest rate).
2) Effective outstanding Loan to Deposits rate on banks.
3) Federal Reserve ‘printing presses’.

Thats basically it. Each of these has limitations and consequences in their actions. The Federal Reserve Chairman can not control how much congress wants to or will spend… but he has a partial responsibility with finding the money that they will spend (can’t deny them the purse strings).

Each of the above mechanisms can stimulate or hold back the economy. In addition, deficit spending by Congress can limit the Federal Reserve Chairman’s options (as hinted by CONCHO).

Method #1 (Federal Reserve Rate), this is considered an ‘underpinning’ interest rate because the US Gov. is consider to have 0% chance of default on its debt, therefore it is considered the risk free rate of return on capital. Any returns that have a higher risk of default or failure, will have a risk premium associated with it, increasing the effective interest rate. The risk premium is to offset the chance that you will not get any return or will loose part or all the capital (ie. short shale/foreclosure).

This Federal Reserve Rate is also around the rate that US. Treasuries return since a Treasury Bill is effective a loan to the US Government with the noted rate of return. When Congress is running a deficit, this rate can not be lowered below the indicated rate or return at which people will buy a Treasury Bill at (because the Treasuries will not sell and Congress would not get its deficit spending funded). One of the flies in the mix, is that foreign countries have historically been picking up US Treasuries as investments. While there is 0% risk of default, the chance that the US dollar will decline vs. foreign exchange currency will add an implied risk to the foreign investor and therefore they will demand a risk premium. An example would be: A treasury yielding 5%, but the dollar to foreign currency exchange rate changes by -7%, approximate net would be -2% return. Now take a look at the following links:
http://www.x-rates.com/
http://www.x-rates.com/d/CNY/USD/graph120.html
http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/USD/graph120.html

Method #2(Effective outstanding Loan to Deposits) Otherwise known as M2 (Money supply) adjusted by fractional reserve rate. If banks were originally having to hold 40% of deposits, and allowed to loan out 60% of deposited dollars, a change to holding 30% of deposits and loans on 70% of dollars would free up money for loans. This is in part why the banks were securitizing loans (bundling them as securities and selling the loan packages). The securitized loans no longer count against them on the fractional reserve rate. In addition caveat to some clauses it removes the bank from the risk of those loans failing. see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage-backed_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Money-supply.png

NOTE: The banks really abused securitization of loans during the R.E. bubble by creating wholly owned subsidiaries to do this dirty work and are presently closing these subsidiaries (having them declare bankruptcy) to protect themselves from liability. Because it is a separate company, there is a corporate ‘veil’ between the bank and the wholly owned subsidiary, which also applies to liability. This veil would need to be pierced to go after those that are responsible for the bad loans. If the subsidiaries were created primarily to shield the owning company from liability, and most of the money was being transferred back up to the parent, there may be a good chance to pierce the corporate veil. The wholly owned subsidiary would not have been acting as a separate company in that instance. The suit to pierce that corporate veil may have to be instigated by the holders of the mortgage backed securities. The abuse of the securitization was also a large part of the cause of the drop in lending standards and the crazy prices. The lenders felt safe to lend money to those who they felt couldn’t handle it, because the lenders didn’t feel that they would be caught holding the bag (in a manner of speaking).

One side effect of adjusting fractional reserve rate downward (lower on-hand deposits), is an increased risk of bank failure should those loans go south. Adjusting this rate downward does not help Congress fund its deficit spending either.

Method #3This is firing up the printing presses, otherwise known as M0 (another money supply variable), and relates to the amount of physical currency and central bank accounts that can be exchanged for physical currency. A zero inflationary stance here would be that the growth in physical currency would match the growth of the population. Because of the leverage that fractional reserve rate gives on this figure, increases here can be highly inflationary.

Finally, deficit spending itself is also stimulative to the economy and can be quite inflationary.

Therefore, in reality, it is very unlikely that the Federal Reserve will lower rates. The part that is worrisome, is that with the amount of destruction of capital that the Real Estate deflation will cause, the economy will need to be stimulated again to keep it on its feet. With deficit spending presently occurring, this can not be done by lowering the Federal Reserve Rate. Because the banking industry has put themselves at risk due to their lending behavior, the stimulation can not be done through the fractional reserve rate (Method #2), therefore method #3 is left. To keep inflation at bay when increasing M0, reserve rates may need to be further increased… which has the possibility of worsening the R.E. situation.

As for csr_sd’s situation: I am in much of the same boat, except that I do have a significant investment ‘stash’. I look at the situation a different way. A home is also a ‘performing’ asset. It gives shelter etc at a cost. So does renting. I could use some of my investments to buy a house, but my expected return should be better than the return that I get from the investments. To those that claim that I would get a tax write-off by buying, you forget that at the $100K+ /year level and with investment returns, you are already banging against AMT.. which would limit your deduction for mortgage interest. (LTCG rate is 15%, floor on AMT is 26%, mortgage deductibility is only for interest).

[ucodegen]

Article on G.W. censorship.. good find.

[ucodegen]

Here is the link on NAR deleting entries in the wiki..

http://davidlereahwatch.blogspot.com/2006/12/nar-deleting-criticism-of-david-lereah.html

wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lereah
History
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Lereah&action=history
History of changes showing the reinsert..
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Lereah&diff=94282072&oldid=94087715
Here’s the delete.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Lereah&diff=94087715&oldid=90948165

Wikipedia is not an absolute reference.. and not 100% trustworthy.

[Author]

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