Global Warming Debate

[Jonathan]

Inked, I'd love if you could describe your links more in detail before posting them - otherwise I'll sense no incentive to read them unless (like now) I'm procrastinating Just throwing forth a link with a cryptic headline doesn't always attract readers...

I like how the person in the first link took time to investigate news of melting polar ices in the NY Times, from 128 years back to today. But if you call journalistic presentations "real science", you're broadening the concept quite a lot!

As a reaction to your second link, I'll give you something that BoP dug up:
Primate change

By the way Inked, I never quite grasped where you stand on all this. You're a sceptic of course but scepticism can present itself on so many levels. For instance:

Do you just object to how so many people can believe in the media's presentation of global warming?

Do you also think that the scientific data itself is at fault?

Do you reject the notion of "manmade" global warming?

Do you believe we are not in a period of global warming at all?

Do you maybe believe we are on the verge of another ice age? (Well I don't know )

[Coffeehouse]

Very nice questions Jonathan.

I'm hoping any deni... I mean skeptic, would answer them. A proper debate needs proper clarifying questions and statements, perhaps now we can have one if f.ex. Inked and Alcuin would be so kind and understanding as to answer them. In advance, thanx!

[inked]

Statistical destruction of IPCC model.......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...eneration.html


ratified in the USA and other stuff................

Oh, oh, oh! Throw the data out with the bathwater, eh? Okay!......

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6936328.ece

How the baby is taking it......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...risis-response

[Jonathan]

I wonder whether he does that in private too?

Inked's friend: "Hey Inked! How are ya?"

Inked: *random link to global warming rejection*

Inked's friend: "Uh, ok... Well, care for lunch later?"

Inked: *random link to climate change debunking*

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I wonder whether he does that in private too?

Inked's friend: "Hey Inked! How are ya?"

Inked: *random link to global warming rejection*

Inked's friend: "Uh, ok... Well, care for lunch later?"

Inked: *random link to climate change debunking*

Lol. Well I wouldn't expect much... replying to straight-forward questions means having to give straight-forward answers and all the dirty laundry it exposes...

[Coffeehouse]

But I will glady answer your questions Jonathan.

Do you just object to how so many people can believe in the media's presentation of global warming?

I don't object to a media presentation that has been (over-all) as informative, broad and sustained as the reporting on climate change, over many years now. If the media had saturated the news-stage with pseudo-scientific hodgepodge or faulty information, scientists wouldn't be coming out in the tens or hundreds, but in their thousands and tens of thousands, unleashing their scientific fury on partly false or completely false reports. That hasn't happened.

People are believing the scientists, not the journalists.

Fact of the matter is the journalists across the globe aren't even coping with the breadth and depth of the information currently being forwarded by the scientific community. They write and write about it but there is just so much new stuff coming in all the time that you can read new, daily reports from top newspapers.

Do you also think that the scientific data itself is at fault?

Scientifically faulty data is one thing. Faulty data collection is another. But different groups of scientists use different (sometimes slightly altered or altogether different) instruments and very different locations. You also have scientific groups in practically every nation doing research on climate change now, and they are all reaching strikingly similar conclusions about the state of the planet.

The question could be put on its head. Are there scientists who, never mind the data, have faulty analysis of that data. I am skeptical of the few scientists whom seem to be reaching entirely different conclusions on what is going on compared to the vast majority of scientists showing the evidence for anthropogenic climate change. They are certainly getting media cover, which is great since it lets other scientists peer-review their work. That isn't to say that they are wrong, but when you're getting results saying the completely opposite of so many of your colleagues you would probably want to test and test and test and still see if you're arriving at the same results.

Do you reject the notion of "manmade" global warming?

No. It is very real. You don't need to be a scientist to both see and comprehend the effect human beings are having on the planet's greenhouse gases.

Do you believe we are not in a period of global warming at all?

I believe we are.

Do you maybe believe we are on the verge of another ice age?

I have no reason to believe this.

[inked]

Questions? Answers? All right here:
http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/gav...e-the-quiz.htm

[The Gaffer]

Yet more spin from the denialist lobby. Wonder how much he gets paid for this? And who by?

[Insidious Rex]

You have to understand. In this county, most conservatives see global warming/climate change as a point for the "other team" so of course theyll go to any extreme to deny/attack it because agreeing is akin to kicking the ball in their own goal. The fact that it could be a real danger is irrelevant to the game of political/ideological opposition. They will continue their blind opposition until the Atlantic is lapping up against Appalachians if need be.

Unfortunately this mentality is all too common in this country (and others I would imagine). For some reason we feel the need to oppose for the sake of opposition just because our opponent happens to be the one to inform us that our house is burning down. Its true on both sides but the conservatives tend to be a bit more rabid about it.

[The Gaffer]

Correct. This is not confined to your country unfortunately, though you seem to have a thriving export industry in it just now.

Add to that the fact that they use this as an explicit strategy to sway the apathetic and/or ignorant.

By depicting it as yet another "us v them" issue they make it seem as if each side of the argument had equal merit.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

You have to understand. In this county, most conservatives see global warming/climate change as a point for the "other team" so of course theyll go to any extreme to deny/attack it because agreeing is akin to kicking the ball in their own goal. The fact that it could be a real danger is irrelevant to the game of political/ideological opposition. They will continue their blind opposition until the Atlantic is lapping up against Appalachians if need be.

Unfortunately this mentality is all too common in this country (and others I would imagine). For some reason we feel the need to oppose for the sake of opposition just because our opponent happens to be the one to inform us that our house is burning down. Its true on both sides but the conservatives tend to be a bit more rabid about it.

Strangely, it seems to be largely confined to the Anglosphere- of course we canucks have reasons of our own for embracing Global Warming....

But it doesn't really seem to exist elsewhere- Merkel, generally a darling of the Right, was met by obstinate silence from the Republicans when she made her climate pitch to Congress.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

But I will glady answer your questions Jonathan.

Gee, thanks Coffeehouse
Of course, I had a pretty good understanding of your stance already (although I must admit I feel your view of people and media is a tad naïve...).

I'm still left in the dark about your exact position, Inked. Reading your articles doesn't help much because they're rather varying. Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't some of your articles had arguments against anthropogenic factors while still actually supporting the idea of an ongoing rapid climate change? Other articles of yours have rejected the notion completely.

You can't have it both ways, so which is it that you believe in?

[Alcuin]

No problem here, True Believers! Don’t look!

A former top climate scientist who had become of one the scientific world's most cited authorities on the human effect on Earth's atmosphere was sentenced to probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to steering lucrative no-bid contracts to his wife's company.

In addition to a year's probation, former NASA manager Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, was also fined $10,000 and ordered to put in 50 hours of community service. He admitted in the late summer that he had hid some $50,000 in NASA contracts for a company called Animated Earth, which was run by Schoeberl's wife, Barbara. Prosecutors alleged that Schoeberl tried to help his wife's firm for years. When his colleagues balked at giving no-bid contracts to his wife's firm, Schoeberl pressured them to steer money to his wife through indirect means.

It’s solid science, right? Here is the American Physics Society definition Science “Adopted by Council on November 14, 1999”. I suppose they will have to redefine it, just like Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth are going to redefine what constitutes peer-reviewed literature, hm? Dr. Jones has been temporarily relieved of his duties, so he has more time to get on with his redefinitions.

Science extends and enriches our lives, expands our imagination and liberates us from the bonds of ignorance and superstition. The American Physical Society affirms the precepts of modern science that are responsible for its success.

Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the universe and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.

The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:

1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.

Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science.

Here’s the view of a professional, organic chemist Derek Lowe. Read the whole thing.

I'm no climatologist, but I am an experienced working scientist - so, is there a problem here?

I'll give you the short answer: yes. I have to say that there appears to be several, as shown by many troubling features in the documents that have come out. ...

No matter what you think about climate change, if you respect the scientific endeavor, this is very bad news. Respect has to be earned. And it can be lost.

Oh, my! I seem to have quoted a scientist who is not also a climatologist. Well, let’s lay aside the fact that these scoundrels have been working hard to keep those who disagree with them from keeping their positions, getting them fired, and working to defame them. Let’s hear from a working climatologist:

Eduardo Zorita, a researcher on past temperature trends at the Institute for Coastal Research in Germany, is calling for prominent Climategate reseachers, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and Stefan Rahmstorf, to be banned from any future work on the Intergrovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports. But Zorita makes an even more interesting and very disturbing observation: “I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. They depict a realistic, I would say even harmless, picture of what the real research in the area of the climate of the past millennium has been in the last years. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.”

“Harmless,” Zorita calls it, before he then admits that, “editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed.” That’s like Guido the Mafioso enforcer telling you, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business,” before he shoots you in the kneecaps.


Then there is the “unfortunate” case of Dr. Douglas J. Keenan. I suppose this is entirely “harmless”, too, right? And entirely in line with the American Physical Society’s definition of “science”, too, we can be sure.

Phil Jones tried to hush my paper. SUNY Albany won't discuss the investigation my paper initiated. And QUB ignored my three FOI requests for their data.

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper. After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university’s policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report’s release. But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.

Oops!

The IPCC has been claiming Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035. The research paper they used concluded 2350.

No doubt most of you regard Lord Monckton as an infidel. But here’s his list of what has been revealed in the past week:

• The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia had profited to the tune of at least $20 million in “research” grants from the Team’s activities.
• The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons.
• The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the UN’s climate panel to report.
• They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.
• They had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures in the paleoclimate.
• They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that “global warming” science is settled.
• They had interfered with the process of peer-review itself by leaning on journals to get their friends rather than independent scientists to review their papers.
• They had successfully leaned on friendly journal editors to reject papers reporting results inconsistent with their political viewpoint.
• They had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase and corrupt science for political purposes.
• They had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created.
• Contrary to all the rules of open, verifiable science, the Team had committed the criminal offense of conspiracy to conceal and then to destroy computer codes and data that had been legitimately requested by an external researcher who had very good reason to doubt that their “research” was either honest or competent.

Here is an observation from a trained, practicing scientist. I am in full agreement.

Until we have the answer to this question, I’m not going to take seriously people who tell me that the vast majority of the work continues to confirm climatory disaster if we don’t immediately put into effect measures to wreck the global economy. And I hope that we can have an answer before Copenhagen. Not that any of the scientific illiterates at that meeting, including Carol Browner, will care. ... I’ve called them charlatans, but that’s too harsh. I think they’re true believers in their new religion. But what angers me is when they and their defenders accuse me of being “anti-science” (even sometimes to the degree of lumping me and others in with creationists) when it is they who abandoned science, even if they don’t realize it.

By the way, with all due respect, I don’t think any of you True Believers in this thread are in any position to determine what is or is not legitimate science. I cannot detect from your postings that you’re trained in science or engineering, and I don’t think you’re in practice in science or engineering. I was. I hated it, but I was trained for it.

If you are untrained, and lack the expertise (or mental acuity) to determine for yourself what is happening, it is not your fault. Your sources of information are contaminated. Read this about a reporters forum in 1990 (entire article available through a link in the link):

[Charles Alexander:] “As the science editor at Time [magazine] I would freely admit that ... we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.” There was applause from the ... conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that “clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy.”

An environmental reporter at The Boston Globe, Dianne Dumanoski, is quoted as saying, “There is no such thing as objective reporting … I've become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That’s my subversive mission.” Then spake Barbara Pyle, environmental editor of Cable News Network...: “I do have an axe to grind. I want to be the little subversive person in television.”

That isn’t science, and isn’t honest. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, those reporters were discussing how to practice not journalism, but propaganda. That is rank dishonesty. For your own benefit, quit listening to subversive little people and start thinking for yourselves.

Anytime you see this behavior, suspect you are being conned. This is how con artists and fraudsters operate. They

1. demand unreasoning acquiescence;
2. vilify their opponents rather than debates their positions;
3. try by every means to silence their opposition;
4. the principal proponents are the recipients of vast sums of government largess dependent upon public acceptance of their idea; and
5. the principal proponents alter laws and create regulations to enrich themselves.

They get away with it because generation after generation, people refuse to believe it can happen to them. Wake up! You’re being conned!

[Alcuin]

Philip D. Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit and Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, 08:49 AM 3/11/2003:

…I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
Cheers
Phil

Henry II “Curtmantle� de Plantagenet, King of England, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland, Christmas Day, 1170:

What sluggards, what cowards have I brought up in my court, who care nothing for their allegiance to their lord! Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?

[Jonathan]

Alcuin, you've put a lot of effort into your posts!

But they're too hard to read! You need to make your posts shorter, more comprehensible and more structured. Right now, to understand what you're aiming at, one needs to read every link - and there are so many of them - because the quotes are not nearly enough self-explicative.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Alcuin, ... You need to make your posts shorter, more comprehensible and more structured. Right now, to understand what you're aiming at, one needs to read every link - and there are so many of them - because the quotes are not nearly enough self-explicative.

Thank you, Jonathan. I pray that I am able take your gracious response to heart and practice.

I do think the quotes to the point.

[Earniel]

Okay, I am out of here for now! I promised myself I would stay until I'd see Monckton being brought up, and look who's here! Sorry guys, I just cannot consider this a serious debate from now on.

Besides, pretty much all of the issues I brought up are being ignored in favour of links, links and more links as if they prove anything, which sadly, they don't. The only thing I see proven here, is that people prefer to make global warming into a PR debate instead. I am also rather insulted by being likened to a sheep by that True Believer stuff. Gee thanks, that's really respectful.

Anytime you see this behavior, suspect you are being conned. This is how con artists and fraudsters operate. They

1. demand unreasoning acquiescence;
2. vilify their opponents rather than debates their positions;
3. try by every means to silence their opposition;
4. the principal proponents are the recipients of vast sums of government largess dependent upon public acceptance of their idea; and
5. the principal proponents alter laws and create regulations to enrich themselves.

They get away with it because generation after generation, people refuse to believe it can happen to them. Wake up! You’re being conned!

You know, that's the third time you've posted something like this within a month and I'm getting a bit of a spamming vibe, really. But Alcuin, don't you feel like you're saying: "Do as I tell you, don't do as I do?" Because you're not applying the same level of criticism to your own sources. A good deal of the people you cited have more than a few stains on their record as well.

So I can not help but thinking that you yourself have been conned as well, more than once, judging by the links you posted, but you're apparently happy to ignore it. About every single tactic you mentioned has been used by global warming deniers. Sometimes even by the very people you quote as 'proof'. But you obviously don't want to judge them by the same standards you propose for everybody else. Maybe it is you who should heed your own warning, rather than the rest of us.

I have a degree in Environmental sciences by the way, but hey, feel free to discount me out of hand. I mean, who needs to have any basic understanding of science to enter this debate? Monckton is a case in point! (Also... infidel? Seriously?)

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

I am also rather insulted by being likened to a sheep by that True Believer stuff. Gee thanks, that's really respectful.

I share that sentiment, it's rather insulting to be referred to as some sort of believer. It's a characterization that says more about your seemingly polarized views Alcuin than many of your counter-debaters in here.

Originally Posted by Eärniel

I have a degree in Environmental sciences by the way, but hey, feel free to discount me out of hand. I mean, who needs to have any basic understanding of science to enter this debate? Monckton is a case in point! (Also... infidel? Seriously?)

Certainly an environmental sciences degree goes a very long way in improving one's understanding, but I consider myself a highly educated person and I don't need to take a degree or have science as a full-time profession to understand basic biological and chemical processes. This is knowledge anyone can acquire by themselves and used constructively you can go a long way in understanding an environmental problem without having to provide detailed knowledge on the feedback mechanisms, so on and so forth.

Climate change is a hugely complex problem but like all processes in nature it can be deduced to some pretty basic elements. CO2 and other gases stored in fossils for millions of years under the seabed, suddenly burned into the atmosphere, is certainly consequential. Everyone can understand this. We are speaking of CO2 that has not been in contact with the natural cycle into the atmosphere since they were buried, and now this CO2 is added to that cycle in huge volumes. From a natural point of view this is a relatively extreme event that can lead to relatively extreme consequences! I say relatively because our planet can be the host to very different environments, but we and our animal and plant biosphere do not have the luxury of being guests in too an extreme environment. That is the problem isn't it. It is common sense Alcuin.

[inked]

Golly, even the timesonline is at it, now! The BBC and the Times!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6936289.ece

[Jonathan]

(If we were to step aside from the climate change controversy itself for the time being).

http://en.cop15.dk/

The UN summit between 7-18 December in Copenhagen aspires to reach international consensus on a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. The aim is of course to lower global carbon emissions.

It is a nerve-tickling thought that by the end of the conference, the 192 represented countries will have to reach consensus (lest the meeting is adjourned to 2010, which no-one wants).

I'd be happy to hear any thoughts about the summit and about whatever might be decided. Are there any predictions whether the agreement in spe will be ambitious? Binding? Toothless? Unobtainable? (And let's not fall for the temptation to discuss the necessity of the new treaty or lack thereof ).