Yup, "Disclose.TV" the same site that also has stories like"Winged Being Chased by Security Guard" and "Mermaids: the Body Found".
Jon Stossel is not a credible reporter. I could point out flaws in his reporting, and I'm not a scientist.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/04/us-climate-carbon-iceage-idUSBRE8330ZE20120404

too accept the science of cycle but deny the facts that the cycle is being altered according to "our best" scientific information is hypocritical

remember science is too be challenged, our knowledge changes over time - that is the essence of scientific knowledge

but to deny the link is like saying the link between cancer and cigs did not exist back int he 60s because we had not "proven it" yet

fixbone, deny the link? What link?

"Doug Daluga
Yup, "Disclose.TV" the same site that also has stories like"Winged Being Chased by Security Guard" and "Mermaids: the Body Found".
Jon Stossel is not a credible reporter. I could point out flaws in his reporting, and I'm not a scientist.

#1 this "diosclose" TV rebroadcast the original show. It was not theirs. Stossel presented scientists and their facts. It is not Stossel's facts.

"
DSL350
9:58 pm on Sunday, June 10, 2012

I gravitated toward those sites when I began to realize that sites like WUWT and ClimateAudit were drowning in hubris and contradictory beliefs (beyond allowing comment streams to fill up with what can only be categorized as the ramblings of idiotic would-be Galileos).
"
Hmm, ramblings of would be Galileos? I bet that is what his critics said. Does anyone else see a parallel here?

Earl, how many Galileos have there been since Galileo? And how many have claimed to be the new Galileo? Galileo himself helped usher in an epistemology that makes it much more difficult to be a new Galileo.

as was gravity, as was bacteria, etc, etc back in the days of such enlightenment

Who is John Galt? The guy who believed in a rational world with the exception that he wouldn't be held responsible for anything he decided not to believe in.

Where are the "false statistics," John? Do the independent investigating bodies that found scientists--again and again and again--innocent of scientific misconduct also get the marks of irony? What, exactly, is false about the theory of AGW, John, or are you not passionate enough about the subject to have actually studied it for yourself? If you're giving up your freedom of mind to repeat mindlessly what others have told you, Ms. Rand would not be proud of you.

thanks for that comment, fixbone. There are still people who think that landing on the moon was a hoax, and who think evolution is a crock. The big difference with global warming is that people ARE GOING TO DIE because of the failure of the US and other developed nations to take action. There are low-lying countries like Micronesia and Bangladesh. Islands have already disappeared under rising seas. And in Antarctica, ice that has built up for 10's of thousands of years has melted, and species that were on this planet before humans crawled out of their caves are going extinct. It's a tragedy to think that in our lifetimes we have the power to do something to slow this down, and so many people won't take any action until the effects touch them directly.

Unfortunately, John, not too many are aware of the fraud and the exposure. They just hear and know and repeat all of the B.S. that is puked about, without thinking about it, or their way of thinking has been "schooled" into them. Hence, useful idiots. Unless people start to understand that from Its' inception, the great experiment that is America, where man rules himself and follows laws, has been under attack, because there are many who would prefer to rule man, we are doomed and this tends to be hopeless. 2/3 voting right now think this is real, my jaw hits the ground and my mouth is agape much too often. Shoot me now.

Hey Mazie, actually that ice has all come back and then some in the last 2 incredibly cold and record setting winters. 10,000 year old ice. Aaaahh!! That is scary. The ice is constantly melting on one end, the southern end and being produced on the other end. It moves, it recedes, it expands. It changes, constantly. For people to take small slivers of time and react to them, and get people to believe that we can effect the weather, is criminal. Keep believing, all of you Utopians, we can create Xanadu. :)

Sorry, that should be affect.

And DSL350, John Galt seems to be one of the few here that can think.

Bob: "They just hear and know and repeat all of the B.S. that is puked about, without thinking about it, or their way of thinking has been "schooled" into them."
Bob: "The ice is constantly melting on one end, the southern end and being produced on the other end. It moves, it recedes, it expands. It changes, constantly."

Bob, you are a poster child for the kind of thinking you claim you abhor. You keep saying that the situation is a certain way, yet you A) provide no supporting evidence and B) rely on a theory that requires scientific evidence from the very people you despise and claim are frauds. Multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is rapidly declining (https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm). And Bob, AGW was not "schooled" into me. I've never seen The Inconvenient Truth nor have I read the book. In fact, I haven't read any book that has global warming as its explicit subject. I've spent the last 3+ years working it out for myself, from the ground up. There's a lot I still don't know, but I'm asking questions and keeping my mind open. Are you asking questions and keeping your mind open, or do you have it all figured out?

One thing I do know: if you claim that intentionally misinforming the public is heinously wrong, you might want to back off some of the absolute statements you make.

DSL350, The absolute statements that I make are my opinion only, and I do like to think I keep my mind open. In keeping one's mind open, we keep the ability to see the other side, take into account what is being stated, form judgements for ourselves and, at some point, come to some conclusions, ours hopefully, not what someone else is just telling us.
I can appreciate your seeking the truth over the last three years, but please don't make blanket statements. I see what situation as a certain way? That people lie and twist facts? I am a poster child for the kind of thinking I claim I abhor? Sea ice has been growing since 2008 and the Antarctic has been in a cooling trend. Source: Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois. What are your sources. How do you know what you read on the Internet, or wherever you get info, is from reliable and reputable sources? Do you know who owns your sources? Also, there are a large number of climate scientists that do not believe man's actions or in-actions can affect this planet. Again, nobody wants to deny the planet fluctuates and changes, the question is, are we responsible? To those that want to control, yes. I think not.

Bob, a "large number of climate scientists" do not believe that humans have no effect on the planet. You'd be hard pressed to find two. The usual contrarians, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Roger Pielke, Sr., are not among that "large number." They all believe that the planet is warming and that this warming is largely the result of human activity. As for the rest of climate science, read the publications. I don't think any scientist in any area in the last fifty years has actively put forth the theory that humans have no effect on the environment.

As for global sea ice, please go to the link I provided. All the linked page consists of is graphed data produced by all of the major polar research groups/organizations. No rhetoric. Here's the direct link to global sea ice anomaly from Illinois-UC: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg. Antarctic sea ice has been growing slightly (predicted by climate science), but Arctic sea ice is dropping off the table (record low extent, area, and volume last year). Overall, global sea ice came within a hair of setting a record low last year. Global ice mass is dropping even more dramatically, despite there being more water vapor to turn into snow/ice (see the World Glacier Monitoring Service and GRACE-based studies).

Bob, my sources are the scientific publications. For discussion and working out the fine details of the physics, I go to the oddly-named scienceofdoom.com (oddly named because the title of the site is the most unscientific element of the site). For general discussion of sensitivity and a look at the research as it comes out each week, I go to skepticalscience.com (a huge site that actively tries to work through all honestly-asked questions but tries not to allow evidence-free rants from any point of view). For statistics, I go to tamino.wordpress.com, the owner of which is a published, working statistician and quite willing to point out the blunders of amateur statistical work (and humiliate those with closed minds). I gravitated toward those sites when I began to realize that sites like WUWT and ClimateAudit were drowning in hubris and contradictory beliefs (beyond allowing comment streams to fill up with what can only be categorized as the ramblings of idiotic would-be Galileos).

John, as an Environmental Scientist, we study and learn. I suggest you do the same regarding this issue, then comment from an informed position.

so very true. scare tactics at it's finest !

Agreed. However, I do think we are affecting the Oceans (by our trash) and that we aren't making this climate shift any more tolerable for the other species that live on this planet.

I agree with science and not the mythology on the left. You are correct John Galt.

Marilyn,
You are correct in stating that the warming of the earth is cyclical. The researchers that are studying global warming would agree with you as well. The difference is that according to their research the temperature on earth should not be one of he highest that it has ever been in the past hundred million years, in fact the temperature should be decreasing. The reason for this is because as you know the excess carbon in the atmosphere is trapping heat. This is released by people therefore I do not understand your arguement.

marilyn, can you articulate the "purposeful manipulation" that has been done by working atmospheric scientists. I'm guessing from your comment that you're just repeating what you've read elsewhere. Do yourself a favor: study it. Read the science. Ask questions (skepticalscience.com) Global average temperature cycles, yes, but the same scientists who provide evidence for that theory will also tell you that known cycles (solar output, orbital changes, ENSO) have not caused the recent warming. Indeed, the hottest decade of the past 150 years, the 2000s, occurred as solar dropped to the bottom of its 11-year cycle.

Further, there is no "huge commercial interest" in global warming. Renewable tech, which will have to happen anyway as fossil carbon production begins its inevitable decline, is not currently as profitable as oil. And if it were (and it will be), then so what? So there's a new market and some economic shift -- what, is all your stock tied up in oil? As for paper bags, I use canvas and hemp bags, but pointing out the bag fiasco to use it as evidence of some global and century-long (yes, AGW was first theorized over a century ago) conspiracy is not effective.

Exactly right. If the question s "Do you think human activity will lead to catastrophic warming?" I expect the results would be very different.

It amazes me that, a few months ago, the real temperature data wasn't matching the hypothesis. Instead of following the scientific process, and altering the hypothesis, Hadcrut data was altered to increase the recent warming. GISS has done the same thing. Yet, it receives little publicity. The abuse of "science" under the umbrella of climate change is shamefull.

R James, adjustment is a standard talking point for the funded doubters. It has been addressed ad nauseum. Have you looked at the Hadley Center's methodology on adjusting the temp record? Have you looked at the GISTemp methodology? Which model scenario are you referring to when you say the model/predictions didn't fit observed temps? Are you also saying the ocean heat content and stratosphere temp records are also being "fudged"?

Gahhh . . . why start with a surface temp record? Why not start with the physics? Why not take into account everything that goes into changing the surface record? Take into account insolation, aerosols, ENSO, and tell me why the surface temp is as it is, rather than telling me surface temp is such and such, therefore the physics are such and such. Better yet, go to Foster & Rahmstorf (2011).

Daniel, what you're not telling the audience is that O2, N2, and Ar are not active in the thermal infrared range. In other words, when the sun-warmed Earth radiates in that range, N2, O2, and Ar do little to delay that space-bound radiation. If they were the only three gases in the atmosphere, the Earth would be too cold for current forms of life.

What does that do to the equation? Let's take it one more step. H20 is active in the thermal infrared range. Indeed, it is a very powerful absorber/emitter. However, the atmospheric residence time of water vapor is around nine days. That means that water vapor cycles through the atmosphere pretty quickly, and it cannot be responsible for climate-scale (30yrs) trends.

That brings us to CO2. CO2 is long-lived and well-mixed in the atmosphere. It is not as powerful as H20 in the thermal infrared range, but it is still powerful--especially since it shares several pressure-broadened absorption bands with H20. Because CO2's residence time is longer, it can be responsible for longer trends in temp. And increasing warmth means increasing water vapor via evaporation, which means that H20 is a feedback to the forcing of CO2. Strip out CO2, and H20 quickly condenses out of the atmosphere, leaving a snowball Earth (given current continental placements).

(carbon cycle is on the next post)

Now, as for the human contribution, what you fail to take into account is equilibrium. The planet has a carbon cycle. Each year, a huge chunk of natural CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere, and each year a huge chunk is taken up by natural carbon "sinks." It would have to be that way, wouldn't it? If it wasn't, we'd either have no atmospheric CO2 or we'd be like the Venusian atmosphere. Instead, the natural world is in a rough balance that changes from time to time as long-term changes occur.

When humans started dumping (small amounts relative to the annual global natural sources, large compared to what we had been dumping prior to FF burning) CO2 into the atmosphere in earnest about 150 years ago, the natural sinks of the world were not ready for it, and they still aren't. Sinks take up 40-60% of the human contribution each year (not the individual molecules, but the mass addition). The rest is left in the atmosphere, and it builds up, year after year. Indeed, concentration of atmospheric CO2 has not risen this quickly in at least 300 million years, maybe ever. This year's advance over the previous year will likely be the second largest annual increase in recorded history, after the 1998 (massive El Nino) spike of nearly 3 ppm.

You seem very intelligent Daniel K. Everyone cares about Global Warming but what about issues right in Palatine. Library spent approx $100,000 THIS YEAR on public meeting room renovations ($55,000) and an undisclosed amount on heated sidewalks ( $50,000 ?) in the worst economy since the Great Depression. Its great to be a wealthy library but then why are we missing services for the public that other libraries offer? We are closed on Friday evenings for instance. Arlington Heights and Schaumburg Libraries are Open. Have you ever tried to check out a new DVD from the library? The wait time is 4 months! I know "Red Box is $1"-but thats not the point. The library is for the people of Palatine. If we were a poor library then I would be content with the lack of services and long wait times for new movies but after seeing the money that the Library spent this year alone something doesn't add up. For example, regarding the $55,000 renovations to the public meeting rooms, if you are a Palatine Resident Dan K., have you ever reserved a meeting room at the Library? I have not in 17 yrs living in Palatine. Who said this was a priority? Did you know that Palatine Library Charges $50-$100 to use these rooms. Other libraries such as the Arlington Heights Library and Schaumburg Library do not charge their residents and consider the meeting rooms a service to the cardholders.

I've often thought that we should be eternally grateful to the buffalo hunters of the old west. By killing off millions of buffalo and eliminating all that methane, they may have reduced the level of global warming by a significant amount.

Funny you should mention buffalo, Daniel. As it turns out, research of the last 20 years has revealed that buffalo were not as widespread before 1500 as they were between 1600 and 1850. Why? Because native Americans had, for centuries, hunted them down to the point where they weren't competing for food. When the smallpox brought by Europeans killed roughly 75% of the native peoples, the buffalo population exploded. Compare the accounts of DeSoto and LaSalle on buffalo. Better yet, read Charles Mann's 1491 (and then 1493).

Don't clean your fish tank? You're comparing a highly enclosed, not natural (most fish live in large bodies of water) system to that which is the expanse of the Earth? We are a speck on this planet. If you do not clean your fish tank, it becomes unpretty (my own word). With what? Algae, etc. Plants that produce oxygen. Unless you cut off the oxygen to your highly enclosed environment, everything will be just fine, just not pretty.

And I am not suggesting we should make the Earth unpretty, I'm sure that is what some will take from that comment.

WOW!! FIVE degrees!! That's the kind of over-the-top scare tactic that has people questioning the whole climate change issue.

The globally-averaged land and ocean temperature for January–April 2012 was 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the 20th century average of 12.6°C (54.8°F), the coolest such period since 2008 and the 15th warmest such period in the 133-year record. The land-only global average temperature anomaly of 0.75°C (1.35°F) above the 20th century average of 4.8°C (40.5°F) ties with 2011 as the 17th warmest such period and was the coolest such period since 1997. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/)

"WE must lead just as we've been doing since Pearl Harbor!" We are continuing to lead as we have since Pearl Harbor - in CO2 production. Granted, China and India are closing on us fast but not Romania.

By the way, I'm not familiar with what da Vinci wrote in regard to cosmology. Can't find much on the internet about that. Care to enlighten?

Brian, what about the last 2 record setting cold winters globally. Oh, yeah, that is GW also. Actually it is the planet doing what it does. What happened to the HOLE in the OZONE? Apparently, we stopped using spray deodorant and within months it had disappeared. Wow do we have an effect on this wonderful planet. (We don't)

Bob, could I get a few references for your claims? If you're extrapolating the european cold snap to the rest of the globe, don't. While Europe was freezing, the Arctic was steaming (relative to the 30 year average). Check out https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm

Also, keep in mind that the convergence of temp/pressure gradient between polar and mid-latitude circulation cells means a slower and more meandering jet stream (both observed -- google scholar it). That means greater N-S dips, which means colder air dips to places not used to it.

And ozone did not come back overnight.

I read your other comment as well--the one that's full of conspiracy theory. What would have to be true about the world if you were right? 50,000+ scientists over 100 years would have to be in lock-step secret collusion in creating a completely fraudulent area of science. Students taking courses in atmospheric sciences would have to be in on it, too. Simply lying to them would not be possible. The math would out the conspiracy rather quickly. You seem to think that there are a handful of people doing climate science. No. Evidence for the theory of AGW and its consequences comes from many disciplines. Do a search on google scholar for "global warming." Do yourself a favor: read some of it. Or go to skepticalscience.com and put your theories to the test.

Dang, I just spent twenty minutes on a response and lost it. Ahh! This will now be quick.
DSL350, I will add you to the list with John Galt after reading your posts. Maybe with some disagreement.
After reading my post I realized I wanted to say Northern Hemisphere, North America had many records broken, but Australia also had a cold winter, but for the southwest.

There are many forces affecting the weather, the jet stream being one.

And no, ozone did not come back overnight. Not my point. We stopped HEARING about it overnight. All good. No longer a problem...What's next.

What conspiracy theory comment? About being schooled? 50,000+ scientists colluding to create a false science? Over the last 100 years? Where do you get this stuff? What I am referring to is not on the scale of a single science.
The issue is about recent occurrences and people who would twist this knowledge for their own gain. $$$$ Do you think the climate scientists that tried to manipulate and suppress facts recently didn't happen? And no, I do not think there are a few people people doing climate science, I believe again, that there are a few trying to twist climate science for their own gain.
We have been cooling recently, quiet Sun, and in the seventies, these same people were telling us the globe was cooling and we were doomed. For reference, read "Chicken Little", I think that is the correct reference.

"DSL350
Students taking courses in atmospheric sciences would have to be in on it, too.

Well, they were. They accepted what there profs said. Back in the 1970's when I took those sciences we were supposedly entering a newice age because all the pollution was blotting out the sun's rays.
http://anotherviewonclimate.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/time-announces-approaching-ice-age/

At least I had a prof that told us 1 volcanic eruption puts as much of the bad stuff in the air as 10 years of human production.

Again, the cooling bit in the 1970s was not a widespread belief. Again, read Spencer Weart's quite readable, quite thorough, and quite free "The Discovery of Global Warming" on the AIP website.

About the "conspiracy," what I'm saying is that scientists can't fake data for more than a few months--maybe a year--before independent analysis reveals a problem. In order to sustain a fraud for all global surface temp records, all ocean heat content records, all satellite-based atmospheric temp records, all strong proxies (e.g. global ice) for more than a day, at least two to three thousand people would have to be in on it. Ninety-nine percent of the scientists working on climate-related science are not wealthy, do not write books, and do not go on speaking tours. Many are graduate students who would love to make their names by discovering evidence of fraud.

Earl, aerosols do raise albedo, and that does cause cooling. As with CO2-based warming, though, it's not the only thing affecting global temp. Temp could be dropping like a rock due to decreasing insolation, but CO2 would still be doing its thing. Scientists in the 1970s were missing key components for the development of climate sensitivity to various forcings. They were missing key paleo data, good top-of-atmosphere energy measurements, and good general circulation models. Most of the careful scientists were saying, "We know CO2 should be causing warming, but we don't know how much, how long, and how fast."

"
DSL350
10:14 pm on Sunday, June 10, 2012

Scientists in the 1970s were missing key components for the development of climate sensitivity to various forcings. They were missing key paleo data, good top-of-atmosphere energy measurements, and good general circulation models. Most of the careful scientists were saying, "We know CO2 should be causing warming, but we don't know how much, how long, and how fast."
Yep, scientists for centuries have told us how their earlier predictions were wrong. Weathermen economists and physicists are terrible at predictions but really good at explaining why they were wrong.
Can't wait to see when the scientists will tell us the that they were wrong in the 1990's and 2000's because they missed / didn't know. Oh. wait some are already telling us.

Earl, the same people who told us there would be cooling in the 2000s are telling us there will be cooling in the next decade. These predictions never have a physical model as a basis. They just try to find a pattern in the surface temp signal and then extrapolate that over the next decade. Their followers never seem to complain of their methodology or complain when they're wrong. See Don Easterbrook, John McLean, et al.

Also, apparently you're not paying attention to the millions of times that scientists have been right. You're using products that are the results. Science works by testing, and the experimental basis of the theory of AGW has been being tested for a century.

DSL350, you are obviously too smart for your britches. Get off of all of your science. NOBODY here is denying that the planet is getting warmer. It is(or not). Have you absorbed that fact? Now, the question is, what are the reasons this is happening? Some believe people, and that those people need to change what they are doing at great cost, and some believe there are numerous reasons and variables that cause these NATURAL occurrences, and we are but a blip on this rock. Some will tell you that we know what the force of gravity is, we do not. Some will tell you that we know what causes a tornado, we do not. And the same people who were telling us about cooling and all of the issues we had to react to, are the same ones that now tried to push Global Warming, as a reason for change, but when the math didn't add up, had to "change" to Climate Change. It is so funny, and that is a good one, because the climate is CONSTANTLY changing. Earl Weiss, please jump in some more, you seem to have some good info that might cause DSL350 some issues. Maybe you can direct him to some facts with the references he is looking for. Watch out though, I get the feeling he is a professor.

Bob, you cast aside science and then you make claims about what science "knows." Here's what we "know":
1. H2O, CO2, CH4, O3, and a variety of less abundant HFCs absorb and emit at various points in the limited spectrum at which sun-warmed Earth emits. This has been well-known for a very long time, and many engineering applications use this understanding successfully. Do you accept that this is true?

2. O2, N2, and Ar, the gases that make up 98% of the atmosphere, are not active within the range at which the sun-warmed Earth emits.

3. Water vapor is the most powerful absorber/emitter within the described range. It is more abundant than the rest of the active gases, and it absorbs/emits at many places within the range. Water vapor has an atmospheric residence time of about nine days. CO2 is next most powerful because it is next most abundant gas that emits/absorbs within the described range, and it shares some bands with H20, making the combination of H20 and CO2 even more powerful. Do you have any problems with this bit? It's all well understood and used by scientists for decades.

4. Absorption/emission is not directional. Molecules do not choose the direction they radiate energy.

(see next post -- though I am perhaps foolish to attempt to rationally discuss the matter)

If you accept these four points, then you accept one of the pillars of AGW, and you are forced to admit that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause more atmospheric storage of energy, like increasing the height of a simple dam (the dam will eventually overflow and the stream will return to equilibrium flow, but the lake will be deeper.).

That doesn't mean the surface temp increases. It just means that CO2 is a positive forcing. H2O would be a positive forcing, but its residence time is much too short for it to create climate-scale trends. H2O is a positive feedback: when other forcings warm the planet, water vapor increases due to increased evaporation. The WV then adds a little extra storage (temp increase). The effect is logarithmic, though, so runaway warming isn't the natural conclusion.

So what is the effect of CO2 when set against all the other negative and positive forcings? Solar variation is enough to explain early 20th century warming, but not enough to explain late 20th century warming. As I pointed out in another comment, solar was dropping to its 11-year minimum during the hottest recorded decade, the 2000s. ENSO (La Nina/El Nino) and other oscillations are just that: oscillations. they do not add or subtract energy from the system. They move it around. They do push heat from the oceans in one phase, and the energy can then more easily radiate from the atmosphere to space, but the overall effect is nearly a zero-sum game.

(next post)

Foster & Rahmstorf (2011) actually does the math on the major forcings for the last thirty years. It strips out solar, aerosol, and ENSO effects from the ensemble temperature record. Is what's left over a bumpy but zero-trend line? Not even close. Robust warming.

Now, is it our responsibility? How do we add CO2 to the atmosphere when compared to yearly natural sources our contribution is pretty small? The answer is that the natural world has been in rough carbon equilibrium for the last several thousand years, as the interglacial has stabilized. The natural world has been putting out and taking up carbon at about the same rate annually. If there is a trend, it is a very very slow trend. In the last 150 years, though, atmospheric carbon has spiked at an unprecedented rate. Why? Because the natural world is currently incapable of sinking most of our additional carbon, and the leftover keeps piling up. If you can't find a problem with the basic physics, and you get the global mass balance argument I just made, then you're forced to conclude that no matter what the negative forcings are doing, we are responsible for increasing the energy storage capability of the planet.

Oh, and positive ad hominem is just as faulty as negative. Whether or not I am a professor or a high school janitor has nothing to do with the argument.

One more, Bob (can't resist): you claim the climate is constantly changing. How do you know this? Where did the information come from?

" Earl Weiss, please jump in some more, you seem to have some good info that might cause DSL350 some issues."

No issues for DSL. He chooses which experts are right and which are wrong. The ones that support his position are right. The others are wrong. So far I have not seen anyone change their ideas on this toppic due to this discussion, nor do I expect them to.

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! --Homer Simpson

Earl: "He chooses which experts are right and which are wrong. The ones that support his position are right. The others are wrong."

Earl, you don't see any irony here? Aside from that, what "others" are there? I've yet to see any actual expert argue against the fundamental theory of AGW. Lindzen won't do it. Michaels won't do it. Spencer won't do it. Pielke won't do it. I disagree with each of their assessments of climate sensitivity to CO2, and they are the small handful of dissenters on sensitivity. Show me a working atmospheric scientist who doesn't agree with the basic theory. Only then will you be able to accurately say there are "others."

Earl: "So far I have not seen anyone change their ideas on this toppic due to this discussion, nor do I expect them to."

Neither do I -- not immediately anyway. Recent research confirms the theory that it takes quite a while for strongly invested beliefs to change, even in the face of overwhelming and direct evidence.

I am open to evidence that AGW is wrong--even in fundamental ways. I will follow the evidence. Right now, though, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the theory that human-sourced CO2 is causing rapid warming ("rapid" on the geologic scale, not the human scale). Will you follow the evidence? Can you even explain what it is you don't believe?

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! --Homer Simpson

""DSL350
9:37 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012

. Show me a working atmospheric scientist who doesn't agree with the basic theory. Only then will you be able to accurately say there are "others."

Since you apparently missed it the first time I posted the link to the 20/20 piece here it is again:
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvCCTEfypk"; There are some of the award winning "Others".
We also need to keep the debate on track and ignore the question of weather climate change is real. If it were not real those of us in the great lakes region would be under ice right now. The issue is how much as human activity contributed to it.

Earl, the Stossel piece is an attack on Al Gore. I'm going to set aside anything Stossel says about Al Gore. It's just one talking head talking to another. The surface message of the piece is "it is warming, but what do humans have to do with it?" Nothing in the piece addressed the actual science. Rather, Stossel invites in four "good scientists." Roy Spencer and John Christy we can dismiss right now, because both believe humans are responsible for the warming. They disagree on the amount. Spencer's website even has a statement directed toward people who don't think that CO2 increases lead to warmer temps. Whether or not Spencer is a "good" scientist is up for debate. He's been called out for a number of errors in his work. One published piece was so bad that the editor of the journal resigned for having let it pass through.

Tim Ball calls himself a climatologist, but his degree is in historical geography. The credential doesn't matter so much as Ball's willingness to mischaracterize himself and allow others to do so (for example, allowing someone to publicly pronounce he'd been a prof at a university for 28 years when he knew he'd only been one for 8 years (and none of it researching climate)). Ball is also in Exxon's pocket. All Ball says in the piece is that global warming could be a good thing. Doubtless there will be winners, but the science says humans are not likely winners in the short run.

(next post)

Then we have Paul Reiter, who (not in the piece) admits he's not a climatologist. He works in the science of infectious diseases. Reiter has nothing to say about the surface message--whether or not the A in AGW should be there. His purpose in the piece is to serve the primary subsurface message: "do not trust >those< people." Reiter did not quit the IPCC because he doesn't believe AGW is real; he quit because he was in disagreement with other IPCC researchers within his field about the potential spread of malaria on a warming planet.

The implication that the four "good scientists" presented are not making money off their dissent is a straightforward lie. Ball has served in a number of advisory roles for oil industry-funded groups (e.g. Friends of Science). If he lives in a leaky house and drives a piece of junk, he was not forced to do it. Spencer has published two books questioning the power of CO2 and suggesting that warming might be a good thing. He's also the science advisor for the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. Both Spencer and Christy are on the government dollar, and Spencer's projects at UAH receive grant money. Whatever can be said about government-funded science must apply equally to those two. Reiter may not actually be paid. It's uncertain. He writes for "denialist" blogs. He has spoken for the Heartland Institute and its bizarre counter-conference to the IPCC.

(next post - a short one)

There is no evidence in support of the piece's ostensible message, that humans might not be the source of the warming. Nothing addresses the mass balance argument. Nothing addresses isotope studies. Nothing addresses climate sensitivity. Stossel allows no counterargument other than the piece's overall counterargument to Gore, with the most powerful piece of evidence being provided by the IPCC. The IPCC disagrees with Gore, says Stossel, and then he goes on to cast doubt on the IPCC. Stossel is an opinion-maker. He doesn't care whether he's right or wrong about the science. His product is doubt, uncertainty.

Hey Brian, all of you "Inconvenient Truthers" either are unaware, (a function of Pravda, or our current media) or part of the lies. Two years ago it was shown that the Global Warming "scientists" were sending e-mails to each other on how to twist the facts, not to mention that a number of temperature sights were read incorrectly, or placed incorrectly, (next to items that would make the readings warmer), what a farce! More government control is what we need, from mommy and daddy politicians, they know what is best for us. Nothing is perfect and yes, as we grow new technologies will present themselves and we should be stewards of the planet, but to believe the crap from the slingers, the ones who are set to make money off of all this, is very naive. These are the same people that in the 70'sclaimed that the earth was COOLING too fast, and we needed to do something before it was too late. These are evil, greedy individuals and groups that need to "save" us. How stupid are we?

Sorry J Lyn, your comment is nothing more than the old saying by John Maynard Keynes "in the long run,. we're all dead".

In the long run,, our sun will supernova and there's nothing we can do about it.

But we and our children and all future generations don't live in that long run. We live in the present and near future. We live in historical time. Looking at events on a cosmic timescale, billions of years, in not a guide as to what we ought to do about global warming.

Absolutely! Well put, SuzyQ. Everything in nature vibrates. Everything. Everything is a sine wave. It goes up a little and then it goes down a little. There are natural forces that compensate as things change. For example, what happens when it gets hotter? More evaporation, which creates more cloud cover, which creates more cooling, a simple example, but this place is BIG, and we are just specks.

Wake up! What a bunch of poop! And Eve should probably be capitalized, also.

well said!

Donny, I am over 40. Acid rain is still a problem. Global cooling was a mass media event, not a scientific event. See Spencer Weart's history on the American Institute of Physics website: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm.

"DSL350
11:57 am on Sunday, June 10, 2012

. Global cooling was a mass media event, not a scientific event. See Spencer Weart's history on the American Institute of Physics website: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm.
"

That's what they claim now. See:
http://anotherviewonclimate.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/time-announces-approaching-ice-age/
My 1974 college earth science class covered this and it was supposedly a real scientific threat , except for some of the holes the prof. poked in it.

DSL350, could you elaborate on the acid rain problem? Global warming, excuse me climate change, wait a minute man made global warming - is a mass media event not a scientific event.

I assume you meant to use acid rain as an example of a minor problem that the government used to go overboard with regulation. Actually, it was a major problem. It affected soils, trees, lake and stream life, human structures, and other areas. Regulation has limited the problem, and the economic costs have been much less than originally projected (not taking into account the damage avoided).

I've already directed you to Weart for the history of "global cooling" in the 1970s. If you don't want Weart, check out Peterson (2008). That study looked at 68 studies on "global cooling" published between 1965 and 1979. Sixty-two percent predicted warming. Twenty-eight percent came to no conclusion. Ten percent predicted cooling. Mass media found the cooling line more sensational. "Why?" is a question I can't answer. Today, the percentage of published studies that support the theory of AGW is probably around 95-98%. The bulk of sensitivity studies fall within a limited range, and there are few outliers. You'd be hard-pressed to find any publication within the last 15 years that questions the mass balance argument (human-sourced CO2 is the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2), and if you did, the journal would probably be a pay-to-play or by-invitation (new science-as-commodity journals like to bet on sensational studies on the off chance that the work might be legit).

Awesome!

With a BIGASS carbon footprint, to park his planes on. All you Inconvenient truthers, look up "useful idiots"

After 3 feet of melted glacier.

Raymond... You are very bright...and very funny... I always appreciate your comments.
This one had me LOL... thanx !

"Reply
LC Citizen
4:47 am on Monday, June 11, 2012

The professional denialists, who are well-funded by the most cynical, cruel, and craven special interests, can always find some deliberately dishonest stooges who have some semblance of scientific credential to spread false propaganda, but that small number of fools and liars "

Yep, the ad Hominem arguments always ad a lot of weight to a position.

"settled science as are the theories of gravity and relativity."

Bring yourself up to date. The theory of gravity especially is not settled. Scientists know the mechanics of gravity but they don't know WHAT it is. They know it has an effect on mass but they don't know what causes mass. That's why they're spending billions of dollars looking for the Higgs boson. They examine the way galaxies act based on the theory of gravity and it doesn't work. Therefore, since the theory must be correct, they make up dark matter. Then they verify the existence of dark matter using the theory of gravity. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that not everything is settled.

Daniel, "settled" means that the fundamental research for the general theory in question has reached the point where it's a waste of money to continue to confirm it. It means that everyone is ready to move on to the finer details or to lateral issues. It does not mean that absolute certainty has been achieved.

That's an interesting example you give, though. Why do they make up dark matter? Because the alternative, that dark matter does not exist and there is something wrong with the fundamentals, is more unlikely than the existence of something they haven't yet detected. This is analogous to doubters of AGW making up conspiracy theories because the alternative--that something in their fundamental understandings of the world are wrong--is, for them, too unlikely to contemplate. The difference, of course, is that the physicists have been through the fundamental work over and over and over again, generation after generation, submitting themselves to a process that demands the admission of error for the sake of progress.

In 1859, the hypothesis of continental drift was proposed by Antonio Snider and developed into a coherent hypothesis in the early 1900s by meteorologist Alfred Wagner. In spite of evidence for continental drift, this hypothesis was largely ignored or scorned and ridiculed.

From the 1960 edition of Clark and Stearn's Geological Evolution of North America:

"The geosynclinal theory is one of the great unifying principles in geology. In many ways its role in geology is similar to that of the theory of evolution which serves to integrate the many branches of the biological sciences. The geosynclinal theory is of fundamental importance to sedimentation, petrology, geomorphology, ore deposits, structural geology, geophysics, and in fact all branches of geological science. It is a generalization concerning the genetic relationship between the trough like basinal areas of the earth's crust which accumulate great thicknesses of sediment and are called geosynclines, and major mountain ranges. Just as the doctrine of evolution is universally accepted among biologists, so also the geosynclinal origin of the major mountain systems is an established principle in geology."

Five years after the publication of the above geology textbook, geosynclinal theory was effectively dead. It was replaced by plate tectonics.

So, for 100 years scientists suppressed a theory that didn't agree with what was “established” theory.

Congratulations, Daniel. You found one case (of how many) where a major theory was discredited. And why was it discredited? Because our ability to observe the subject at hand improved dramatically, and the weight of evidence began to pile up against the existing theory. This is not the case with AGW. The data collection is massive, and we're getting it from the surface and from orbit and have for thirty years. The weight of evidence in publication is overwhelming. Few theories have faced and survived more scrutiny than AGW.

DSL350:

J Harlen Bretz, who earned his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Chicago, presented his theory that a truly huge catastrophic flood was in fact the creator of the most prominent features of the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington State.

Of course this conclusion was less than enthusiastically received by Bretz's fellow geologists. In fact, Bretz was openly and vigorously ridiculed for presenting such a ludicrous notion as a flood model for the scablands since this region had obviously been carved out over millions of years by uniformitarian processes. In support of this derision, Pardee's brief 1922 paper concerning the scabland region near Spokane, Washington (the Cheney-Palouse Scabland Tract) was used to discredit Bretz.

Bretz's remarkable work was built painstakingly over many years, but he had to fight great opposition for many decades for its final acceptance. Finally, in 1979, the geological establishment publicly acknowledged Bretz's work by awarding him the prestigious Penrose Medal - the most prestigious honor in the field of geology. Bretz was in his late 90s, and had been holding the line for more than 50 years before finally realizing general acceptance of his "insane" catastrophic model for the formation of the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington State.

http://www4.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/dutch/VTrips/Scablands0.HTM

Bretz is not a good one, Daniel. The people who confirmed his theory are some of the same people who will tell you that AGW is happening and is serious. Also, Bretz serves to remind me of Svante Arrhenius. Add him to your list. And for crying out loud please go and read just this section of Spencer Weart's work on the history of the theory of AGW: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Or else I'll repeat it here, paragraph by paragraph.

McCloud, every organization you could come up with would be funded by someone. I am not going to get into the renewables argument other than to point out that these are business ventures, and plenty of business ventures have taken advantage of government subsidization--including oil companies. Is Heartland's tax status ethical? Have Republican administrations been free of corruption and collusion with big business? Complain about the shadow of the democratic government the US has all you want, but realize that you are allowed to complain about it. You're allowed FOIA requests. You're allowed to demand that your tax dollars be used how you wish. Privatize the world, and those rights disappear. You give an example of well-meaning, progressive companies who, I can only assume you allege, have committed some atrocity in order to steal tax dollars. What, then, are the less well-meaning, more crafty, less progressive companies and corporations doing? In other words, why are you being highly selective with your damnation of entities that abuse our trust when they ask us for money? At least the organizations on LC's list are accountable to the scientific process and government oversight. Corporate-funded organizations do whatever corporations want them to do, with no oversight other than "do whatever you want, but don't give us a bad reputation" (something Heartland learned the hard way). Imagine a world in which science was completely privatized.

Orbital cycles are primarily responsible for recent ice ages. Other major factors include continental positions and ocean circulation changes. If you know and accept the theory that ice ages have occurred, without having read the research that supports the theory, then why not trust the same scientists who are telling you that humans are responsible for rapid recent warming?

If by "cult" you mean science, then I accept the epistemology of that cult. Name-calling has occurred all around: warmist, warmista, alarmist, climate hoaxer. The term "denialist" is reserved for those who argue against a theory without providing evidence or, if evidence is provided, are unwilling to engage in discussion of the provided evidence. These people also continue to repeat publicly the same unquestioned assumptions, as if they are uninterested in engaging in a critical discussion of the issue. That is a denialist, and the climate science blogosphere is not their only domain. Denialists are people who assume that they have it all figured out and that discussion is closed--more than "settled," these people's understandings of the world have become concretized.

If you cannot articulate the basic theory, but you still claim to have an open and skeptical mind, then discussion is the proper next step. Ask questions. You, McCloud: where do you find the basic theory of AGW to be wrong? Can you even articulate the basic theory? I don't know everything. I still don't have a strong opinion on where climate sensitivity actually is within the highly likely range. After the work I've done, I'm highly confident in the basic theory and the history and role of insolation. I am pretty confident with regards to my knowledge of the connection between weather extremes and rapid warming, but not where tornadoes and hurricanes are concerned.

I also recall the "global cooling" scare from the mid-1970's. Back in the mid-1970's, the NOAA was telling us about "global cooling", now the NOAA is telling us about "global warming". In other words, the same government agency is playing it both ways.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

The New York Times has published articles on "global cooling" and "global warming" since the 1850's. It appears that the predictions of "global cooling" and "global warming" alternate with one another on about a 30 year cycle. Obviously, we scientists don't know what's happening.

Actually, Steve, the most recent interglacial started with CO2 leading temp. See Shakun et al. 2012. It would still be no surprise to scientists that temp leads CO2, since CO2 is not the initial driver of post-glacial warming. Orbital is. Growing CO2 levels do help speed up the post-glacial temp increase, though.

It's easy to say the science is corrupt when your audience is unwilling or unable to challenge you. Can you show me corruption? Can you tell me how many working scientists (not people with BSc degrees, ala the OISM "petition") accept AGW? There is a list of organizations on this comment stream.

Is your final line how you approach everything? Whatever I don't know, no one else knows either. If it isn't, then why single out climate science?

DSL350, So, one time CO2 leads global warming therefore this time it will too? Seems like a lapse in logic to me. At least it looks like a lack of pattern.

As for corruption, why don't you show me research funded by government that is seeming to disprove global warming? As far as I know, the government funds research that assumes (as you put it) AGW. I assume you are a money corrupts guy, because you don't believe anyone that works for the energy industries, so what does that tell you?
y
No, that is not my approach to everything. I have studied Ecology, Geology and Biology. I work in the computer field. I know enough to know that there's not enough data or computer power yet to model the weather. Two things could indicate this to anyone even if they haven't researched the topics:

1) Nobody can reliable forecast the weather around the world even a day ahead.
2) In a great percentage of articles you find disclaimers about how the models didn't take into account this or that.

As an example, a few years ago the AGWers forcast the most violent hurricane season ever. When that didn't happen they said the sand blowing off the Sahara Desert into the ocean currents was the reason they were wrong. How many questions does that bring up?

1) Was this a one time thing or does it happen often?
2) Either way was this taken into account in their models?
3) If it was, why was it wrong?
4) If it wasn't why not?

Just one example.

No, Steve, it's not a lapse in logic. You're building a strawman by claiming that I said the current situation is like the beginning of the current interglacial. I did not say that. I was replying to the claim that CO2 lags temperature in the historical record, and it apparently often (but not always) does in the recent geologic record (the last 1 my). That says very little about recent warming, as conditions are quite different.

Steve, contrary to what you imply, the government did not just conjure up the problem of AGW and then task scientists with finding it (or else!). The theory has been in development for a century, and researchers have actually had a hard time getting the government to support research. Wiki Charles Keeling or go here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Kfunds.htm. The government supports research in general. Research finds what research finds. People react to what research finds. If research found that human antecedents lived individually in their own trees and were negligibly social, we would have socialist groups crying conspiracy and hoax. If research found an early Christian text that showed celebrations of homosexuality, many (but not all) Christians would be screaming conspiracy and hoax. Science tries to ignore this reaction and the inevitable attempts to pull funding, but it doesn't always work.

(next)

Show me the money, McCloud. Evidence-free ranting is very therapeutic, but hardly an effective argumentation strategy . . . unless, of course, no one calls you on it. Where are the phony numbers? Let's start with the basic theory. Where is the fraud in the absorption spectrum of CO2?

Chortle -- I've never explored that site. I'm assuming that you have. And, again, I've never read or watched An Inconvenient Truth. Gore is an opinion-maker, just like Watts, Monckton, Limbaugh, and Heartland. Their audience is that group of people who have not the time, energy, training, means, and/or motivation to do the work of understanding the issue. Most people find themselves in that position. I decided, much to the chagrin of my wife, to do the work. I'm not an expert, but I understand the theory to the point of being able to explain the diverse elements and the associated levels of uncertainty (and why). Most of the people I've encountered in comment streams who doubt AGW cannot explain the theory. Indeed, many have some very odd ideas about the theory (e.g. the IPCC claims we're going to turn Earth into Venus). To be fair, many of the people who do accept the theory publicly in comment streams also cannot accurately describe the theory. All I ask as a member of the democracy is that if you received your beliefs from an opinion-maker, question them. Well, I ask one more thing: if the scientific method is not your primary epistemology, admit it, and we can stop wasting our time.

McCloud, you once again post a serious claim without a shred of evidence. There is no "place where all the data is accumulated." Do you mean the Hadley Centre, NASA, RSS, UAH, NOAA, NCDC? What data? How about data for a strong proxy like sea ice? Are all the organizations monitoring sea ice also fudging the data? Glacial mass? Data on biosphere responses? Ocean heat content? Record highs and lows? Top of atmosphere energy emission? Hadley/mid-lat/polar cell changes? Sea level? Global water vapor? Rainfall intensity? Drought? Aerosols? Have you actually looked at Google Scholar for related publications? Do you realize how much evidence exists beyond the surface temp record? If we had no way to measure surface temp, the evidence of rapid warming would be overwhelming based only on the response of the biosphere, let alone sea ice and glacial mass. Don't listen to me: do your own reading of the science. Question your own assumptions. Or not.

You do realize that a "skeptic," Richard Muller, spent a lot of time going over the temp records (the B.E.S.T. project) and found nothing out of order. Even the Heartland-funded Anthony Watts dabbled in the temp record and did not find what he expected to find.

My points stands because continental drift is not AGW. A student learning the theory of continental drift has no way to test the theory. A student learning the basics of AGW does have a way to test the theory. All one needs to do is find out whether or not CO2 absorbs/emits within the thermal infrared range. That has been shown experimentally at least tens of thousands of times. Then one needs to do the simple math of the mass balance argument, taking into account the global records for atmospheric CO2. The evidence for the basics of AGW is within reach of students. Not so for plate tectonics or a glacial dam scenario.

As you say, "there didn't seem to be a mechanism." No one had access to the mantle. We're still very much in the dark about what goes on down there. We are not in the dark about global circulation and the energy budget of the Earth. We're not in the dark about atmospheric composition and the radiative qualities of the components. We're not in the dark about insolation. We're in the shade of a big tree on prehistoric climate.

As for swans, yes: science proves nothing. I never said it did. The probability that the fundamental theory of AGW is correct is very, very high. The black swan could show up any day. It could, but what's the chance that it will, and will you bet on that chance?

Bad logic. You assume that doing something about AGW displaces action on solving the socioeconomic problems of the "third world." It is possible that one action could address both problems. It is certainly possible that both problems can be addressed simultaneously. Worse yet, a variety of studies strongly suggest that the "third world" will bear the greater costs of rapidly rising global temp. Not addressing both, then, is worse than not addressing one or the other. Lastly, it is a theory that helping people in the "third world" does anything for the prospect of a better life for their children. The theory has been tested for at least a century. Billions have been spent by those who accept the theory. The results are mixed, but methods are improving. Do you dismiss the need to help "third world" people because the theory has had only limited success? The model ensemble for the IPCC has had greater predictive success than the models used to justify pouring billions into alleviating "third world" poverty. I still support action on both issues, but I don't do it without fully understanding just what it is I am supporting.

I'll let #1 slide, despite the implications of some of your comments. #2 - no offense; my comment was just a reminder that it's ultimately not about what job someone holds. It's ultimately about the science. #3 - Step back for a moment and look at "Climategate." A hacker gets into the UEA mail system and collects 5000+ emails. This is not selective at the point of the theft. It's from date Y to date Z. The hacker then either sells, gives, or makes available these emails to groups/individuals selected for their stance on AGW. One of these groups then spends a few days mining the material for useful information. Out of 5000 emails, the analysis reveals a couple of pieces of text that could, if decontextualized, be made to look like evidence of fraud. Rather than go through the formal process (which would have been much more detrimental to the researchers if the claims were true) of giving the researchers a chance to respond, the groups trumpeted an interpretation based on those few carefully recontextualized bits of text. Those who wanted to see crime immediately accepted the trumpeted interpretation without ever asking for verification or even the context of the whole emails. When read in the context of the whole email and the whole conversation between the researchers, very different interpretations are obvious. (next post)

Rather than rewrite what has already been written about efficiently, I'll re-post the following from the SkS article on Climategate:

"The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature."

If you read the email conversation and understand what they were working on, the "hide the decline" is an insignificant note on how to display temps without using dodgy data. Instead, it was pulled from context, given a different interpretation (without consultation with the original authors), and sensationalized.

(next post)

Trenberth's "travesty" is even more of a stretch. In its original context, Trenberth is clearly talking about the lack of observational data re the deep ocean. That data is a huge missing piece, and despite the advances in satellite measurement of atmosphere and surface, we don't seem to be getting anywhere with deep ocean observation. Trenberth addressed the sensationalized version immediately and strongly, but too late: "climategate" was off and rolling.

Phil Jones did indeed say some not very nice things about some people. People can be jerks. While many of the six (I think six, maybe seven now) independent investigations of the incidence did note Jones' lack of charisma, they all cleared everyone involved of scientific misconduct.

Two small, deliberately misinterpreted pieces of text out of 5000+ emails caused six investigative bodies to be formed and caused untold damage to the reputation of science in general.

#4 coming up

#4 - First, do you understand the basic energy budget and how the so-called "greenhouse" effect works? Energy in must equal energy out, but it doesn't have to happen immediately. Basically, if a new delaying factor were introduced into the system, it should temporarily cause a dip in OLR until the system warmed enough to radiate at a higher temp. This is like adding height to a dam, though the height is not added all at once in this case, and the water rises while the height is being added. OLR equations are actually extremely complicated, because one has to take into account changes in insolation, energy wrapped up in ice melt and thermal expansion, energy wrapped up in work, albedo, ocean heat storage capacity, et al. Here's Trenberth (if you can trust him) on the global energy budget: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Tracking_Earths_Energy.html

#5 - The eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of the Earth orbit and axis. Changing Earth's distance and aspect toward the sun changes how much insolation is received where and for how long. That has driven at least the last four ice ages. Further back in time, surface dynamics were different, even though orbital forcings were still present. The lack of a continent at the south pole was critical during some of the warmer periods in Earth's history. As orbital forcing shifted to its positive phase, life spread out, and more CO2 was put into the atmosphere. In this case, CO2 may have been a feedback rather than forcing.

Orbital continued --

Shakun et al. (2012) studies the last ice age and finds that CO2 did not lag temperature in the initial stages of coming out of the ice phase. Why? Much speculation. Read Shakun. If you don't have access, summary and discussion can be found here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/skakun-co2-temp-lag.html

Anyway, bottom line is that the Earth does go through warming and cooling periods for a variety of reasons. The recent warming is not consistent with any of those reasons. This interglacial has likely already reached its "natural" peak around 8k years ago. Temp has been generally trending slightly down ever since (until the last century and esp. the last 30 years). The primary orbital warming is long past.

DSL350... Sorry, "hide the decline" is very important. They were trying to merge two sources of data and hide THAT fact. To use to different sources is scientifically questionable to say the least. Additionally, the source for the tree ring data was from ONE tree. I'll repeat that... ONE tree. So, you would expect discrepancies.

The data was being relied on by the UN in their reports. The UN was embarrassed by these revelations.

Steve, the tree ring divergence problem has been around for a while. It's openly discussed in the literature on tree ring proxies. Tree growth was a good proxy for temperature until about 1960, when tree growth at higher altitudes in the northern hemisphere began to diverge from the temp record. The decline in growth relative to the temp record is the "decline" in "hide the decline." The text string "Mike's Nature trick" refers to the way that Michael Mann displayed instrumental data in the same graph as reconstructed data. There's nothing wrong with that. People display two data sets in the same graph all the time. It's like me saying, "Hey, how did you get those two pictures to fit on the same page?" It's a discussion of display technique, not a discussion of methodology.

"Mike's Nature trick" has nothing to do with "hide the decline". "Mike's trick" refers to a technique by Michael Mann to plot instrumental temperature data on the same graph as reconstructed data over the past millennium.
The divergence of tree-ring proxies from temperatures after 1960 is openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature and the last two IPCC assessment reports.

Do you have a reference for the UN being "embarrassed" by "it"? Six investigations found no evidence for scientific misconduct.

Right on McCloud! Love the DDT, how about our CFL's?

Newly designed theory? Svante Arrhenius died a century ago. As I've said several times on this thread, I am not listening to Al Gore. I applaud your decision not to as well. But don't throw the baby (science) out with the bath water (Gore), and it wouldn't be wise to assume that all "environmentalists" are criminals. You yourself might be considered an environmentalist when looked at from a different time and place.

DDT is a complicated issue--certainly not as black and white as you imply. DDT is not a wonder chemical. It is a poison. Like many poisons, it can be used successfully when used carefully. It was not used carefully in many cases last century. DDT and AGW are not analogous. If you'd like to discuss the actual costs of mitigation, by all means do so, but numbers are required and hearsay is counterproductive.

What hoax? Where is the hoax? The data do not "prove" the theory. The data support the theory. Look at my replies on this thread. I have explained the basics of the theory -- both the so-called "greenhouse" effect and the global mass balance argument for CO2 -- at least once. Where do you have issues? AGW is not predicated upon the surface temp record.

What can be done about it? Many things, and many of those things actually save individuals on energy costs. I am not a zero carbon advocate.

What can you tell me about the likely consequences of business-as-usual CO2 scenarios (let's say a 3C global increase by 2100), based on what the IPCC and published science have actually said (not what Al Gore has said)?

Here's a side-by-side of some of the published work on consequences -- just short summaries and links, no rhetoric: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm.

I recognize political motivation and the role of economic pressure in the decisions people make (and beliefs they express). It has been part of my professional work for the last ten years. Critical thinking starts with recognizing how one's own position has been established--how one's own beliefs have been formed.

Man made climate change / global warming is the biggest hoax in the history of man-kind to date.

Donny, are you a broken record, a mindless troll, or did you not read the above posts? Where is the hoax? At what point do you stop believing the basic elements of the theory, and why? I've given the basics in other comments above. Do you not believe that CO2 absorbs/emits at pressure-broadened bands within the range at which the sun-warmed Earth emits?

We are small. Looking at a Hubble deep sky image will provide infinite confirmation of that. Our science has not advanced to a complete understanding, and no scientist would ever dream of saying or believing such a thing. We have, however, come to understand a great deal about the universe, relative to what we knew 500 years ago. The proof is in the pudding, and our feats of engineering--enabled by science--constantly amaze even the smartest and smuggest of us. No, I don't believe that technology will miraculously save us from doing stupid things, but it is evidence that we know stuff--a lot of stuff. Wisdom does not come from technology.

I disagree that it is the perfect tool for enforcing collectivism. There are too many free market and personal solutions. There may be big mitigation efforts that are beyond the scope and ethical nature of private entities, but these mitigation efforts won't result in the new Stalin. If you take government out of the picture, though, you enter a world where no one is held responsible for disinformation. Imagine for a moment (as difficult as it might be) that science is actually right on this one, and we will have rapid warmth -- 5C by 2200, on top of interglacial warmth. If private interests controlled science and information, there would be no climate science--or, rather, there would be to the extent that it was product-based. Any old theories from the 20th century would be erased (as orgs like Heartland now wish). (next)

Individual efforts might be made (climate hobbying) to understand why the warming was happening, but with no funding for satellites and no fair access to the democracy, there's not much individuals could do. They certainly couldn't hold producers fiscally responsible (can't do that now, even with a government). The entities powerful enough to avoid the worst of the resulting crises would profit from the chaos (ala the last several major wars). People must have a way to control the proven excesses of the current economic mode. Democracy is not product choice, yet real power is not a vote. Real power is currently wealth. Under the current mode, people are driven to generate profit by all means. That puts a damper on my expectations for a lukewarm 22nd century for our grandchildren. On my more cynical days, I am convinced it's going to have to become hammer-to-the-head obvious before we do something.

I wonder what event happened that has restored the ice caps.

Ken, during the last glacial period, glaciers reached well down into the US. Perhaps you meant "during the last interglacial." If so, do you mean the current interglacial or the one prior to the last glacial period? I don't recall reading any research that found total ice cap melt during the last interglacial. In fact, I don't think Antarctica has thawed in about 20 million years. Perhaps you could provide a reference?

The Arctic cap we don't know much about because it's primarily ocean. There are glaciers and old ice that help us understand some facets of ice. Robust data only exists for 1950 and beyond. In that period, Arctic sea ice is fairly stable (slight decline) until about 1975, when it starts to deteriorate in earnest. It is currently deteriorating at a rate that falls more than a standard deviation below the IPCC projection in 2007. Last September saw historical lows in sea ice extent, area, and volume, and 2012 is looking like a strong contender to best last year. Indeed, yesterday produced one of the largest single day drops in area and extent I've seen, and Arctic sea ice has, within the historical record, never been lower in extent/area on day 160 and 161 than it is right now (today is 161, I believe). A slow-motion train wreck. Check out https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ (just graphed data and images by polar monitoring organizations) and check out the long-term link at the top of the page.

DSL350 - Let me get this straight....The earth has been in existence for somewhere in the range of 4 billion years. The industrial age (the cause of pollution, right?) has existed roughly 150 years. "Robust data" has existed for about 60 years. And you think that adds up to substantial changes to the climate of the earth? You realize you want people to believe that in .00000004% of the time that the earth has existed, this drastic of change has occurred? I'm not going to get into the semantics of glacial/interglacial discussions, but I look at facts and use critical thinking. 4 billion years, and all destroyed in 150 years? Illogical for someone who was taught to think and not feel. Meteorologists can't even predict the weather in 3 days, what makes you think someone can predict the weather in 5, 10 or 20 years???

Ken, "regularity" in no way describes the history of Earth. There are many forces that work together dynamically to create major changes. However, only three of these forces occur cyclically: orbital wobble, planetary wobble, and solar pulse (several types of cycles, and a possible fourth is movement through the galactic spiral arms). All the others--continental drift, objects impacting Earth, volcanic activity, life-based changes (e.g, the Great Oxygenation Event), etc.--are non-cyclical. Life has radically altered the climate of Earth in the past, and one could easily argue that the relationship between life and the climate is now basic. The major forces have changed life, and life itself has acted as a major force. It has adapted and survived, taking on the forms necessary to persist in the given conditions. Those conditions sometimes changed rapidly, but throughout most of Earth's history, the major changes have come slowly--slow enough to allow adaptation for most types of life.

Your "all destroyed" is a strawman of epic proportions. No scientist would claim it. No scientist has claimed it. The rapid changes we're providing are not a threat to life in general on Earth. Sure, a significant number of ocean-dwelling species may become (are becoming) extinct, but others will thrive. Some land-based species will be losers, and the food chain will be disrupted here and there, but life will persist beyond the rapid temp increase.

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The human species is, as far as I am concerned, not under threat of extinction. Humans have endured moderately rapid changes in climate (nothing quite this fast) many times in the last half million years. We made it through. Of course, there were far fewer of us then, and we didn't have several billion people living in cities and highly dependent on regular food and energy delivery. We weren't packed into a system of states and private property and encouraged through the resulting culture to work against each other rather than with each other. For the last 10,000 years, we have enjoyed a stable climate--remarkably stable relative to the preceding half million. In a geologic snap of the fingers, we're destabilizing the climate. Again, on the geologic scale, it's not really a huge deal. On the human scale, and especially the recent human scale, it could end up committing a billion lives to long-term misery. Could. If we use coal to extend our current energy standard and keep pace with the extension of human lives predicated upon that energy standard, then we could see warming of 6C by 2150. Of course, warming of 3C by 2100 will make continued release of fossil carbon unlikely, but what's in the atmosphere will remain for a while unless we come up with miracle carbon sequestration technology. <sarc> That won't happen, though, because that's clean tech, and everybody knows that clean tech is just a scam, like AGW. </sarc>

Oh, the weather thing. Climate is not weather. No one is trying to predict weather events 20 years from now. Again, what models do is show us the likelihood of climate being wetter, dryer, warmer, colder, windier. Go to scholar.google.com and search for "Hadley cell" and "global warming." There's a bit on the Wiki for Hadley cells, but the actual research is a better read.

DSL350, you're showing your colors. "Private Property" is the essence of freedom and has nothing to do with some encouraging us to work against each other rather than with each other. Divide and conquer; If this country isn't 50/50 on almost every issue, it's close. Every issue! Including this one. Please do not use this twisted poll as an example. We are being conquered. We are asleep. I know, propaganda to you, but again, The United States of America, where man rules HIMSELF with laws, has been a thorn in many sides since it's inception. Look at Obama's EPA running roughshod over people right now. It is all about control. The elites MUST control us, for or own good in their eyes, individuality being contradictory to that goal. Are you looking forward to a time when we no longer have our guns? Just curious. P.S. You do bring up some good points, but if the Earth is going to change, for MANY reasons, and life is going to adapt, what's the fuss? We should be good stewards of the planet, of course, and as ideas, and technologies develop, we will create new products, etc., how about a big CO2 vacuum that replenishes the carbon in the ground and blows oxygen back into the atmosphere, replacing trees. Just a joke, but like some silly thoughts I've had over the years, someone might invent this in 10-20 years and make millions. Oh yeah, that's bad.

Bob: "where man rules HIMSELF with laws" -- you're a socialist? i never would have figured.

Bob: "The elites MUST control us, for or own good in their eyes, individuality being contradictory to that goal." -- more socialism? What are capitalists if not elites? Or does the economic ruling class keep its hands off of the democratically-controlled government? Bob, you're showing your colors.

Guns are fun and useful when used responsibly, like everything else.

Bob, I'd love the invention you describe, but it takes money to develop. Who has the capital/revenue to spend on it? Taxpayers do, but everyone screams fraud when clean tech is mentioned, as if the fraud were in the clean tech rather than the developers and entrepreneurs (guns don't kill people; people kill people). Still, tech such as this is in development. If it works, we'll have significant weight lifted from our shoulders as we work on the rest of the mess we find ourselves in. I'd prefer the addition of renewables, though, since that addresses several problems at once. Solar efficiency is getting better.

DSL350, what don't you understand? I'm a socialist? Are you kidding me? You do not understand America. Maybe if you had spent the last three years learning about that, you might be a different person. Read and understand our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We are intended not to be ruled by Man, or men, but by ourselves utilizing our God given rights, following our LAWS. We are intended to be free, to make our own decisions as long as you don't hurt someone else, the issue that most (or all) law addresses. How is that Socialism? And unfortunately, the Elites are on both sides of the aisle and/or work with both. Yes, guns are fun, but you ignored my question. Do you lean toward concealed carry or only criminals having guns? Or, to put it another way, do you lean toward more gun CONTROL or less? I'm showing my colors, really?

Bob, you said, and I quote: "where man rules HIMSELF with laws." I assume you don't mean personal laws (make up whatever suits you) but laws determined by democratic action. The individual conspiring socially to create the best of all worlds, with "elites" having the same level of power within the system of control (law) as the "non-elites." This is no different than Marx's ideal.

Economic power is real power--the power to shape law and life as one sees fit. A person who controls how a person works, when a person works, what work a person does, and how much compensation a person gets -- the controlling person is expressing a great deal of power. True, a person can choose among different working situations, but a variety of boundaries are set and in some cases manifest as law (within both working conditions and living conditions). Other boundaries are created within cultural institutions. Property owners (the owners of the means of production) hire experts to modify the beliefs of the middle and working classes, and those modified beliefs shape the decisions that the people make regarding their positions within the economy. Economic elites have tremendous power that is only occasionally checked by democratic power and to little effect. Bringing economic elites back within the range of control of the democracy (localization/small business, for example) is very difficult.

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The notion that these elites "deserve" this power is absurd. The elites are allowed, by law, to organize the production process in the manner they find most efficient for the generation of capital. The processes of management and market analysis are necessary, to a certain extent, but the collection of the great mass of capital under the control of tiny percentage of people is, by definition, elitist. People who organize do not deserve greater security than people who make. Expertise should be no argument for receiving higher wages. That would be another form of elitism. Many scientists work for the joy of the process; they want to be paid well because everyone wants security. When we pay scientists according to the market value of their work, we diminish the scientific process--completely atrophy in some cases. When all value is first and foremostly considered as exchange value, we've entered the twilight zone.

By the way, you didn't ask about conceal and carry. I only know your mind through your words: "Are you looking forward to a time when we no longer have our guns?" It's a tough argument, though. In theory, conceal and carry should be fine. In reality, people are sometimes irrational and forgetful. Put guns within arm's reach of everyone, and gun-related deaths will increase, because people are sometimes irrational and stupid. Anything predicated on the ability of people to act responsibly will ultimately fail to some degree.

McCloud, what you propose--doing nothing--is also a theory and a belief. Your solution is as unquantifiable as any I could present. The positions are linked. The only way you can guarantee me that AGW will cost us nothing is to deny the existence of the mechanism. That brings us back to the science. I've asked you directly why you think there's a hoax. One theory that I have is that libertarian types, in order to justify their positions, must carefully control the information that they recognize (or are forced to recognize) as true. They are big believers in responsibility, but responsibility is based on knowledge. If knowledge is limited, responsibility can be limited. Any idea that increases responsibility (diminishes power (liberty)) must be scrutinized to the nth degree. Any doubt must be amplified. Uncertainty means that responsibility might be misplaced. In the three years I've been studying AGW, I have talked with at least a hundred of these types, both online and in person. I have become almost convinced that my theory is true, but I keep testing it.

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And to bring this back to the subject at hand: Exxon takes your money and spends it on the creation of institutions designed to change the opinions of the general public. When the government does the same thing, there are cries of "government oppression" and conspiracy.

Sandra... Very funny ! Sad...yet funny...

we're glad you don't have kids, either.

the best thing about pigressivism is that many of them are either LGBT or like to have abortions. the less liberals, the better it is for our country.

President Eisenhower and Congress built the Interstate Highway system with money. Tax money. Well spent? Lateral? Economic gain? Bush 41, 43 and Clinton improved the economy through public employee hiring to the tune of 4% of GDP when they had recession to deal with. Not that we need to hire a bunch now, but wisely spending tax dollars can improve the economy. I don't see where it ever goes to campaign funding as you say. That $1 on your tax form is not tax dollars.
Now, back to Global warming. Doing nothing is stupid. If doing something is wrong, them we cleaned up pollution- cleaner waterways and the air. Not so bad.

why did the leading 'climate change' scientists feel like they had to "hide the decline" if the science backed up the facts?

it's because it's a scam, Andrew. they want the research money to keep flowing in, and the best way for that to happen is to screw with the data and data sources to try and fit the narrative.

if there's one thing i have learned about pigressives, it's that they will tell any kind of lie to fit the liberal narrative, and they don't feel like that's a bad thing.

pigressives are delusional.

The following scenario is purely hypothetical. Dan, suppose I wanted to hurt your reputation. I managed to find 5000 of your private emails posted somewhere on the net. I did some work to verify that they were actually yours. I searched through all 5000 of them for a couple of days until I managed to find the text string I was looking for: "I like to sleep with children." I found no other strings that might be useful for a pedophile claim. I took that string and trumpeted across the internet, along with the strong suggestion that you are a pedophile. Your local net explodes! People are petitioning church, business, and government to go after you. You try to explain yourself by providing the context of the text string: "Oh sure, sleeping with my kids is fun - sometimes. I like sleeping with children, but when they stay up all night singing, falling off the bed (on purpose), and eating my books, I tend to be a little irritated in the morning." A few people believe you. Most don't read the context, don't believe it, or don't want to think they could have been hoodwinked so easily. Doubt lingers for the rest of your life, even after six independent investigations clear you of any wrongdoing. If this scenario were true, would I be a criminal?

Yes, the above hypothetical situation is analogous to "climategate." Out of all of those emails, the fraud-claimers found two bits of text that they then had to radically recontextualize and trumpet. You bought into it.

Dan, as for scam, the research money is going to flow in anyway. They're scientists. Scientists need funding. They discover stuff, and society in general thinks that it's a good thing to know more about the world around us. Sometimes the research can't be turned into economic growth. Sometimes it can. If those scientists were working on a different area within their disciplines, they'd still need funding. You also sound like you think these people are lining their pockets with grant money. No. The overwhelming majority of working scientists do not make the big bucks. Many are graduate students who don't have two cents to rub together. A tiny fraction end up writing books and doing speaking tours. And now, with the hyped up attack on the science, the attackers are generating nice profits with their own books, speaking tours, and consulting fees. Of course, they're not doing much actual scientific work -- a few curve fittings here and there, a few bizarre attacks on the 2nd law, a few uhhh "radical new theories" about core heat or GCRs or microwaves.

Ed Schultz, Al Sharptoon, Bill Maher, Shelia Jackson Lee, Chris Matthews..

really, Prusak? you want to go there?

there are more conservatives in this country than there are pigressives.. there is still hope for this country after all.

Dan, did you read Michael Fumento's piece in Salon?

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/my_break_with_the_extreme_right/singleton/

You might want to read it. Fumento is a strong conservative, and I don't agree with many of his views, but I respect his approach to life and to thinking. Fumento seems to be talking about you -- or at least the "you" you have presented in your writings on this thread. The actual "you" may be quite different (for some reason).

Wot? I thought government was a corrupt institution. You're not seriously suggesting you're going to support the institution after having railed against it. Surely you don't support a new government coming in and tearing apart people's lives because of an ideological imperative. "By November, your world is dust" -- sounds a little Stalinista.

yes, we're getting off topic, but that's a good point.

Obama recently said (with a smirk) that "the private sector is doing fine".

What he wants is more gov't employees. More public union employees. More union dues. More contributions to Democrats. More entitlement programs.

More 'takers' than 'makers'. Once this happens, the USA becomes Greece or France. Look what just happened in France...they have more 'takers' than 'makers' so they voted in a guy who cut the retirement age to 60 from 62. Can you imagine that?

How is France going to pay for these people's retirements? They aren't. They can't. They do not have the economic growth to sustain these retirement payments....but since there are more 'takers' than 'makers' in France, the people voted for the guy who would do this.

Let the grandchildren who haven't yet been born worry about austerity, because today's 'adults' aren't capable of the sacrifice.

Yes, to filter through THEIR pockets.

Steve: "In a free country you want to limit the laws, and increase the education." Agreed. In a rational society, a constant focus on education throughout the life cycle should decrease the need for law (setting aside a certain arguable level of general human irrationality).

In the case of global warming, law has not lead the science. It has been quite the other way around. No one was concerned with Arhennius' theory and evidence, nor with the scientists who were working in bits and pieces on the theory throughout the first half of the 20th century. "Global warming" and "climate change" did manage to make it into mainstream print in the late 1950s, but no one really paid attention. Keeling had a heck of a time getting funding just to monitor levels of CO2. Only in the last 20 years, with the problem becoming more obvious, has legislation been worked on.

Do you seriously think global warming is an anti-capitalist plot? I can't recall if I linked the Fumento piece here. Here's the link anyway: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/my_break_with_the_extreme_right/. Fumento is an economic conservative.

The Windfall Profit Tax was actually an excise tax. It was not a tax on oil profits, despite it's name.

What in that statement indicates the UN was embarrassed?

Ewww . . . I see you've linked to Christopher Booker, the opinion-maker. This is one of those people who knows he can get away with saying anything, because few in his audience are willing to call him on it. Seriously, take a good long look at what Booker has dished out over the years.

Do you understand what you're listening to? It is impossible to fool science over the long haul. Eventually, someone runs the experiments, does the math, and finds a study to be faulty. With the "greenhouse" effect, that process has been going on for a century. The problems have been weeded out. The theory is in its fine-tuning stage. Not even the relatively tiny number of working climate-related scientists who do disagree with some of the IPCC's conclusions will say that the greenhouse effect does not exist, that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or that warming will not occur with increased atmospheric CO2.

Yet we have bloggers, paid by industry-financed opinion-making organizations, who will say, and allow commenters and guest posters to say, just about anything as long as the bottom line is "it's not happening," "it's not us," or "it's not bad." The pattern is quite clear, and still people are taken in and rubber stamped by these experts at rhetoric.

Many of the same people who organize public opinion on AGW also have a hand in organizing opinion on evolution and the smoking-cancer connection. Science is fine as long as it is working for me. When it works against me, it's wrong and fraudulent, and the scientists should be shot dead.

Where did I say I "hate" capitalism? I agree with Marx's view: capitalism is an incredibly energetic mode of production, and it is more egalitarian than many (most) of its predecessors. It is not the end of history, though. It creates a number of problems that cannot be solved without significantly moderating the efficiency of the system (solutions that pop up every few months in the financial rags with the title "ethical capitalism"). One face is democratic; another is totalitarian. See Orwell for a colorful description.

As for actual solutions, I don't know. Marx didn't really know either. He knew what he felt was right: democratic control of the means of production. He didn't know how it would play out, and like everyone else alive then and now he hoped he would see a better world before he died. Like Marx, I also don't believe a utopian form of socio-economy is possible. It will be a continual struggle to improve democratic conditions.

Now that I've mentioned Marx, you get to freak out, jump up and down, and scream "commie!" I can stereotype, too. I don't like to, though.

McCloud, where is the evidence for your claims of data manipulation (and by manipulation, I presume you mean "intentional mishandling")? Two snippets of text from 5000 emails, snippets that were first published and interpreted by bloggers known to be consistently biased? If you don't know the truth, why do you accept the "climategate" interpretation without a shred of doubt?

As for solutions, we know with high confidence that limiting CO2 emissions will eventually slow down the warming, just as we know with high confidence that adding CO2 will cause an imbalance in Earth's energy budget. How we limit emissions is an open question. As for mitigation that doesn't involve limiting emissions or sequestration tech, yes, there are unknowns, and I'm not comfortable with some of the ideas that have been suggested. I'd like to have more research on those possibilities.

You make long-term importance decisions every day based on far less information and far less reliable modeling than the IPCC, yet you do so because you know you have to act now. Not acting is also a decision--in some cases a commitment.

Lack of rain. ;-)

To whom are you addressing your comment, Paul?

Richard, you haven't read the IPCC AR4 chapter on modeling, have you? These are world-class modelers. You're also building a strawman: IPCC modeling does not predict. It projects. There is a difference, and it's not subtle. Projections are a range of scenarios, each driven by a set of conditions that could occur. This range covers the most probable sets of conditions. The greatest uncertainty in modeling climate is the human response.

We don't know all the variables, but we know the major variables. Rising global temp is the simplest of conclusions. Could solar drop massively, countering the warming effects of increased atmospheric CO2? Sure. There's no indication that will happen. Could a bus run you over tomorrow? Sure, but today you act as if it won't. You spend time and money today on future plans. Everything in your environment tells you that tomorrow will not be the day of the bus. Everything in the tens of thousands of publications that form the body of evidence for AGW tells scientists that natural forcings will continue to do their normal routines, just as accounted for in the modeling. You're suggesting that we don't do something on the highly unlikely chance that some once-in-a-million year event will make the issue go away.

A single volcanic eruption would not change the projections much at all. Pinatubo resonated significantly for about three years.

If it's a scientific joke, there are thousands of scientists in on it.

Sully: "You make long-term importance decisions every day based on far less information and far less reliable modeling than the IPCC, yet you do so because you know you have to act now. Not acting is also a decision--in some cases a commitment."

You can just about set your watch by it-when Schulte posts a comment on Patch within 30 minutes, Sully will post a comment saying the opposite of the opinion that I have expressed. It's like he's a lost puppy following me around-I guess Sully is a very lonely man with nothing else to do but stalk me. It's OK Sully, I don't mind you stalking me if that provides you some comfort, but you might want to get a dog or a cat. They are really good companions, especially for cranky/nasty people who no one else wants to be around.

In the last month or so, there have been 3 important developments regarding climate change. In one (low-key) announcement, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that there were errors in previously released IPCC reports. (Ooops.) In another development in the field, one of the leading scientists promoting the climate change theory changed his mind and said he didn't think climate change was really such a big deal after all. And in a third development, a new study indicated that the long-term trend over the last two thousand years is cooling, not warming.

Yes, that's right, cooling not warming. So Sully if you like beans, it's OK to eat them once again.

Richard, can I get references for your three claims?

I think with no. 2, you're talking about Lovelock. Lovelock is Mr. Gaia. He once made an extended argument that the Earth is self-regulating. Evidence does not support this--at least in the way that Lovelock would like it to have been supported.

No. 3 must be the Esper study. Good grief. We've been cooling slightly for 10k years, not simply since Roman times. Oh, until about 1850. Then we move toward the solar modern max around 1950. Then solar drops but AGW takes over, and we go higher still.

Richard: "then the entire economy of the United States will be destroyed"

Dude, I usually give people the benefit of the doubt -- and a long way, too -- but I am getting very close to openly ridiculing you. You sound like a robot for the Heartland Institute. Just the usual one-sentence memes, one after the other. Richard, do you have a mind of your own? Can I get access to it, if so? Let's start with something easy: do you accept the theory of the so-called "greenhouse" effect? Yes, I want to corner you into accepting something that will undermine your simplistic Red/Blue, Commie/Freedom, LIbtard-killin' philosophy.

Meanwhile, have a good read: A Reaganite has some good advice for you: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/my_break_with_the_extreme_right/

Sorry Rich, not my quote. Oh dear- did you make a mistake? Say it isn't so!

Rich, I have a spouse, kids, and two dogs. I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I have a good education, a good job, and friends. How about you, buddy?

I meant to ask... You have no work, your home was foreclosed, and you were on food stamps, so how did you pay for that cancer treatment you said you got? Just curious.

'Me

I am curious about how those who do not believe in warming (based upon Richard's post can we now call them coolers?) rationalize their position to their children and grandchildren. Do you tell them that you don't believe in global warming but on the off chance the theory is correct, it just isn't worth the money to make the world a better place for future generations
"
Not at all complicated especialy for anyone who learned in Grade school about the great lakes formed by glaciers. Glaciers receeded. If not we 'd all be under ice now. Further evidence shows that over the eons those glaciers came and went several times. So, for now the warming is a reality as the cycles have been for eons. So far throwing boatloads of resources trying to thwart nature is an exercise in idiocy. Every 25 years or so New Orleans has a terrible flood and it's a big surprise for an are below sea level and surrounded on 3 sides by water.

So the anser is yes, it's not worth throwing money at an off chance theory that even if correct is unlikely to have much effect.

BTW I was in Earth Science college classes during the Global cooling stories and the prof. said there wasn't much to the human component because one volcanic eruption put more hydrocarbons in the atmosphere than 10 years of human production.

Earl, I think I've been over this before. Annual global volcanic emissions are between 65 and 319 million tons per year -- see Moerner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001). Human emissions last year were 34 billion tons. Million. Billion.

You know about glaciers thanks to paleoclimatologists. These are the same people who are telling you that AGW is real and a threat. Further, if you had done some research post-grade school (and you've had the chance), you'd know that Pleistocene glacial cycling is caused primarily by Milankovitch cycling. We are in a remarkably stable interglacial right now, and we may have been heading back toward a glacial period. May have been. Unfortunately, according to Tzedakis et al. (2012), Tyrrell et al. (2007), and Archer (2005), we're probably going to miss the next glacial period. Glacial cycles can't start with more than 300ppm of atmospheric CO2. We're way above that now, and we'll be way above it for centuries, unless we come up with miracle sequestration technology.

Unlikely to have much of an effect? Wiki "PETM" and consider that we're warming at 40 times the rate of that event.

Yes, Richard, you were fooled -- but not by scientists. Of all the research done on "global cooling" between 1968 and 1979, only ten percent predicted cooling. Sixty-two percent predicted warming. So who thought you were stupid enough to buy it? And now, when 97%+ of the scientists working and publishing in areas related to climate tell you that the planet is warming rapidly, you choose to go with the underdog, just like you did in the 1970s.

That's right Rich. There has been absolutely no progress in the scientific community since the 1970s. No new technology, no new discoveries, nothing. So of course how could scientists know any more today than they knew forty years ago? Hey, I heard people are saying the world is round, but I know that can't be true. They said it was flat before, so that has to be the truth! And some people are even saying the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around. Boy are they dumb.

Richard, you pretend to have a mind of your own but every single comment you make on this board you've heard from a right wing pundit first. And that quote you put by my name a couple of times earlier? Not mine, Dude. Get your posters straight. Now, i if you care to see some facts-
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/1021/Climate-study-funded-in-part-by-conservative-group-confirms-global-warming
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/30/356783/koch-fueled-study-finds-recent-warming-on-the-high-judith-curry/?mobile=wp
http://blog.seattlepi.com/robertbrown/2011/12/27/summary-of-the-latest-in-global-warming/
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/12/02/380400/koch-denial-backfires-independents-other-republicans-split-with-tea-party-on-global-warming/?mobile=
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/28/opinion/mann-climate-change-email-attacks/index.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/12/13/388527/deniers-study-true-global-warming-signal-rate-of-manmade-warming/?mobile=wp
http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/12/19/rush-limbaugh-climate-change-misinformer-of-the/185495
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/06/world/mountain-countries-climate-change/index.html

Richie, you can disbelieve all you want, but that doesn't change the facts that human beings in the real world acknowledge.

You are no expert Richard, to anyone but yourself. Nor are you world renowned in the real world. You are just a sad little man who listens to paid pundits spreading misinformation for those who pay them. Any critical thinking skills you may have once possessed have disappeared into your vast cauldron of anger, hatred, and blame. You hold yourself high because no one else does. The inflated opinion of yourself is either a cover for your extremely poor self concept or is the sign of a delusional individual with no footing in reality. I'm actually betting on number two. Your holier than thou attitude and your purported superiority to all others means absolutely nothing. Do you get that Rich? How much time do you spend on this forum? How many total posts would there be with your name over the last few years? Get a life and stop making excuses.

DSL350: "Dude, I usually give people the benefit of the doubt -- and a long way, too -- but I am getting very close to openly ridiculing you."

DSL350, I post under my name, not some moniker to hide my identity. If you want to ridicule me, please go ahead, but ridicule from one who has to hide his/her identity is just character assassination, but the left wing is good at character assassination.

I have 30 years experience with modeling in another engineering field. The climate model or models which are used in "climate science" haven't been "validated". Without "validation", you have no idea whether or not your model acting is capable of predicting or approximating anything in the real world. "Validation" of the model presently used will take decades.

In order to actually develop a model which will produce reasonable results, it is necessary to include all of the factors which could influence temperatures on the Earth. Although science has come a long way in the last 100 years, we still really do not have a good understanding of the oceans and the Sun. Given that, it is simply impossible to develop a model which will produce relatively accurate results.

How long will it take to develop a model which acutally produces useful results-who knows. Predicting the future is quite difficult, but we can't predict the weather 7 days from now and that's easy compared with predicting the climate on Earth 50 or 100 years from now.

No - Steve Milloy peddles "junk science." You've pegged yourself, Richard. You give the standard memes, won't answer direct questions, and constantly try to shift the dialogue toward simple politics. If you're not being paid to do this, then someone thinks you're incredibly gullible. Indeed, they depend on it.

AGW is not occurring - check
AGW is not bad - check
Government-funded science is corrupt - check
Scientists hype things - check
Scientists are frauds - check
Intellectuals are elites who should be feared - check

By the way, Richard, the whole "throw fancy words at you" doesn't work in the Age of Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Taking stupidity to a whole new level.

Mr. Schulte - Republican leaders are telling their members in Congress to do the same. There was an article regarding Joe Walsh and how he's been advised to stay and campaign in his new district. Quit trying to make this a one party issue. Both are using the time to campaign. Maybe your time would be better spent looking for some sprinklers to inspect.

Paul K: ". . .but I just would like some one to tell me what happend in 1930-1936 if we are causing warming now?"

Paul, a single event such as the Dust Bowl is not an indication of climate, even though it lasted 7 years (based upon the dates which you provided). The localized climate at any point on Earth is subject to variation.

Recall the 2004 and 2005 were very active Atlantic hurricane seasons-Hurricanes Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005) for example. Also recall the prediction by the briliant scientist Al Gore and others climate change scientists that the cause of the rash of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 was caused by global warming.

Since 2005, the number and strength of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic has been reduced. The hurricanes that have been produced are now sliding up the East Coast, rather than making their way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Just the lie about global warming causing massive hurricanes put out by the global warming "experts" should tell you that climate scientists don't have a clue as to what they are talking about.

You might remember the predictions by the climate scientitsts (e.g., Ted Danson, a.k.a. Sam Malone from Cheers) about the rise in the ocean levels-some predicting a rise of 20 feet in sea levels and the inidation of coastal towns and cities along the East Coast and Gulf Coast within 20 years. Its' been 20 years and Manhattan is still there. Once again, another lie put out by the climate change "scientific experts".

Paul, an excellent source of information on climate science is the British press. The American press completely ignored "Climategate", while the British press was all over the scandal.

I'm sure you remember the hocky-stick curve if you've had an interest in global warming/climate change. You don't see the "hockey-stick" curve anymore. Why? Because the "hockey-stick" curve has been discredited.

The "hockey-stick" curve took one part of a curve and expanded the scale to make it look like a rapid rise in global temperature has been occurring recently. When you look at the entire temperature curve, you see that this is not really the case.

If you a bit of a history buff, you know that the Viking once farmed on the coast of Greenland. Of course, can't farm on land covered in ice. What that means is that the climate on the coast of Greenland was much warmer than it is now-the Medieval Warm Period. What caused the Medieval Warm Period? There were far fewer humans on Earth a 1,000 years ago.

Is today's climate warmer than the Medieval Warm Period? Not positive about this, but I think it was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than it is now, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

And, oh btw, where do you put the thermometer to measure the temperature of the Earth?

The temperature of the Earth is determined by an average. How is the temperature of the oceans measured? Is the temperature of the oceans just measured at the surface of the water?

We can't predict the weather 7 days from now, but the climate scientists tell us we can predict the climate 50 and 100 years from now.

Tell us about all the hurricanes that were predicted by the climate scientists after the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. New Orleans and Miami are still there.

Tell us about all the coastal flooding that was predicted by the climate scientists-New York City under water. Manhattan is still there. New Orleans is located below sea level and New Orleans is still there too.

And what about all those polar bears drowing? The polar bear population is increasing, not decreasing. The next time you see a polar bear, ask him (or her) whether the bears would prefer colder weather or weather that's just a bit milder. (The caribou like the oil pipeline in Alaska because it's a bit warmer near the pipeline.)

Hell, I think I just fell off the turnip truck and hit my head. I can't remember though.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me, over and over and over, and you're just a snake oil salesman. How much for a bottle of snake oil that your selling DSL350? Good for whatever ails you.

Cooling causes warming. Warming causes cooling. Up is down. Right is left. They've got an explanation for every thing, just as long as you are a sucker.

If global warming is occurring, it is most likely caused by the Sun. Another common sense explanation would be the Earth's wobble.

DSL350: "These are good questions, McCloud, even if they do come with a heavy coat of sneering."

Yes, there is no sneering from DSL350. Didn't DSL350 tells us that anybody who doesn't agree with him is "close-minded"? McCloud and Schulte define the term "close-minded" as not agreeing with McClound and Schulte.

Only an elitist would say that anyone who disagrees with them is "close-minded". DSL350 just outed himself as an elitist.

Now, tell us who you actually are and what are your credentials. Do you really trust a "scientist" who posts under a moniker? If you want to know who I am, all you have to do is Google.

Sully: "And of course if it isn't happening in America, it can't possibly be happeniing anywhere else. After all, the world IS America."

Ahhh, once again Sully contradicts himself. Just 6 or 7 months ago, Sully cited the warm winter in the US as evidence of global warming. In response, Schulte cited the abnormally frigid winters in Europe over the past few years as compensating for the wamer weather in the US.

So here we have an example of Sully citing weather in America as proof of global warming and then implying that Schulte had weather and climate confused. No Sully, you are the guy who has weather and climate confused.

Not let's talk about those massive hurricanes predicted due to global warming. Didn't happen.

And how about the flooding of Manhattan by rising seas. Didn't happen.

So far no answers about the hurricanes and the flooding of Manhattan, nor the Medieval Wam Period.

Sorry Rich, wrong again. I did not state that warmth in a single season proves global warming. Just as cold in a single season does not prove it doesn't exist. Nice try though. Again.

Paul K: "Well thanks for all your answers but all this high tec talk is giving me a headache so I'll just chock it up to the old saying " Shit Happens "

The NOAA told us in the middle 1970's that it was global cooling. Now the NOAA is telling us that it's global warming. Who are you going to belive-the NOAA or the NOAA? So it's the NOAA vs. the NOAA. That tells you all you we need to know.

Global warming is not uniform across the planet. That having been said, consider the possible causes for the European cold snap: a strong blocking high became rooted, likely because of a weakened jet stream, itself the result of a decrease in pressure gradient between polar and Ferrel cells, itself the result of polar amplification.

What was the temperature anomaly (departure from normal) in Svalbard when Budapest was going through the worst?

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/LHBP/2012/2/24/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/ENSB/2012/2/24/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

Sully: ""Richard, you continue to use the 1970's as your reason for distrusting science. I asked you before and I'll ask again- have there been no scientific advances in the last forty years?"

Sully, an excellent question, however, you neglect history. If you bothered to do any research, you would see that the mid-1970's is not the first time we were told by "scientists" about global warming or cooling. Your bible, The New York Times, has been reporting on global warming/global cooling for about 150 years-no mistake, 150 years. Every 30 years or so, we get a report alternating between global warming and global cooling. How many times to you have to be suckered before you figure it out? It seems apparent here that we're dealing with something that's cyclical-with a cycle of about 30 ot 35 years.

What is different now is that people are living longer today, hence, people remember back 30-35 years. Prior to our generation, life spans were much shorter, hence, people didn't remember that the last time that told us the opposite.

I remember vividly January 1979 when Chicago got 24 inches of snow and it kept snowing for another 10 weeks and when it wasn't snowing it was minus 15 degrees F. I also remember vividly the minus 25 degrees temps in late December, 1986 and early January in 1987. Global cooling was right in line with the weather occurring in Chicago.

As an engineer, I am trained to ask questions and not just accept what somebody says.

Sully,

You could have asked the same questions in the 1970s to try and prove entering the next Ice Age. Why do you think we are advanced enough now to prove warming?

I'll give you a hint. We aren't. Just read almost any of the articles pro Global Warming. You'll find in a great deal of them they talk about adding more variables, and producing better models. Currently, we don't have the complexity of the global environment figured out yet, and we don't have fast enough computers to produce the model if we did.

Sure thing Rich, strike two- no direct quote of what you claim I said. Goes along with all the other non-answers I get from you.

Sully, 5:12 am on Tuesday, January 10, 2012

"Susan, thank you for your response. I too am in the education field which is why I only ask for responsible and carefully considered presentations. . . ."

And now we know why Sully is the Patch "know-it-all", he's in the education field. Yup, he's the smartest guy in the room in whatever room he's in.

Still deflecting by attacking the source. You have nothing, Richie.

Sully, a little blurb cut from the Rolling Stone article you have used to influence. Are these the facts? "Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.)"
We've (we've) raised the temperature 0.8 C.? I would agree we've been here while it happened. And DSL350 and Sully, water vapor increasing is bad, right? I think that has a much greater effect than even my breath.
Richard Shulte, how are you still standing, after Sully's love? Great response to Paul K. Paul K... pay attention to Rich
And I'll add this as I talk out of my d#$b A$$, We've mentioned the Sun in all of this, how far down under our feet does our science go? DSL350 and Sully, you think you have all of the answers, but really, we only know what we know and we really don't know spit.
Nudelman... Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, it's not too late for you

Bob, what are claiming here? That scientists don't take solar into account?

Seriously, people. You can imagine all you want, but all you have to do to find out what scientists have done on the subject is go to AR4 and read it. Is it that frightening of a prospect? Here's a link to AR4 Working Group 1. Keep in mind that AR4 is five years old. AR5 comes out next year.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

And this writer from Forbes is credible because?

And that writer from Rolling Stone is credible because? Quit the B.S.

Sully: "And this writer from Forbes is credible because?"

I thought that everybody had heard of the Smithsonian Institution, but I guess I shouldn't have made that assumption. Let me repeat this for you, Sully:

"In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines."

Yes Sully, a global cooling exhibit in the Smithsonian.

You're right McCloud. We're all just specks when considering the immensity of the universe, but right now, we are here and now and it's the here and now in which we make a difference. Ignoring facts because they're inconvenient does nothing but support the oil industry barons in their efforts to deceive. They enrich themselves while continuing to pollute and physically damage the Earth.

Sully, Wake up! The FACTS are questionable, at best! You may think they're rock solid, but... And to make a difference, don't follow Algore's lead, and stomp your big carbon foot around, (All these folks are so full of hoo-hah), do your own little part, leave the place cleaner than you found it. If you want to ride a bike, ride a bike. If you want to put solar panels on your roof, put solar panels on your roof. If you want to stop emitting CO2... JUST A JOKE!! Really, government doesn't, individuals do.

Bob, as with richard, I'll ask you: where does the theory break down? Remember, the theory is based on the physics of CO2 and radiative transfer. It is not based on the surface temp record.

You know what's telling about climategate, Steve. The fact that no one has refused to work with Phil Jones and Mike Mann. If they were fudging data, tens of thousands of scientists who depend on those records for their research should be screaming their heads off to UEA. Silence. Nada. Nothing.

No warming? Show me: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2011/trend

You're also not taking into account the cycle down of solar radiation and increase in aerosols during the last decade. Check out Foster & Rahmstorf (2011). The surface record is not the measure of global warming. 90%+ of the energy is going into the oceans and global ice mass loss.

Sully: "No changing the close-minded mind, facts be damned."

Yes, facts be damned. NOAA predicts global cooling in the mid-1970's, then NOAA predicts global warming in the 1990's. Who should we believe, the NOAA or the NOAA?

The "hockey stick" graph was discredited. The "more massive hurricane" prediction was discredited. "Manhattan will be flooded by the rising seas" prediction was discredited. Those are the facts.

Why won't you believe the facts Sully? Facts be damned.

Richard, of all the research published on "global cooling" between 1968 and 1979, only 10% predicts cooling. Sixty-two percent predicts warming. That is why you shouldn't be getting your opinion from newspapers.

Sully, did you look in the mirror?

Bob, what exactly do you want explained? There's a great deal of information in those two graphs.

Well, for 1, It is curious to me that Wikilibia has charts that are the reverse of each other. When making a comparable chart, why would the X axis be reversed.

Sully: "Steve, if you can show me legitimate research disproving climate change, then I'll believe it. "

Sully, if you do a little research on the internet and approach that research with an "open-mind", then the case against "global warming" is very strong, plainly obvious and actually undeniable.

The problem is that "global warming" is the foundation of the Democrat Party. If "global warming" is shown to be a fraud, then the whole Democrat Party is a fraud. Since Sully is a Democrat first and an American second, Sully will never admit that global warming is a fraud, regardless of the evidence.

Typical Democrat-ignore all the facts and just go with the standard Democrat line. That's Sully's story and he's sticking to it.

Sully, did you look in the mirror?

Sully: "McCloud, if you care to look, an investigation was conducted. You may want to read about it."

Been there, done that. Take a look at the British newspapers-AWG a fraud.

You can tell that by the fact that DSL350 won't answer any questions. All DSL350 does is go into his pompous act and claim that anyone who doesn't agree with him is "close-minded". Nonsense, we're listening and DSL350 hasn't convinced me and others-anything that's inconvenient, DSL350 just ignores. Sorry, that ain't going to fly.

It's time for the US Government to tell the climate scientists "sorry, but no more funding." And the US Government should be asking for the grant money back. I'm sure that there are a whole lot of climate scientists that belong in prison for fraud.

Richard, I've asked you directly about this.

Do you accept the theory of the greenhouse effect?

DSL350, you bonehead, now I've resorted to name calling, uh-oh. We would not exist without the greenhouse effect, or should I say the "theory" of the greenhouse effect. Richard, tell him it is so.

DSL350, I know you know the answer to that.

Sully, an (DSL350) investigation by WHO?

From the second site (sea levels 1992-present) Since 1993, measurements from the TOPEX and Jason series of satellite radar altimeters have allowed ESTIMATES of global mean sea level height. These measurements are continuously calibrated against a network of tide gauges. When seasonal and other variations are subtracted, they allow estimation of the global mean sea level rate.
As new data, models and corrections become available, these estimates are continuously revised these (about every two months) to improve their quality.
This is since '92, still young and adapting, and by the look of the chart, it almost goes straight up, what coastal cities have we lost to this tragedy?
Here's the spin on your first graphs from NASA. Starts to rise severely after 1980. Is this when readings were shown to be getting taken from bad locations? Locations that were too close to exhausts of buildings, etc. Don't hear much mention of this anymore. Your numbers are skewed, your facts. When will you get it. I am still waiting for an explanation on the previous two graphs, anybody?

Bob, sea level rise is at the top edge of IPCC AR4 projections. It is projected to rise at an increasing rate as global glacial mass declines (which it is, rapidly: http://www.wgms.ch/mbb/sum10.html - the World Glacier Monitoring Service). Antarctica is losing land ice mass, and the glacial outlets for the Antarctic ice sheets are weakening. See Velicogna (2009): http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml. Sea level height is an incredibly complex measurement. For an overview, I suggest Church (2011) in the highly-respected Geophysical Research Letters: http://ps.uci.edu/scholar/velicogna/files/2011gl048794.pdf.

As for the temp record, you might recall that Anthony Watts, of the, ummm, "interesting" website Watts Up With That, claimed the same thing about surface stations: bad placement. He decided to engage in actual scientific research. He and his team went through the entire GHCN station list and, via photography, assigned a site value: good (1 or 2) and bad (3 or 4). Then he checked the trend on the good stations. It was completely in line with the overall temp record. Menne (2010 - http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf) then followed up Watts' work with a more comprehensive analysis. Menne found that the stations Watts identified as "bad" showed a <i>cool</i> bias for maximum temp. In other words, the bad stations were cooling the temp series.

Using the five thousand guesstimate, Rich?

http://www.sejarchive.org/pub/SEJournal_Excerpts_Su08.htm

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/what-the-experts-say/expert-q-and-a/are-polar-bear-populations-booming

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/images/polarbear/schliebe_03.gif
(less sea ice, fewer polar bears. Get it?)

Now, I'm finished wasting time with you on this topic, gentlemen. It's worthless.

See ya'.

DSL350, what a pain all this is. It was six "independent" investigatORS, most tied to the Global Warming issue already and from East Anglia already. Independent, right. All of these folks receive tens of millions in funding for their research. And why did they have to dump so many e-mails to avoid Freedom of Information Act stuff, huh?

1. In February 2010, the Pennsylvania State University released an Inquiry Report that investigated any 'Climategate' emails involving Dr Michael Mann, a Professor of Penn State's Department of Meteorology. They found that "there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data". On "Mike's Nature trick", they concluded "The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."

2. In March 2010, the UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report finding that the criticisms of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) were misplaced and that CRU’s "Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community".

3. In April 2010, the University of East Anglia set up an international Scientific Assessment Panel, in consultation with the Royal Society and chaired by Professor Ron Oxburgh. The Report of the International Panel assessed the integrity of the research published by the CRU and found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit".

(cont)

4. In June 2010, the Pennsylvania State University published their Final Investigation Report, determining "there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann".

5. In July 2010, the University of East Anglia published the Independent Climate Change Email Review report. They examined the emails to assess whether manipulation or suppression of data occurred and concluded that "The scientists’ rigor and honesty are not in doubt".

6. In July 2010, the US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the emails and "found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets."

7. In September 2010, the UK Government responded to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, chaired by Sir Muir Russell. On the issue of releasing data, they found "In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data". On the issue of attempting to corrupt the peer-review process, they found "The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers".

Dump so many emails?

Keep in mind, Bob, that the hacker copied 5000+ emails. In those emails, the "interpreters" (amateur bloggers who received initial access to the emails) found a shockingly large volume of evidence against Jones et al. One sentence. One sentence that needed to be ripped from context and couched in some dubious claims. You and others here complain that you don't have enough evidence to accept the theory, yet you accept the interpretation of one sentence from these amateur bloggers (bloggers who have a clear history of misreading science) in order to make a wholesale condemnation of the science.

One Sentence? "One sentence that needed to be ripped from context and couched in some dubious claims." A."I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Depends on what is (trick) means, hah. B. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" What does "redefine" mean? Sounds scientific. C. "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate." Well, by all means, REDEFINE it. D. “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.” Problem? E. "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise." THEY, Jones, Mann, Briffa, Trenberth, THEY discussed "dumping e-mails. F. "Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future." They don't like their opposition. One sentence, it seems as though your info is skewed.

And what if the "hacker" got 15,000 e-mails, or some that were dumped? How many sentences would we have? You need to concentrate with D'skidoc and Nudelman. When will you guys get it? You keep up with the internet articles that we can't trust... using cherry picked Russian tree rings to form a theory, or CREATE research, come on! WAKE-UP!

P.S. Which sentence are you referring to?

Again, Bob, no scientific misconduct was found. That means that Jones did not corrupt the peer review process. He did not mishandle the data.

As you say, "Depends on what is (trick) means, hah." Yes. It does. You think there was a "trick" as in a mishandling of the data. Tell me, what was the outcome of this fraud -- exactly. What did Mann do in Nature (trick one), and what did Jones do (trick two)? What was the result? No, I clearly do not think you can explain exactly what fraud was supposed to have occurred and what the precise outcome was.

As for peer review, Jones had a point. You neglected to add this from the email collection:

Jones: "I think the skeptics will use this paper [Soon & Baliunas] to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of years if it goes unchallenged. 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 well-known skeptic in NZ. A CRU person is on the board but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch."

Mann's reply: "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that — take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…"

I think you're just taking someone's word for all this stuff, Bob. You really should check out the whole situation. The Soon & Baliunas paper was not good. Furthermore, <i>Energy & Environment</i> has absolutely no credibility in the scientific community. It is essentially an industry rag.

Then there's the De Frietas debacle. He let the S & B paper through. Check out how many editors resigned as a result of the publication of the article that Jones had a problem with. The paper should never have passed peer review. Yet it did. Why?

We can open this up further, Bob, if you wish. We can get into the conduct of Boehmer-Christiansen and Ed Wegman. Wegman's case would be hilarious if it weren't such an important issue. Wegman tried to write a paper accusing climate scientists of "pal review." As it turns out, he plagiarized a great deal of the paper. How did it get through peer review? Turns out his buddy was the editor.

Steve, the papers were rebutted, not retracted. Follow the history on the McIntyre/McKitrick work, and you'll find that their reputation for doing solid work is not good. McIntyre has a personal bone to pick, and it drives his analysis.

I've already addressed the "climategate" issue. I'll point out again that no scientist has any problems working with Jones et al., nor does anyone have a problem with the HadCRU temp series. That's saying a lot, because no scientist wants their hard work to be based on a sandcastle. Also, the Hadley series continue to match well with the other temp series, including RSS, UAH, and BEST.

Source: Personal Liberty Digest

http://personalliberty.com/2012/07/25/the-dog-days-of-global-warming/?eiid=

Not quite, Rich.

"Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared." "The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen." "Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”
"He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought."
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

Richard, you clearly do not understand how science works. What you now imply is that tens of thousands of scientists are OK with basing their work and conclusions on (what you call, without evidence, and still unable to explain) a fraud. They, according to you, are saying, "Yah, we know it's hokey data, but we use it anyway because, hey, we're getting a paycheck and we have no integrity."

You believe this?

30 years ago, I was a member of the Sierra Club and a few other environmental groups. It took me a while, but I finally figured in out. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups are just fund-raising organizations. Some of the funds raised to go for the cause, but much of the funds raised go into somebody else's pocket. Scam.

That's an awful example, Richard. Scientists do not provide "expert testimony." They provide science. Science is a progressive process. If you toss in garbage, it gets weeded out. People don't like to doing work they know is going to be rendered meaningless.

No, I think Richard is right. There are scientists who will fabricate or embellish or who do shady things. For instance, the oil industry scientists.

EXACTLY! Wake up, you drones.

Keep digging. And don't forget to be "fair and balanced" in your research.

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

I'm digging.
Sir Muir Russell, big spending, big waste, from Glasgow, Liberal, Left-Wing, Labour Party, self pay raiser, University of Glasgow President.
Professor Geoffrey Boulton, Vice Principal of the University of Edinburgh, Left-Wing
Professor Peter Clarke, British Historian, for this report? Former director of the Centre for Urban History of the University of Leicester, Labour, Lefty.
David Eyton, Beyond Petroleum Group Vice President. L. Nettles said it best, "I’m sure a high level employee of a petroleum company that likes to call itself Beyond Petroleum can be perfectly objective on climate science much more so than the remaining 5 billion or so of the remaining population of the planet who don’t have anything invested in the “solutions” to AGW."
Professor James Norton a.k.a. "Jim", IT Professor. ??? What connection?
Thanks too for turning me on to Steve McIntire and Climate Audit, of course these fools want to discredit him, he rips them to shreds.
And the BIG question. Wait for it. This is an Independent Board of Review?
How can you take this seriously?

Hard to be "Fair and Balanced" when everything leans so hard to one side.

Oh, I see, Bob. If someone can be identified as "liberal" or "left" in some way, everything they do is a fraud. If someone can be identified as "libertarian" (or whatever you define as "not-liberal" or "not-left"), then everything they do is perfectly reliable.

And you call me a drone.

The list of people who are in on the "hoax" is now growing. We have 99% of scientists publishing in areas related to climate. We have all of the scientists who work with those scientists. We have all of the students taught by those scientists. We have everyone who has independently verified the theory. We have anyone who can be identified (by you) as "liberal" or "left." Pretty soon, we'll have everyone who don't agree with. I suspect this number will be something like World Population - 1.

Can you point to a publishing scientist working in the area of climate who you do trust?

Lindzen? Accepts AGW. He's a hoaxer, according to you.
Michaels? Also accepts AGW. Hoaxer.
Spencer? His UAH lower trop temp series agrees with Hadley's, so ole Roy must be a hoaxer (and he also accepts the theory of AGW).

C'mon, Bob - let's get all sciency. Where does the theory of AGW fall apart for you?

DSL350: "Richard: "they mean what they mean." Translation: "I know all." "

In my 35 years of engineering experience, I have never heard of the word "trick" used, except in reference to prostitution. The purpose of engineering and science is not to "trick" anybody. Where trillions of dollars are at stake, you don't try to "trick" people.

Any scientist or engineer who would use the word "trick" to mean anything other than what it means ain't too damn bright. In this case, it should be the responsibility of the writer of the e-mail note to prove that the "trick" is not fraud.

There is so much shady nonsense going on with "climate science", it's difficult not to be suspicious. Only someone who fell off the turnip truck wouldn't be suspicious.

The amount of grant money to study global warming being thrown around by governments is enormous. If it were concluded that global warming is b.s., then the gravy train would be over. Given that, it seems reasonable to expect "junk science" to be deployed to continue the scam.

Richard, I hear it all the time because I'm the unofficial "techie guy" where I work. It's akin to "how'd you do that thing with the Excel?" Jones assumed, perhaps wrongly so (probably because there was no precedent for such an action), that his conversation was private. I doubt if he'd use the same language in a AGU presentation. He'd probably call it a technique.

Richard: "In this case, it should be the responsibility of the writer of the e-mail note to prove that the "trick" is not fraud." What has he not done to do this? He's completely explained himself, and everyone who works with him agrees that his explanation makes perfect sense (and that the other "interpretation" is bizarre, given the context). You simply refuse to believe it.

What "shady nonsense"? What?

Money to study enormous? Gravy train? Where do you get this stuff? How much do you think the average scientist working in the area of climate makes? Don't forget to factor in all of the post-docs and graduate students who make jack and s___. If you think grant money is disposable income for climate scientists, you don't know what you're talking about. Sure, it buys them month-long vacations to Nunavut in the dead of winter. You signing up? If you decided to go into climate science, how much would you expect to bring home? And how much grant money do you think exists? And, if the theory is correct (and I've asked you where it falls apart), is it enough?

Engineering News-Record, June 7, 2004:

http://enr.construction.com/features/buildings/archives/040607-1.asp

Global warming is part of the foundation of the Democrat Party. If global warming is found to be a fraud, that means that the Democrat Party has been perpetrating a fraud on the American people and it would be curtains for the Democrat Party (i.e. the end). So, of course, scientist involved know it's political. Hence, climate science is political science. It should be obvious to anybody with a brain.

Richard, I agree that mitigation, adaptation, and policy are areas where corruption can persistently occur. However, I am talking strictly about the science. This is not one area of engineering (building codes). This is a multi-disciplinary scientific endeavor that has been developing since Tyndall and Arrhenius. The social process of science is much less forgiving than engineering. It is a progressive practice. Science develops toward a finer and finer understanding. If a scientist fudges results, it comes out in the wash. Few scientific frauds have lasted longer than 3-4 years, and these have been in areas of minor importance, with the great exception of the alleged vaccine-autism link. That eventually came out in the wash as well.

This is knowledge that is being built, not buildings. As I've said before, the editorial boards of Nature and Science (journals) would fistfight in the street for the rights to publish a study that falsified one or more of the basic elements of AGW. There is fame and fortune in being able to do such a thing. And many of the scientists with whom I have spoken have said they would trade their careers to be proven wrong, because it would mean that we are not beginning to experience rapid warming.

(cont.)

Richard, if I told you you were wrong about NIST and the WTC, I'd be talking out of my posterior. If I persisted in my claims about the WTC, and pointed to some website that both you and I know had a biased agenda re the situation, you would rightfully hammer me. If I told you that building code corruption is legendary, and all inspectors are frauds, and that we ought to de-regulate because no one really knows whether a building is safe, you'd probably have to buy a new head vise.

I have the same reaction when I read your claims about climate science. I know how solid the science is. I've spent three years making sure I know, because I wanted to study the rhetoric surrounding the issue while having a firm grip on what the science actually says. That's what you do if you want to understand something: you study the situation starting with no assumptions (one exception: science is a highly effective epistemology). I did, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and the people I met were kind enough to explain my errors without rubbing my nose in them (well, a few exceptions). I'm convinced because I did the work myself. I didn't listen to Al Gore (still haven't) or any other non-expert.

You believe what you believe (right now) because you started with the assumption that AGW is a fraud. You never started with the science. You're not concerned with scientific progress. All you want is for the theory to go away and leave you alone.

Steve, you can question the reputation of climate scientists, but if the evidence isn't there, the onus is on you to accept it gracefully.

You want to equate scientists and "deniers," as if both have equal standing where the science is concerned. This is not true. "Deniers" are, by definition, people who have been shown why their analyses are weak but refuse to accept it. It is "denial" in the Kubler-Ross sense: irrational refusal to accept the evidence.

I can't think of an actual working scientist I'd call a "denier." Lindzen and Spencer accept AGW. They just think sensitivity is lower. Michaels is more of a think-tank guy than a scientist these days, as he was when he defended the tobacco industry's claims of no cancer link. Who else is there . . . ? McIntyre? He's more in the Lindzen camp, but any science he does is done with a rhetorical purpose. He doesn't actually have any training in climate-related areas. Hrmmm . . . Murray Salby? He's not doing so well right now. There is only a handful of these people. There is another, larger group of people who have no training in areas related to climate (some have no scientific training at all) who publish stuff (fun with spreadsheets, adventures in curve-fitting, cherry-picking celebrations) in zero reputation pay-to-publish journals or, if they get lucky, in Energy & Environment (no scientist's idea of 'getting lucky') or on blogs like WUWT.

That's right McCloud. It doesn't matter how many times something has been disproven or proven. Some people just can't change their minds. Most likely because that would require original and independent thought produced by the individual rather than taking someone else's word as gospel. That's why there are those who will actually vote for Romney.

cont.

You see Rich, that's what happens when you get all your information from basically one source, which for you consists only of right wing pundits with a clear agenda- republicans good, democrats evil.' as simple as black and white. No gray areas- everything boils down to "Us good, Them bad." Right, Rich?

Sully, let me ask you a few simple questions:

Is the Sun a constant energy source? Could it be that the Sun might have an impact on the increase (or decrease) in temperatures on Earth? Or, could it be that the Earth's wobble might have an impact on the increase (or decrease) in temperatures on Earth?

It would be my guess that the variability of the energy output from the Sun, or the Earth's wobble, or a combination of both is the explanation for the variation in the Earth's temperature.

Sully: "He's not the one denying global warming. You are."

And pray tell Sully, tell me where I have denied that global warming is occurring. Quite frankly, I don't know. What I have said is that I don't think that climate scientists know either. And if climate scientists don't know for sure, why would we want to spend trillions of dollars to address something that may not be a problem?

If you want to do something about global warming yourself, do it, but don't ask me to pay for your kooky ideas until you've got definite proof that their is a problem.

Now, go ride your bicycle-that'll be more gasoline for me to use.

Of course Richard, of course. Whatever you say. Actually, here is something you said previously -

"Sully, if you do a little research on the Internet... then the case against  "global warming" is very strong, plainly obvious, and actually undeniable."

You also called climate science "junk science", and have alluded a few times to something about 'falling off the turnip truck" pretty much sounds like a denier to me.

Yes, Richard. Solar variation can have a great effect. Milankovitch (orbital) cycles can have great effect. These are well-understood mechanisms that are taken into account by scientists. The solar claim is why I pointed to Foster & Rahmstorf (2011). It removes solar variation from the temp record (along with aerosol and ENSO forcing), so what we are left with is a look at warming without all the natural (well, partially in the case of aerosols) noise.

Richard, this is not political. I know people of every political stripe who accept the science.

Once again:

Michael Fumento:
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/my_break_with_the_extreme_right/

Jonathan Adler:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/glimmer_of_hope_a_conservative_tackles_climate.html

George Shultz:
http://paloalto.patch.com/articles/stanford-s-george-shultz-on-energy-it-s-personal

Daniel Bailey, one of the primary moderators at skepticalscience.com, is a conservative.

Barry Bickmore (Mormon missionary and apologist and geologist):
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/

Peter Wehner (neo-con):
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/19/conservatives-and-climate-change/

Another strawman -- I did not say there were no corrupt scientists. Show me where I did.

I said the scientific process weeds out the garbage. That's why it blows away every other epistemology where describing the operation of the universe is concerned.

Worst.President.Ever.

No Richard, only YOU are stupid enough to discount every single thing you see or hear just because that's what Rush says. You have not one independent thought in your brain; no critical thinking skills (and no, I don't care about your credentials or the high opinion of yourself as engineer or a consultant. Funny, Rich, that someone as world renowned as you had a house foreclosed on, and you couldn't find any work. I guess you've just been blackballed.). You would never dare question anything your right wing heros tell you. I'm guessing you're a big fan of Michele Bachmann, and her current hunt for the big bad Muslims taking over our government.. And we all know Sarah Palin tells the truth and nothing but the truth. Only democrats lie. The republicans are much too pure to tell an untruth (although Pennsylvania repubs told the truth about voter fraud, but they don't care). Pitiful.

America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Soon, automobiles in the US will be running on compressed natural gas (CNG). Honda will be selling a Civic which runs on CNG in a few months.

Natural gas is the fuel of the future.

Yes, Richard -- that's why the recently departed leftist Alexander Cockburn was also a "denier." I also know a few Stalinists who swear AGW is a plot to maintain capitalist control.

And once again I have asked you to show me where AGW goes wrong. And for the fortieth time, you ignore the request.

Sully: "Convenient that you added man-made after the fact. Yep Rich, we're all Marxists. And we're coming after your guns, and building concentrations camps at this very moment. As soon as all you smart Americans are put away in the camps, we're installing sharia law all over the country and moving the Muslim Brotherhood into the white house. That's been Obama's plan since he was born in Kenya. He was a very precocious child, and had the birth certificate thing all figured out by the time he was three. Yes, very sneaky he is. Oh, and all the crosses at Arlington National Cemetary will be removed. Christians will have to wear purple crosses at all times so they can be identified, and Jews will wear black stars of David. It's coming Richard! And we're starting in Florida."

******

Sully, I added the "[man-made]" as a clarification because apparently you haven't picked up on the fact that's what we are talking about. If global warming is caused by the Sun or the Earth's wobble, humans can do to much about it.

Sooner or later, the Sun will die and, when the Sun dies, guess what happens? Nothing lasts forever, although I get the impression that Mr. Potter (aka Sully) thinks he is going to live forever.

With respect to the marxist plans that you revealed above, I would expect that the 2nd Amendment will take care of those plans. Rusty Shackleford and his gun-nut friends aren't going to let you take the crosses out of Arlington Cemetary.

Schulte: "DSL350 posts comments on Patch regarding a scientific question without revealing his name or his/her credentials and expects that we are supposed to respect his/her statements. As far as we know, you're some homeless guy on the street with access to a computer."

The above is not intended to imply that homeless guys on the street with access to a computer are not knowledgeable about climate science.

1. How do we determine the temperature of the Earth? We measure the temperature through satellite instrumentation, through surface instrumentation, and through ocean-based instrumentation. Global average for each area -- ocean, sea surface, land surface, troposphere, stratosphere -- is then calculated. The figure itself (global average temp) is not useful except in relation to other points in the time series. Pre-historic temps are calculated with a wide variety of instrumentally-verified, correlated proxies, and error bars are given. The various means of determining global average temp are in close agreement.

2. Show me where NOAA predicted global cooling in the 1970s. If they did, they were not paying attention to the science. Of all studies published on "global cooling" from 1968 to 1979, only 10% predicted cooling. Sixty-two percent predicted warming. Global cooling in the 1970s was a media event. See Peterson et al. (2008): http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

Richard, I'm just passing along the science. I'm not providing interpretation and analysis. If I were a homeless guy on the street with no access to a computer, what difference would it make? I work in the field of writing, rhetoric, and critical thinking. I should probably let everyone know that I am working on a project involving the communication of climate science and the public response. I am not in that role here, though it must inform my opinion.

Richard: "what would the temperature profile look like if we included the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? Would a profile that includes the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age still look like a "hockey stick"?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Have at it.

Without getting into the details, the error would have to occur on all instruments simultaneously. Further, absolute measurement matters less than anomaly. If the instrument is consistently precisely 100 degrees off, then the anomaly should still show the trend.

Also, the instruments are checked regularly for correct operation, and the temp series are checked against each other for consistency. You can see that at http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:3/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:3/plot/rss/mean:3/plot/uah/mean:3/plot/best/mean:3/from:1850/to:2012

Keep in mind that the Berkeley (BEST) trend is land-only and will thus be slightly higher. Also, RSS and UAH are satellite-based lower troposphere series and will thus be slightly cooler. You can see temp series for the various levels of the troposphere here: http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_browse.html

I can't speak for the "mad-cap environmentalists." Again, I know plenty of greens with strong belief in AGW but who can't begin to articulate the theory and haven't read, for example, the recent SREX report from the IPCC that lays out some of the high-impact projected changes that will occur (with various levels of confidence given).

http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/

New Orleans is under sea level. Manhattan is at risk. You expect sea level rise to be instantaneous. No. Again, go to the source. Read the actual scientific literature or at the very least the IPCC AR4 predictions. Sea level rise is above IPCC predictions right now.

What massive hurricane predictions?

I have no comment on polar bears. They are one element of the biosphere. Their current habitat is threatened. What will happen? Hard to say. They'll probably try to adapt by moving. Will they be successful? Dunno. I haven't really researched the issue, because it's such a small part of the overall situation.

Al Gore again. Sigh.

No, you did not answer.

Which of the following do you have a problem with?

1. CO2 is a long-lived, non-condensing greenhouse gas.
2. H2O is a short-lived, condensing greenhouse gas.
3. O2, N2, and Ar (99% of the atmosphere) do not absorb/emit within the thermal infrared range, the range within which the sun-warmed Earth emits.
4. Atmospheric CO2 has, over the last 10k years has been in equilibrium, hovering around 270ppm +/- 10ppm, until around 1850. Since 1850, atmospheric CO2 has risen to 395ppm.
5. Absorption/emission bands are broadened with pressure.
6. Transient climate response is not the same as equilibrium/final climate response.
7. Solar has been trending down since the Modern Maximum in the 1950s.
8. If we want to see anthropogenic global warming in the surface temp record, we need to strip out as many non-GHG signals (solar, aerosols, ENSO, UHI effect, etc.) as possible. In other words, we can't simply look at the surface temp record and say, "see, it's global warming!" or "see, no global warming!"

Orbital changes cause the glacial cycle (combined with continental position). Orbital forcing is currently working to cool us, as is solar. Look at the Holocene temp trend, and this will be clear.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

In spite of orbital forcing, we're warming.

"The climate is always changing. If it weren't THEN I would really be worried. Because of the cycles, some of which are 50,000 or even millions of years long, we just don't know what the data means. Are we really warming? People think they know, but they don't."

Precisely-we don't know what we don't know. The Earth eco-system is so complex, that the only one of comprehends the Earth's eco-system is God. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

Positive forcing is a forcing (vs. a feedback) that adds energy to the system.

I am not saying that long-term cycles are not relevant. I'm saying that they are acting as negative forcings. Yet this is relevant only to climate sensitivity studies. Again, the basic theory is based on physics. If we add CO2 to the atmosphere, warming must occur -- even if it is overwhelmed by negative forcings.

You have already accepted the idea that there are glacial cycles. The cycles coincide with what we know about Earth's orbit and tilt characteristics. Continental positions come into play because with a continent at the south pole, ice sheets can build more easily and then act as a long-term cooling mechanism. We're not so much going through a wave type period of glacial cycles as we are going through a several million years-long glacial period with regular and very brief interglacial punctuations.

To which period are you referring when you make the high CO2/low temp reference?

As for siting, what's to explain? The siting problems simply aren't significant, as the "denier" Anthony Watts' research (and Menne's followup) points out. Urban heat island effects are well-understood and factored into temp analyses (that's one part of the "adjustment"). No one is putting a hundred temp sensors right by air conditioning exhaust ports. And, again, station-based temp series match very well with satellite series. And random sets of stations agree with each other as well.

There is no need to be as accurate as an instrument. Proxies are very good at matching instrumental temp, with a couple of now high-profile exceptions. One of those is the divergence problem, the decline in the ability of certain high-latitude northern hemisphere tree rings to match temp after around 1960. In other words, if you display that proxy temp series on the same graph as an instrumental series, the two series will match until around 1960, when the proxy declines and the instrument rises.

Of course, if you did try to display the data like that, you would be publicly and loudly accused of scientific fraud by people who have no idea what they're talking about. You'd be cleared of any scientific misconduct, but the lie would resonate according to the physics of gossip.

Again, we're not worried about the absolute precise increase in temp that will come from certain addition of CO2. We're worried about the transition period. The trend's the thing.

Steve, if you're standing in the middle of a street, and a bus is coming right at you, do you try to get out of the way? After all, there's no way of knowing for sure if the bus will hit you - until it hits you. Are you suggesting that we let the bus hit us? By the way, it already is (very slowly, the slow-motion trainwreck). Almost half of the Arctic sea ice volume has been lost in just 30 years. The bus is honking.

So you discount the information provided by any and all experts, Richard? Your building code expertise is irrelevant to any discussion on building codes.

You don't know what we don't know because you haven't looked at what we know and why we know it. Science is speculation by definition. If you want absolute truths, go to your local priest or look in the mirror.

Everything is political. That's why science is such an effective epistemology. The garbage is eventually discovered and tossed out. Opinion makers' interpretations of scientific findings can always be skewed ("global cooling"). Surely you're not suggesting that the sources you've used above are somehow politically neutral?

That is why I have tried very, very hard to move the discussion to the science. Yet it's still political. How much funding an area gets is highly politicized. Didn't someone upstream suggest cutting funding to climate science? Don't like the answers, kill the messenger and/or replace the messenger with one who will give you more satisfying answers.

Nice, Matt. Where did you get the graph? Roy Spencer. From which of his peer-reviewed papers was it drawn from? Shall we open up the Roy files?

Matt, what forcing is responsible for the trend over the last 35 years?

As far as left-wing propaganda goes, read the links I provided above that point to statements by a variety of prominent conservatives.

By the way, why just show Roy's graphs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

That's just to 2005. If you want 20th/21st, do it yourself at wood for trees:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:3/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:3/plot/rss/mean:3/plot/uah/mean:3/plot/best/mean:3/from:1850/to:2012

Keep in mind that the Berkeley (BEST) trend is land-only and will thus be slightly higher. Also, RSS and UAH are satellite-based lower troposphere series and will thus be slightly cooler. You can see temp series for the various levels of the troposphere here: http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_browse.html

Here is one from NOAA-based data:

http://www.planetseed.com/files/uploadedimages/Science/Earth_Science/Global_Climate_Change_and_Energy/Related_Articles/global_temp2.jpg

Same thing.

1. depends on how big of error bars you want. Perhaps 1920.
2. Yes. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:3/from:1975/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:3/from:1975/to:2012/plot/rss/mean:3/from:1975/to:2012/plot/uah/mean:3/from:1975/to:2012

The yellow line does not turn, Steve.

Yes on negative forcings, and we know what the major forcings are doing:

Gillett et al. (2012) in Geophysical Research Letters
http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/improved-constraints-on-21st-century-warming-derived-using-160-years-of-temperature-observations.pdf

Lean and Rind (2008) in Geophysical Research Letters
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167.2337&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Huber and Knutti (2011) in Nature (Geoscience)
http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/anthropogenic-and-natural-warming-inferred-from-changes-in-earths-energy-balance.pdf

Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) in Environmental Research Letters
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022 (paywall - discussion from one of the authors here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/)

Richard, you said: "DSL350, thank you for making my point. Scientists still don't understand how the human body works. If we are still making medical discoveries, then how can we expect that we know how the eco-system called Earth works."

The implication of your statement is that because scientists still don't understand how X (in this case, the body) works, it's not reasonable to accept their conclusions (cancer diagnosis).

What else could you have meant? And I notice that you did not provide a correction.

right/left, Rep/Dem, lib/con, white/non-white, etc. -- what does all that stuff mean?

If you can't sell marxism, change the name. The new name for marxisn is progressive. Global warming/climate change or whatever new b.s. name you come up with is still the progressive agenda and the progressive agenda is just re-packaged marxism.

Sorry DSL350, but you've been less than convincing. If you knew what your were talking about, you would answer the questions being posed to you directly, rather than responding to a question with a question.

You've failed the "small test". Sully failed the "smell test" a long time ago-you can smell Sully a mile away. Sorry.

DSL350: "You haven't even looked at the science, so how can you make that claim? You can't articulate the basic theory you are condemning. Remember, the IPCC is a voluntary effort by hundreds of the world's top scientists in climate-related fields. They draw together thousands of peer-reviewed, published works. You claim that their conclusions are "marxist." What exactly does "marxist" mean to you, then?"

DSL350, like Sully, you seem to draw conclusions based upon no evidence. I get the general theory of "global warming"-it's real easy to understand the theory. The question is whether or not the theory "holds water".

You have been unwilling (or unable) to explain what has actually been observed and the hype which has been generated. Given your inability to explain what has been observed, you've failed in your effort to defend the "science". You were given the opportunity to defend the global warming theory and you weren't up to the task.

Answering questions with a question isn't a very convincing way of arguing your point.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the members of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations did not simply disappear into thin air. Did the die-hard Communists give up their belief in communism? The die-hard communists simply migrated to the environmental movement and are intent on accomplishing their goals using the environmental movement.

Richard, you just accused me of what I just accused you of. I have provided evidence for my claims. You have not.

I have endlessly explained what has been observed. How many times have I pointed to Foster & Rahmstorf (2011), who use the now five major temp series and remove the signals from the major non-GHG forcings in order to isolate GHG-based warming? You say I wasn't up to the task, but you still have yet to demonstrate that you understand what scientists have been doing for the last 150 years. I'll ask you again, for the tenth time, where does the theory of AGW go wrong? You can't accuse me of not defending the science if you can't tell me what the science is.

I have explained ad nauseum the basics of the theory, and you have yet to respond to those basics. I gave you and others a list of basic elements of the theory for you to agree or disagree with. I made it easy for you. You refuse to answer.

You and others have tried to use proxy-based temp records to cast doubt on current warming, and then attempted to turn around and called those proxy records into question. Your game is not scientific progress. You clearly could care less about what the science says. All you're looking for is doubt. If you can convince yourself that there's doubt, you don't have to take responsibility for your actions. I know a few actual libertarians who would shake their heads at such games.

As for your "commies everywhere" paranoia, I've pointed out many times that this is not a left issue. There are religious, economic, and social conservatives who accept the science. There are leftists who do not.

Matt, downwelling longwave radiation at wavelengths for which CO2 could only be responsible has been instrumentally measured.

Matt, I'll let all of the geologists and half the field of biology know that they aren't engaging in science. They'll be relieved to know. What you describe is one type of study, and it is a study that can only be usefully applied in certain types of situations where a usable negative control can be constructed.

Your dual planet experiment is totally unnecessary. All you need to do is determine the radiative properties of atmospheric gases. That was done a century ago, and countless engineering applications have confirmed the results.

Matt, can you articulate the basic theory of AGW?

And do you mind if I borrow your definition of science? I want to show it to a range of scientists to see what they have to say. I'll post the responses here.

Can I articulate the basic theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Sure. I just don't believe that there is any credible data that indisputable proves that the current warming trend is human-induced and not part of the normal historic cycle. If you look at any temperature plot of reasonable length, you'll see that the earth has natural cycles.

Ever heard of the ice age? Somehow all of that ice melted...and where did it all come from? Was it volcanic activity that increased greenhouse gas concentration to melt the ice? Maybe. Point is that the earth cycles and if using the past historical data, we are exactly where that data would predict we should be. Not saying that humans won't break that cycle some day, but as of now, no way to know.

Any yes, I don't really consider geology a cause-effect science effort. It is mainly descriptive and correlative. Not saying that its value is diminished by this, but it is a different type of science.

Talk all you want about radiative properties of atmospheric gases. I consider that fact. Show me concrete data that human-based influences are affecting global climate and pushing it outside of it's normal historical trends and then we'll talk.

Since we are currently within the predicted conditions, that's a hard thing to do.