Global Warming Scam

[a_unique_person]

So then what is the big hoo-hoo about the current warming trend? If there is nothing unique about the current trend, then isn't it likely that there is no 'A' in AGW? If no 'A", then our C02 is not to blame. Likewise, if the heat is 'natural', then it's likely that the heat raises the CO2, not the other way around. Likewise, the trend ought to top out like all the other warming periods before, and NOT boil the oceans.

So what we will have is a natural warming, with all of the same weather improvements as the Medieval Warming Period brought about. Historical record shows the world economy booming. Everywhere except the very small percentage of land that lies only a couple meters above sea level. Good bye Mexicali, hello Palm Springs Beach, and the Port of Yuma, with it's rail connections from the rice fields of Nebraska. And the corn fields will return to Nazca, obliterating those silly drawings for once and for all.

The MWP was a localised phenomenon, this is a global one. Australia is suffering because it is experiencing bad droughts in the South East, as predicted. That is cutting the farm output because there is simply no water for farmers. The wetter areas in the North are experiencing increased rain.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/climate-report-heat-on-australia/2006/10/31/1162056953893.html

Australia will be vulnerable to a slew of environmental problems if the world fails to act urgently on global warming, a report into climate change warns today.
"In Australia (the world's driest continent) winter rainfall in the southwest and southeast is likely to decrease significantly, as storm tracks shift polewards and away from the continent itself," says the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.
"River flows in NSW, including those supplying Sydney, have been predicted to drop by 15 per cent for a 1-2 degree celsius rise in temperature."

Apparently 600,000 in China are experiencing severe drought as well.

 

[fsol]

...

So what we will have is a natural warming, with all of the same weather improvements as the Medieval Warming Period brought about. Historical record shows the world economy booming. ...

This economist says that the economy will do the opposite of boom this time round.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6098362.stm

 

[DeviousB]

This economist says that the economy will do the opposite of boom this time round.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6098362.stm

The report is already generating feedback:

I very much welcome the Stern Review which provides a much needed critical economic analysis of the issues associated with climate change, and complements the recent IEA technology assessment and the World Bank's Clean Energy Investment Framework paper. -- Paul Wolfowitz

If the world is waiting for a calm, reasonable, carefully argued approach to climate change, Nick Stern and his team have produced one. -- Robert Solow

The world would be foolish to neglect this strong but strictly time-bound practical message. -- Amartya Sen

To be sure, there are uncertainties, but what it makes clear is that the downside uncertainties—aggravated by the complex dynamics of long delays, complex interactions, and strong non-linearities—make a compelling case for action. -- Joeseph Stiglitz

 

[DeviousB]

Pessimistic thinking isn't either. Give me proof (NOT models) that man is causing GW.

You still haven't said what this type of "proof" might possibly consist of?

Your starter for ten...

What do subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, superconductors, semi conductors, galaxies, the stars, starlight, planets, continents, life, and its myriad behaviours have in common?

Scientists use models to investigate them.

 

[varwoche]

Fine, I'll be your research assistent for 5 seconds. Thats how long it takes me to find good reason to doubt Mann and the IPCC.
http://www.climatechangeissues.com/files/PDF/conf05mckitrick.pdf
Unfounded indeed... take your 'faith based' skepticism and shove it.

I intend to create a summary of the goofiest citations offered up by "skeptics" of A/GW here on jref and surely must not overlook associate economics professor Ross McKitrick, the bumbler cited above who can't tell a degree from a radian and who somehow extrapolated missing readings into readings of zero degrees. He is duly added to the list, along with Lyndon Larouche, junkscience.com, Michael Crichton (ad nauseam), an oil industry businessman, a construction worker, a coal mining engineer, and various right-wing political lobbying organizations such as TCS. (Oh yeah, musn't forget "Here".)

 

[casebro]

The MWP was a localised phenomenon, this is a global one.

Just exactly how can you think that the Medievel Warming Period was 'local'? Is your definition of local "North America, Europe, and Asia"?

And yes, there are droughts on the world. There always have been droughts. The fact that we have droughts today doesn't mean that man's CO2 is the cause.

 

[Piggy]

What would be nice is if the guy with the extraordinary claims brought out some evidence. Thats not me. Thats you.

Check again. It's you. You're going against the majority mainstream, and providing no evidence. Those on the mainstream side have provided valid citations here.

"Popular opinion" does not mean your claims arent extraordinary.

The current "popular opinion" in climatology is that Mann isn't a fraud. All works derived from his fraud should automatically be considered suspect.. but you don't seem to be doing that.

Why arent you skeptical of any works derived from it?

You are confusing popular opinion with scientific consensus.

I've cited the mainstream science above. If you would like to raise specific and supported objections, then we can have a discussion.

If you continue with the CT tactics, there's no point.

 

[Piggy]

Fine, I'll be your research assistent for 5 seconds. Thats how long it takes me to find good reason to doubt Mann and the IPCC.

http://www.climatechangeissues.com/files/PDF/conf05mckitrick.pdf

Unfounded indeed... take your 'faith based' skepticism and shove it. You picked a theory and now sit with blinders on. I don't blame you for picking the theory originally.. but a real skeptic is willing to back off on a belief when things arent as kosher as they first thought.

Apparently, you are willing to grasp at any straw. This is one paper by an economist concerning one particular sub-issue in this whole business.

Sorry, but the mainstream consensus, built by the rigorous and objective work of actual scientists, still stands.

See also other replies above.

 

[Piggy]

Just exactly how can you think that the Medievel Warming Period was 'local'? Is your definition of local "North America, Europe, and Asia"?

And yes, there are droughts on the world. There always have been droughts. The fact that we have droughts today doesn't mean that man's CO2 is the cause.

casebro, just a little heads-up... arguments from ignorance and incredulity are not going to fly on this board.

 

[casebro]

casebro, just a little heads-up... arguments from ignorance and incredulity are not going to fly on this board.

Yes I'm ingnorant. I'm ignorant of exactly what about your quote of me is ingorance? We have not always had droughts? Or that a warm period that effects North America, Europe, and Asia is considered local? It's called the Medieval Warming Period, NOT the North American Warming period. But I suppose the current drougth in Australia and China is local too? I guess that makes the AGW local? Yes, I guess I am incredulous.

 

[a_unique_person]

The Medieval Period was a period that applied to a small part of the world, that is, Europe. The majority of the world has a different name and history for that period of time.

There have always been droughts. Australia is the driest continent in the world, (if you don't count antarctica), and it is going to feel the effects of less rainfall pretty severely.

 

[Floyd]

No, there is not. But the scientists already know that, even if interested forum members did not know it already. The science already takes this into account.



rubbish



Says who? You, not them. The hockey stick is only about 10 or 20 percent of their case. The existing warming and models explaining that warming are, and always have been, most of the case. Read the IPCC report. The hockey stick only takes a few pages out of, IIRC, hundreds.




The Australian people and many others who are experiencing the adverse affects of global warming would like to disagree.

I suspect the Australian drought is the result of an ongoing and worsening drying up of the continent due to the massive clearing of forests through fire by the Aborigines over thousands of years.

Typical. This Denier picks an economist to critique the consensus conclusion of climate scientists.

If you don't think an economist is a credible source, I don't want you guys to start quoting from economist Nicholas Stern's report.

You're just repeating points which were handily demolished earlier in the thread. You might want to review before you post again, so you don't embarrass yourself.

Floyd, how about we break Global Warming down into a series of claims. Then we can discuss what particularly you are disputing.

1. Earth's atmosphere exhibits the so-called 'greenhouse effect'.
True
2. The greenhouse effect warms the Earth's climate.
True
3. This warming is dependent upon the amount of 'greenhouse gasses' in the atmosphere.
True
4. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
True
5. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes a significant contribution to the level of the greenhouse effect.
We don't know
6. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.
True
7. The increase in carbon dioxide is anthropogenic in origin.
We don't know
8. The Earth's climate is warming.
True
A simple true/false should suffice.

(And sorry if I keep going quiet, my bosses will insist that their problems are somehow more important than JREF!)

 

[Floyd]

Oh bugger. Guess I'll actually have to read up on how to do quotes.

 

[Piggy]

Yes I'm ingnorant. I'm ignorant of exactly what about your quote of me is ingorance? We have not always had droughts? Or that a warm period that effects North America, Europe, and Asia is considered local? It's called the Medieval Warming Period, NOT the North American Warming period. But I suppose the current drougth in Australia and China is local too? I guess that makes the AGW local? Yes, I guess I am incredulous.

What you're doing is projecting what you don't know onto the researchers, as if they didn't know it either.

When you write things like this:

And yes, there are droughts on the world. There always have been droughts. The fact that we have droughts today doesn't mean that man's CO2 is the cause.

... you're assuming that scientists are using simplistic reasoning, which they're not.

You only come to this kind of thinking because you obviously know extremely little about the number and types of factors involved in concluding that human activity is contributing to the warming trend.

No legitimate researcher is saying "There are droughts today, so human activity is to blame for recent warming."

 

[Buckaroo]

I suspect the Australian drought is the result of an ongoing and worsening drying up of the continent due to the massive clearing of forests through fire by the Aborigines over thousands of years.

Wow. An amazing hypothesis. Do you have any evidence at all that this is the case?

If you don't think an economist is a credible source, I don't want you guys to start quoting from economist Nicholas Stern's report.

McKitrick was attacking the methods and conclusions of climate scientists who have shown that global warming is occurring. He has absolutely no qualifications or expertise in this area, so he is not a credible source. Stern's report was addressing the economic impact of global warming. Stern is an economist. He is, therefore, a credible source on this issue. Do you not see this difference here?

 

[varwoche]

This email exchange further documents what a doofus Mckitrick is.

He's taken to task for selecting a nonsensical 10% subset of reporting stations. For instance, his sample included seven stations from Sudan.

I did not supervise the selection of stations, instead I instructed my RA
...
I didn't even realize the role of Sudan until you pointed it out.

 

[briandunning]

And it's never very hot in the Sudan...

 

[varwoche]

And it's never very hot in the Sudan...

Just in case you're inferring that 7 Sudan stations would overstate GW: He oversampled a latitude with minimal warming (Sudan) and undersampled a latitude with maximum warming (Canada, 4x the size of Sudan), amongst a number of other gaffes.

Check out Mckitrick's comically self-defeating post hoc justification:

For the purpose of the statistical model, an even geographical spread is less important than inclusion of many different countries.

But more to the point...

One aspect of my colloquial use of 'treasure the data' is that a century of experience in looking at trends and correlations in meteorological data has taught climatologists to be extremely concerned about the provenance of the data and selection artefacts. It is amazing to me that you made absolutely no such internal tests on your data set. Heavily down selecting an already sparse data set, and then making no testing of representativeness of the remaining sample is not something that inspires confidence in any conclusions drawn from what remains. This is one of the charges commonly made against Hansen et al. in the first place.

 

[rockoon]

Check again. It's you. You're going against the majority mainstream, and providing no evidence. Those on the mainstream side have provided valid citations here.


You are confusing popular opinion with scientific consensus.

I've cited the mainstream science above. If you would like to raise specific and supported objections, then we can have a discussion.

If you continue with the CT tactics, there's no point.

You keep going back to popular opinion. You can claim that a bunch of scientists beliving the same thing isnt popular opinion, but instead a 'scientific concensus' but you would be wrong.

Nobody has ever reproduced Manns graph using Manns data, not even the guys AUP references who only "largely" confirm it.

His methodology is flawed yet the 'scientific concensus' believes the conclusion anyways. You would think that the IPCC would put a little effort into producing a graph with correct methodology as to better inform the large collection of Nations they are trying to influence. Instead they hired Mann to write reports with his graph all over them.

Little doubt != Zero Doubt.

You claim zero doubt, out of faith. Faith isnt science. Science can be independently confirmed. Manns graph hasn't.

 

[DeviousB]

Nobody has ever reproduced Manns graph using Manns data, not even the guys AUP references who only "largely" confirm it.

So given that McKitrick's criticism of Mann et al. was that Mann's method produces a hockey-stick with just about any data, you are presumably saying McKitrick's was wrong then?

You would think that the IPCC would put a little effort into producing a graph with correct methodology as to better inform the large collection of Nations they are trying to influence. Instead they hired Mann to write reports with his graph all over them.

The IPCC doesn't hire researchers.

Science can be independently confirmed. Manns graph hasn't.

From the National Research Council's report...

"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years."