AGW, true? or not? (first thread didn't work)

[alerj123]

Hey everyone, I used to post a lot on the evolutionary forum, but haven't in a while. Recently I have become interested in the AGW debate. I am having a lot of trouble with it, however. Let me say how I started.

I started off assuming that AGW was simply a fact. Everyone believed it to be true except the conservatives and religious. However, I then read the book State of Fear. This book awakened the skeptic inside me. Now, after researching the book a little, I found out that it was filled with lies and deception and could not be relied on. That is fine, bit the seed was there.

Then, my senior year of high school my senior class was shown the movie "an inconvenient truth". This movie bugged me in a lot of ways. It was quite simply put, propaganda and had a lot of very extreme claims shown in an incredibly bias way. The simple fact that a supposed SCIENCE documentary was being shown to us by a POLITICIAN was the obvious indicator that this movie was unreasonably bias. However, I later found out that a clip from the movie was taken directly out of the movie "The day after tomorrow". The movie was shown to us, not as an educational tool, but as evidence that we were all going to die in ten years unless we stopped driving cars (a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean).

Anyways, this made me quite skeptical of many of the extreme claims. I would hear people point to Katrina and say "ah..global warming..." and I would hear news reports of how much of a disaster global warming is. I had a problem with these extreme types of claims. The following website is the type of extreme claim that I have a problem with http://onehundredmonths.org/

Anyways, I accept that the world is warming. However, I am unsure about whether humans are causing a significant impact on this warming.

I started researching the issue more in depth and I found many things that bothered me about both views. I will list the problems I have on both sides with the hope that some of them can be explained, because right now I am very confused about what to believe.

AGW problems:

Often I see graphs and charts that show about 150 years of data, with a spike towards the end. This is used to show that things are getting warmed much faster then in the past. However, the earth is 4.5 billion years old...how could a snap shot of 150 years EVER be an indicator of our climate?

What is the evidence that CO2 causes a positive feedback system. Usually, a system with strong positive feedback has a very unstable record, as it is easy for the system to snowball out of control. However, alarmists claim that climate as been relatively stable for hundreds of millions of years, and we are just NOW pushing it past some sort of "tipping point". How can you reconcile the fact that positive feedback creates unstable systems with the fact that earth's climate has been relatively stable until humans messed things up? Also, what is the evidence for this positive feedback in the first place?

Why all the obvious bias? The IPCC has been criticized often for having an incomplete peer review process. Are these claims simply wrong? I have also heard that the final report is not written by scientists, but government members who are merely advised by the scientists.

One last thing for AGW. I hear many predictions that we will see the adverse affects of AGW very soon. Is there something about these models that make them so accurate? Given the millions and millions of years of climate we have had, what is to say that instead of feeling the adverse affects in 20 years, we feel them in 200 years? The difference in relation to the age of the earth means nothing. What is 20 years or 200 years or even 2000 years in relation to 4,500,000,000 years? However, if it is 200 years and not 20 years, it means we really dont have to put into effect such huge measures to prevent it and it isn't such a big deal.

Anyways, on too the skeptical arguments.

anti AGW problems:

On this board and others, I see AGW skeptics use tactics I have only seen used by creationists. Not only that, but when I asked an AGW skeptic why there seems to be so many scientists disagreeing with him, he replied that there was a conspiracy with the "secular humanist, atheist fools". These people make the anti AGW position smell a lot like the creationist position...if it acts like a fish, and looks like a fish...

My biggest problem, however, is that there really does seem to be a consensus that support AGW. Why is that true if AGW is false? Am i misunderstanding the "consensus"? Is there not really a consensus at all? Is the consensus saying something different then what AGW proponents claim?

Anyways, sorry for making this post so long. I hope to get intelligent responses, and not simply people bashing me for thinking one way or another.

 

[plindboe]

Interesting post. You sound as confused as me.

I think anyone of reason can see that the global warming debate has a huge number of nuts on both sides. There are plenty of ridiculous alarmists on one side, and plenty of denialists using dishonest tactics on the other. Why this is so, I think is mostly because there are so many uncertainties and complexities involved, combined with the fact that there are huge political consequences no matter how countries will approach the issue.

The advices I offer are:

1.Humility. When there is so much complexity, and so much data out there, that is spun left and right depending on the propaganda you're beholding, you're bound to get lost as a non-expert. If you lack humility, confirmation bias will take over, and you'll end up as a fanatic, regurgitating the propaganda you've been fed.
2.Listen to the experts and ignore the non-experts. When you listen to the actual scientists who warn against global warning they don't tend to be the alarmist nutcases. It's mostly the non-experts polarizing the issue to ridiculous extremes.
3.Patiently await a verdict, instead of thinking that you'll have to make up your mind immediately and completely. From my impression, the scientific community is approaching a concensus on GW. Of course there is still much debate, and even some skeptical scientists, which is always a healthy sign.

Peter

 

[Deamiter]

I'll start by saying you should check out http://www.realclimate.org It's an amazing blog by climate scientists around the world. It discusses current research, media coverage, denialist claims etc. in great detail. For example, when some researchers claimed that their model showed that the Earth will be warmer in the next few decades, the realclimate folks not only showed exactly why their model was suspect, but wagered 2500 Euros against the global temperature for the next few decades (the bet has not yet been accepted as far as I know). They explain what different measurements mean and how they can or cannot be related to other measurements and look closely at the error bars in predictions to show what we can realistically conclude and what would be simply speculation.

In short, they simplify the science while linking to original sources and explaining in detail in the comments. All around a great source -- well worth reading back a few months (or years if you have time).

AGW problems:

Often I see graphs and charts that show about 150 years of data, with a spike towards the end. This is used to show that things are getting warmed much faster then in the past. However, the earth is 4.5 billion years old...how could a snap shot of 150 years EVER be an indicator of our climate?

There are two issues here. First, there are few direct measurements that go back further than 150 years. Past that, the data is all from tree rings, ice cores, river varves etc... Second, if you show a graph that goes back hundreds of thousands of years (VERY sparse data before that) that sharp blip at the end won't even be visible. Frankly, it SHOULD concern us that the temperature is changing faster than normal. The faster the climate changes, the less chance nature has to adapt and the less chance WE have to adapt to new and largely unfavorable conditions.

What is the evidence that CO2 causes a positive feedback system. Usually, a system with strong positive feedback has a very unstable record, as it is easy for the system to snowball out of control. However, alarmists claim that climate as been relatively stable for hundreds of millions of years, and we are just NOW pushing it past some sort of "tipping point". How can you reconcile the fact that positive feedback creates unstable systems with the fact that earth's climate has been relatively stable until humans messed things up? Also, what is the evidence for this positive feedback in the first place?

Simply, the evidence is from simple physics experiments. Solar radiation gets through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth and ocean etc... It then gets emitted as broadband radiation (largely IR) and CO2 has significant absorption bands that are not covered by other atmospheric gasses. In other words, when the radiation is re-emitted, the portions in CO2 absorption wavelengths gets trapped.

As for the feedback system, there is some significant feedback effects, but it's not an undamped system. As CO2 and other greenhouse gasses cause temperature to rise, other greenhouse gasses like water vapor are increased and some extra CO2 is emitted from permafrost and marshes where it was previously sequestered. However, while the feedback is significant enough to take into account in modeling, it is not significant enough to cause runaway feedback as you are suggesting. The primary effect of increased greenhouse gasses like CO2 is not a feedback mechanism but an increase in the Earth's temperature equilibrium. It actually takes quite a while for the oceans to reach equilibrium after a change in atmospheric greenhouse gasses so as an example, if we stopped increasing CO2 levels today, the Earth would keep warming for decades. However, there's no feedback mechanisms that would overwhelm the radiation of energy into space as the feedback mechanisms are much weaker than the effect of the greenhouse gasses to start with.

Why all the obvious bias? The IPCC has been criticized often for having an incomplete peer review process. Are these claims simply wrong? I have also heard that the final report is not written by scientists, but government members who are merely advised by the scientists.

The IPCC is necessarily somewhat political as it purposefully includes input from countries across the world. At the same time, each and every scientist signed off on the final report, and in fact, many scientists consider the conclusions to be quite conservative because the IPCC largely considered only the most reviewed and agreed upon models and so was essentially 'out of date' by the time it was finally published.

Overall, the IPCC made great progress in defining the global consensus among climate scientists at a particular point in time, but there are those who reject anything related to AGW and they tend to be similarly suspicious of anything related to the UN. I'd suggest you take the IPCC reports as any other research papers -- it's largely an honest attempt to learn about the world. The models are well defined and are subject to change as more computing power and data becomes available.

One last thing for AGW. I hear many predictions that we will see the adverse affects of AGW very soon. Is there something about these models that make them so accurate? Given the millions and millions of years of climate we have had, what is to say that instead of feeling the adverse affects in 20 years, we feel them in 200 years? The difference in relation to the age of the earth means nothing. What is 20 years or 200 years or even 2000 years in relation to 4,500,000,000 years? However, if it is 200 years and not 20 years, it means we really dont have to put into effect such huge measures to prevent it and it isn't such a big deal.

I'd strongly recommend reading the article at realclimate.org:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/09/progress-in-millennial-reconstructions/
In short, you first have to parse the source -- if a scientist makes a prediction with large error bars and it's reported in a newspaper, chances are pretty good that the newspaper will pick the worst case. You get a lot of crappy 'predictions' this way. That said, scientists are just now starting to produce models that can seriously start to predict climate one or two decades in the future by modeling oceanic effects. Previously, models were only really good to predict next century, but couldn't really be expected to follow the decadal fluctuations that depend more on moving heat around rather than on Earth's total energy absorption/radiation.


anti AGW problems:

On this board and others, I see AGW skeptics use tactics I have only seen used by creationists. Not only that, but when I asked an AGW skeptic why there seems to be so many scientists disagreeing with him, he replied that there was a conspiracy with the "secular humanist, atheist fools". These people make the anti AGW position smell a lot like the creationist position...if it acts like a fish, and looks like a fish...

My biggest problem, however, is that there really does seem to be a consensus that support AGW. Why is that true if AGW is false? Am i misunderstanding the "consensus"? Is there not really a consensus at all? Is the consensus saying something different then what AGW proponents claim? [/QUOTE]It's a big conspiracy don't you know? I mean read this thread: http://christianforums.com/showthread.php?t=7279133 where I repeatedly respond to the denialist Greatcloud in scientific detail. His response: ignore the science and link to yet another op-ed article restating his position.

I don't doubt that people honestly believe that there's a huge scientific/media conspiracy because when somebody who agrees with you politically or theologically says that most scientists disagree with global warming, you want to believe them. However, when you actually delve into the science, the truth and limits to our understanding of future climate changes gets much clearer.

 

[alerj123]

Thank you for your response. I have a few more questions.

There are two issues here. First, there are few direct measurements that go back further than 150 years. Past that, the data is all from tree rings, ice cores, river varves etc... Second, if you show a graph that goes back hundreds of thousands of years (VERY sparse data before that) that sharp blip at the end won't even be visible.

If the problem is that there isn't enough data that goes back more then 150 years, that simply is too bad. You can't extropolate data from the 150 years with the excuse that you simply "do not have the data". If you dont have enough data, then thats that, and you can't make broad conclusions based on the limited data that you have. My question is, why is the 150 years good enough when we are dealing with millions of years of data? If its not good enough and the problem is just we don't have enough data, then you can't make such specific conclusions.

Frankly, it SHOULD concern us that the temperature is changing faster than normal. The faster the climate changes, the less chance nature has to adapt and the less chance WE have to adapt to new and largely unfavorable conditions.

Agreed, however, the question is whether we are doing anything to speed up the process. If we are not, then the correct measure would be to try to adapt quicker to the changing climate, not try to change the climate ourselves.

If it turns out that every couple thousands of years, the climate warms up quickly for reasons other then CO2, and this is just another natural cycle, then there is no reason to try to stop the process by reducing our CO2.

Simply, the evidence is from simple physics experiments. Solar radiation gets through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth and ocean etc... It then gets emitted as broadband radiation (largely IR) and CO2 has significant absorption bands that are not covered by other atmospheric gasses. In other words, when the radiation is re-emitted, the portions in CO2 absorption wavelengths gets trapped.

It is accepted that CO2 can potentially cause warming. The question is whether our potentially insignificant amount of ADDED CO2 has the ability to project through the natural "noise" of our climate.

There are various negative feedback systems that could potentially nullify the effect of any added CO2. For example, added CO2 is absorbed back into the environment as added biomass. Also, warming causes more percipitation, which causes more cloud coverage. This cloud coverage has the ability to reflect back solar radiation.

It is unclear how strong these effects are. I am just saying that it is very possible that, despite the warming POTENTIAL of CO2, the environment could have natural means of stabilizing itself.

However, while the feedback is significant enough to take into account in modeling, it is not significant enough to cause runaway feedback as you are suggesting.

I never suggested that. It's websites and people like Al Gore who I hear say that we may reach some sort of "tipping point" in the next couple of years. Are you saying that there isn't a "tipping point"?

That said, scientists are just now starting to produce models that can seriously start to predict climate one or two decades in the future by modeling oceanic effects. Previously, models were only really good to predict next century, but couldn't really be expected to follow the decadal fluctuations that depend more on moving heat around rather than on Earth's total energy absorption/radiation.

I dont have time to read that whole article right now. But in your opinion and experience, what are the current predictions for the future?

 

[MorkandMindy]

Greetings

I tend to think of Anthropogenic Global Warming as a good error.

It started back when people went nuts about nuclear power. I wonder if the oil industry's control of the media was what hyped all that up, anyway it pushed up demand for petroleum products and when it exceeded supply up went their profits.

And put us in the nasty position we are in now of being dependent on the oil companies and off fighting their wars and having used up 90% of our own oil and putting the nation in debt buying it from abroad.

The reality is heat leaving the planet in IR is partly blocked by a number of windows and the CO2 window is pretty well closed already (OK it's logarithmic), and due to environmentalists the various CFC and such windows are opening so the greenhouse contribution should be stable at the present level from here on. High cloud cover reflection should be on the increase so we may soon start cooling.


BUT I would do everything possible to reduce CO2 from fossil fuels because the only way to do that is not to burn the fossil fuels and frankly it would be nice to still have some in 30 years time.

 

[alerj123]

And put us in the nasty position we are in now of being dependent on the oil companies and off fighting their wars and having used up 90% of our own oil and putting the nation in debt buying it from abroad.

How would that explain the fact that it does look like there is a large majority of scientists who say that it isn't an error?

BUT I would do everything possible to reduce CO2 from fossil fuels because the only way to do that is not to burn the fossil fuels and frankly it would be nice to still have some in 30 years time.

I agree, more importantly, it would be nice not to be reliant on the middle east for anything.

 

[Bombila]

Alerj123, this blog by Coby on ScienceBlogs:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/

has dozens of informative articles on climate change (and on other topics, but it is easy to sort them out), many directly refute the claims of the climate change denialists.

There is an anthropogenic climate change denialist, Greatcloud, posting threads right here; check down the thread title page for his name. A lot of good material has been posted refuting his material.

 

[xXThePrimeDirectiveXx]

Creationists have trouble with Climate Change because the data used in some cases is older than 650,000 years. (Ice cores.) If one of the foundations of creationist beliefs based on a literal bible is that the Earth is only 10,000 years old, they cannot accept Climate Change data without invalidating a literal bible.

Better to ignore the data for them than to question their entire religious view.

Senator James Inhofe, former chairman of the Senate Committee On Evironment and Public Works, is one of these creationists. He is partly responsible for holding the USA back in the fight against Climate Change. This is one of those instances when fundamentalist Christianity can be dangerous.

Btw, as Alerj123 pointed out, "A lot of creationists are anti AGW, but not all agw skeptics are creationists...an important distinction"

 

[Chalnoth]

Often I see graphs and charts that show about 150 years of data, with a spike towards the end. This is used to show that things are getting warmed much faster then in the past. However, the earth is 4.5 billion years old...how could a snap shot of 150 years EVER be an indicator of our climate?

Well, the more significant graphs are those that go back 1000 years or so. But regardless, I don't think these data are particularly compelling. What's the purpose of pointing out temperature history without causes? At most what it'll tell us is that human civilization hasn't yet had to deal with climate change on this scale. It doesn't tell us what we should do about it. For that we need to delve into the causes.

What is the evidence that CO2 causes a positive feedback system. Usually, a system with strong positive feedback has a very unstable record, as it is easy for the system to snowball out of control. However, alarmists claim that climate as been relatively stable for hundreds of millions of years, and we are just NOW pushing it past some sort of "tipping point". How can you reconcile the fact that positive feedback creates unstable systems with the fact that earth's climate has been relatively stable until humans messed things up? Also, what is the evidence for this positive feedback in the first place?

Well, there are a few main points to consider here. First, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable for the last few thousand years because all of the natural forcings have been relatively stable. Second, this is exactly how the Earth's climate behaves: it acts as if there are a series of metastable states and, from time to time, it switches between them. Ice ages are a prominent example, and, in looking at past temperature histories, we see that ice ages start and end very rapidly. This is one of the reasons why we're so worried about the current status of global warming.

It gets even more worrying once we look at the actual data. First, consider arctic sea ice:

Notice that both this year and last, the amount of arctic sea ice in the summer is around two thirds that of the average from 1979-2000. Now look at the start of these graphs in the winter: the extent of the ice during winter is about the same. So why is so much more melting now?

Because it's thinner now. It probably won't be much longer and no place in the arctic will have more than 15% ice coverage during summer, not because the globe is warming now (though that certainly doesn't help), but just because now it's warm enough that more ice melts, on average, each year than is replenished. And this has an additional problem: ice reflects sunlight. Water, being darker, absorbs much more. And since the arctic only gets sunlight during the summer, having less ice in summer means a lot more sunlight is absorbed, dramatically warming the arctic sea.

This is just one way in which a small change (just enough sustained increase in temperature to start the ice melting) can result in a large effect (complete melting of the arctic sea, which leads to more warming).

It is worth mentioning that there are also negative feedback effects, and these help to keep the temperature in a metastable state. For example, the actual melting of the arctic sea ice takes copious amounts of heat, meaning that you need a very long sustained period of warmer temperatures to melt it all. This is one reason why the temperatures remain stable most of the time. But the evidence appears to be that we've initiated a tipping point, and if we don't stop it, we could dramatically change our climate.

Consider, after all, that the current global temperature anomaly (the amount of warming) is only around half a degree Celsius. Half a degree. Current measurements of the effect that CO2 has estimates that the amount of warming we would get from doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, if we are conservative, would be anywhere from 1° to 3° Celsius, which could happen within just a few decades (1° is extremely unlikely...3° not quite as unlikely).

Anyway, if you want more information on specific arguments used to attempt to discredit global warming, here's a nice site that goes into most of them:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

You can go through all of the main arguments from "It's the Sun" to a variety of attempts to claim that CO2 doesn't cause warming. But most damning of all, in my opinion, is where all of these AGW "skeptic" arguments are coming from: right wing think tanks.

One should wonder why, if this is really a scientific debate, nearly all of the opposition comes from political organizations, while every major scientific organization that has spoken on the subject is fully in support of AGW as being valid science.

 

[Greatcloud]

Well, the more significant graphs are those that go back 1000 years or so. But regardless, I don't think these data are particularly compelling. What's the purpose of pointing out temperature history without causes? At most what it'll tell us is that human civilization hasn't yet had to deal with climate change on this scale. It doesn't tell us what we should do about it. For that we need to delve into the causes.


Well, there are a few main points to consider here. First, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable for the last few thousand years because all of the natural forcings have been relatively stable. Second, this is exactly how the Earth's climate behaves: it acts as if there are a series of metastable states and, from time to time, it switches between them. Ice ages are a prominent example, and, in looking at past temperature histories, we see that ice ages start and end very rapidly. This is one of the reasons why we're so worried about the current status of global warming.

It gets even more worrying once we look at the actual data. First, consider arctic sea ice:

Notice that both this year and last, the amount of arctic sea ice in the summer is around two thirds that of the average from 1979-2000. Now look at the start of these graphs in the winter: the extent of the ice during winter is about the same. So why is so much more melting now?

Because it's thinner now. It probably won't be much longer and no place in the arctic will have more than 15% ice coverage during summer, not because the globe is warming now (though that certainly doesn't help), but just because now it's warm enough that more ice melts, on average, each year than is replenished. And this has an additional problem: ice reflects sunlight. Water, being darker, absorbs much more. And since the arctic only gets sunlight during the summer, having less ice in summer means a lot more sunlight is absorbed, dramatically warming the arctic sea.

This is just one way in which a small change (just enough sustained increase in temperature to start the ice melting) can result in a large effect (complete melting of the arctic sea, which leads to more warming).

It is worth mentioning that there are also negative feedback effects, and these help to keep the temperature in a metastable state. For example, the actual melting of the arctic sea ice takes copious amounts of heat, meaning that you need a very long sustained period of warmer temperatures to melt it all. This is one reason why the temperatures remain stable most of the time. But the evidence appears to be that we've initiated a tipping point, and if we don't stop it, we could dramatically change our climate.

Consider, after all, that the current global temperature anomaly (the amount of warming) is only around half a degree Celsius. Half a degree. Current measurements of the effect that CO2 has estimates that the amount of warming we would get from doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, if we are conservative, would be anywhere from 1° to 3° Celsius, which could happen within just a few decades (1° is extremely unlikely...3° not quite as unlikely).

Anyway, if you want more information on specific arguments used to attempt to discredit global warming, here's a nice site that goes into most of them:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

You can go through all of the main arguments from "It's the Sun" to a variety of attempts to claim that CO2 doesn't cause warming. But most damning of all, in my opinion, is where all of these AGW "skeptic" arguments are coming from: right wing think tanks.

One should wonder why, if this is really a scientific debate, nearly all of the opposition comes from political organizations, while every major scientific organization that has spoken on the subject is fully in support of AGW as being valid science.

Unless GW peaked in 2005 and has been on a downward slope. Unless GW is in fact over and we are now in global cooling. The sooner people consider this as fact the sooner we can prepare for some harsh winters.

As for the Artic sea warming it won't last two winters at this rate of temperature change and the one coming.

You can expect to see thick ice this year. I like your graph you can say a lot about it, good graph.

We in the United States however when dealing with solar warming will all be wearing very warm coats this winter.

 

[Chalnoth]

Unless GW peaked in 2005 and has been on a downward slope. Unless GW is in fact over and we are now in global cooling. The sooner people consider this as fact the sooner we can prepare for some harsh winters.

Well, if you had any mechanisms that could come even close to causing this, then you might have something.

 

[Bombila]

Unfortunately, Greatcloud, you have presented no credible evidence that global cooling is happening or will happen. The arctic ice thinning feedback scenario that Chalnoth describes looks pretty starkly realistic.

Your location says Oregon coast. Those of us further North, and especially above the Arctic Circle, see not even a sliver of evidence of cooling, but some ominous signs of climate changes due to warming, and this is exactly what climate change science has predicted.

Chalnoth notes that most opposition to this science is political, but I have seen that there is quite a lot of it, and I include you in this group, coming from a kind of conservative eccentricity; a stubborn desire to prove all those smartypants scientists wrong. Climate change denialists are rarely actual climate scientists, although they may have educated themselves in narrowly specific aspects of climatology.

I for one have neices and nephews just approaching adulthood, moving out into the world, starting their lives with all the energy and joy of the young. I'm very fond of them, and could not forgive myself if they ended up suffering because I rejected legitimate science and worked to delay mitigating efforts just to satisfy my own ego. And by this statement, I don't mean to insult you, but to ask that you examine your own motives and evaluate the consequences, as well as reviewing your understanding of the science involved, and the motives of those who you use as information sources. I think that is important.

 

[Greatcloud]

Unfortunately, Greatcloud, you have presented no credible evidence that global cooling is happening or will happen. The arctic ice thinning feedback scenario that Chalnoth describes looks pretty starkly realistic.

Your location says Oregon coast. Those of us further North, and especially above the Arctic Circle, see not even a sliver of evidence of cooling, but some ominous signs of climate changes due to warming, and this is exactly what climate change science has predicted.

Chalnoth notes that most opposition to this science is political, but I have seen that there is quite a lot of it, and I include you in this group, coming from a kind of conservative eccentricity; a stubborn desire to prove all those smartypants scientists wrong. Climate change denialists are rarely actual climate scientists, although they may have educated themselves in narrowly specific aspects of climatology.

I for one have nieces and nephews just approaching adulthood, moving out into the world, starting their lives with all the energy and joy of the young. I'm very fond of them, and could not forgive myself if they ended up suffering because I rejected legitimate science and worked to delay mitigating efforts just to satisfy my own ego. And by this statement, I don't mean to insult you, but to ask that you examine your own motives and evaluate the consequences, as well as reviewing your understanding of the science involved, and the motives of those who you use as information sources. I think that is important.

I did present evidence of global cooling it's not my fault you did not read it. I believe in GW but that it is very likely caused by the sun. I believe in AGW but that only 2.5 % of it is caused by man.

As for the minor feedback you forgot when the ice is so thick it does not melt all year. This is coming even this year,watch.

I have nephews and nieces and a kid too. I am going to warn them about climate change too.

MY MOTIVES
1) The recession that will come about worldwide not to mention the poor quality of life here and in Africa.

2) It is a poor theory heavily funded. It is bad science.

3) More scientist and money could be spent on research and food management.

 

[Chalnoth]

Chalnoth notes that most opposition to this science is political, but I have seen that there is quite a lot of it, and I include you in this group, coming from a kind of conservative eccentricity; a stubborn desire to prove all those smartypants scientists wrong. Climate change denialists are rarely actual climate scientists, although they may have educated themselves in narrowly specific aspects of climatology.

I should probably be more specific: almost all of the publications in the anthropogenic global warming denialism movement come from or through conservative think tanks.

 

[Chalnoth]

I did present evidence of global cooling it's not my fault you did not read it.

It's not a matter of not reading it. It's a matter of the evidence not meaning what you think it means.

I believe in GW but that it is very likely caused by the sun. I believe in AGW but that only 2.5 % of it is caused by man.

Well, you're wrong. Grossly and horribly so. The current warming cannot be caused by changes in solar irradiation because while the current warming has been happening, the solar irradiation hasn't been changing.

 

[Greatcloud]

It's not a matter of not reading it. It's a matter of the evidence not meaning what you think it means.


Well, you're wrong. Grossly and horribly so. The current warming cannot be caused by changes in solar irradiation because while the current warming has been happening, the solar irradiation hasn't been changing.

To what warming are you referring to, because if you mean 20th century warming I already spoke to that. If you mean the summer then of course.

 

[Bombila]

I did present evidence of global cooling it's not my fault you did not read it. I believe in GW but that it is very likely caused by the sun. I believe in AGW but that only 2.5 % of it is caused by man.

As for the minor feedback you forgot when the ice is so thick it does not melt all year. This is coming even this year,watch.

I have nephews and nieces and a kid too. I am going to warn them about climate change too.

MY MOTIVES
1) The recession that will come about worldwide not to mention the poor quality of life here and in Africa.

2) It is a poor theory heavily funded. It is bad science.

3) More scientist and money could be spent on research and food management.

I read your evidence, Greatcloud, and even as a reasonably educated layperson did not find it credible or supported by reality. AGW, OTOH, is well supported by the conclusions of a large number of recognized scientists with extensive published and peer-reviewed research. Again I suggest that you look at your sources and your current conviction with a critical eye.

I cannot understand why anyone would think that huge numbers of established scientists who work in the field of climate studies would suddenly decide to indulge in a grand conspiracy to promote bad science that a reasonably well educated person could falsify with a few books and the resources of the internet. What would be their motive? Their conclusions have not been at all popular with governments, which is where a good deal of science funding comes from.

Certainly I agree that more money could/should be spent on research and food management, that goes without saying. But surely if we can understand exactly why the climate is changing, predict how it will change, and even to some extent mitigate that change, it will also give us appropriate focus on what kinds of research need to be done to help with endangered food supplies, and it is our duty to do these things.

 

[Chalnoth]

To what warming are you referring to, because if you mean 20th century warming I already spoke to that. If you mean the summer then of course.

I mean the last 40 years.

 

[Greatcloud]

I mean the last 40 years.

The sun shining and AGW over 40 years is like a bell curve. Everything matched from 75 til 98 then we have a flat or ten years of no change, ya get me ?

This is easy to understand Chalnoth as a layman or scientist. I will say it again if you want.

 

[Chalnoth]

The sun shining and AGW over 40 years is like a bell curve. Everything matched from 75 til 98 then we have a flat or ten years of no change, ya get me ?

This is easy to understand Chalnoth as a layman or scientist. I will say it again if you want.

In what imaginary world do you live that the Sun and warming matched from 75 'til 98?

The two diverged starting in '75.

And from '98 'til now? Well, 1998 was an exceptionally warm year, due to an El Nino event. 2007 was an exceptionally cold year, due to the opposite, a La Nina event. Remove those two years, and the trend is still towards warming.