BBC: What Happened to Global Warming?

[INDY500]

YouTube - Please help the world - COP15 opening film

I rest my case.

 

[U2DMfan]

The next 11 presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, all had higher job approval ratings than Obama at this stage of their tenure. Their ratings were:

-- George W. Bush, 86 percent
-- Bill Clinton, 52 percent
-- George H.W. Bush, 71 percent
-- Ronald Reagan, 49 percent
-- Jimmy Carter, 57 percent
-- Gerald Ford, 52 percent
-- Richard Nixon, 59 percent
-- Lyndon Johnson, 74 percent
-- John Kennedy, 77 percent
-- Dwight Eisenhower, 69 percent
-- Harry Truman, 49 percent

5 of these Presidents were re-elected.
JFK was an exception so let's throw him out. That leaves 10.
That means that if you are the President (since 1945), no matter what your approval rating is (because it spans the gamut), basically you have a 50/50 shot of being re-elected.

And when you figure there are only two candidates that could conceivably be elected. The Dem or the Rep, then it's 50/50 as well.

So yeah, it's a toss-up.

Translation: These poll numbers are completely meaningless.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Hello! Maurice Strong is a Communist and I posted his recent criticism of the ballot box. What do you think a world government is that we can't vote for?

BTW attacking Monckton personally for gathering science that others did and presenting it is not going to stop other climatologists from responding to AGW attacks. Monckton got the Nobel Prize pin because of Al Gore (who represents the IPCC) and Monckton contibuted to the 2007 IPCC report. He was being sarcastic.

Welcome to the Copenhagen Climate Challenge Web Site

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....Store_id=83947f5d-d84a-4a84-ad5d-6e2d71db52d9

All their arguments about how deniers are like tobacco companies can easily be thrown towards the AGW lobby. Anybody thinks that there is no wrong doing in the emails didn't read them. Deleting back up data so no one could check them or threatening to delete something to prevent Steve McIntyre from checking it is an enormous problem and denying (A-ha) the problem is not going to satisfy the critics and will create more critics as we are seeing right now.

You are entirely agenda driven and closed minded, the fact that Monckton can put together a literature review to justify his biases doesn't make him an expert. Putting a conservative politician with no scientific background as your superstar in a scientific debate highlights how weak climate sceptics arguments are.

You throw out labels like socialist and communist at people who talk about how to deal with a tragedy of the commons situation while completely ignoring the problems of increased CO2 in our atmosphere. You don't give a fuck about global warming because your favoured political talking heads oppose it.

I had some sympathy for climate change scepticism in 2005-2006, but I changed my mind in light of learning more about the evidence. You are taking a political position and reposting claims from a right wing echo chamber without a jot of honest active doubt.

 

[purpleoscar]

Have you read your posts lately?

You come as the most "religious" in this thread. You believe any piece of junk science that comes your way as long as it supports your side.

Well it's pretty clear who the deniers are now. Including this guy:

YouTube - Biggest Epic Fail - Al Gore Claims Climategate Emails Taken "Out of Context" by "Climate Deniers"

Talk about vested interest here. ​

Then again you don't really read my posts because their are TONS of "denier" science available in my posts and nobody seems to be able to explain how Vikings buried their dead in permafrost in Greenland. Eliminating the MWP brings the antennae up for many scientists. But hey BVS says it's junk so it must be. These people even go out of their way to make their science make sense so average people can see what the other side is.

Since the IPCC likes to decide what is science and what is not there has been an alternate NIPCC created for skeptics to publish.

Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change: Rebutting the IPCC with Authority

At least they aren't spewing alarmism like Gore and that it's "right infront of our eyes" and that we have good enough technology to move to solar and wind. That's an obvious lie. Or he's on Or he's inventing a Church of Climatology.

The ice in the north has been increasing since 2007. Also pointing out warming in the past only shows correlation but not causation. We should be spending some money at looking at what natural causes could exist. We're lucky as a species that we aren't cooling (yet) to the level of another little ice age or worse.

Another thing. How are green jobs (subsidized jobs by taxpayers) going to lift people out of poverty? Poverty is alleviated when there is growth in the economy. Cap and trade is just going to send money to corrupt regimes in 3rd world countries and reward Al Gore's companies for producing unproven products and punish companies for producing the real thing. We have to go on a carbon diet and wait for some miraculous technology to produce energy to the level we do now. Even Van Jones was talking about green jobs lifting people out of poverty.

YouTube - The Green Collar Economy - Van Jones

Saudi Arabia of wind and solar? Nuclear was the cheapest option and Al Gore didn't answer that question well.

 

[A_Wanderer]

An article written by a respected historian of science and published in the journal Science.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change -- Oreskes 306 (5702): 1686 -- Science

INDY, you should be honest and argue economics rather than promoting obscurantists.

 

[purpleoscar]

You are entirely agenda driven and closed minded, the fact that Monckton can put together a literature review to justify his biases doesn't make him an expert. Putting a conservative politician with no scientific background as your superstar in a scientific debate highlights how weak climate sceptics arguments are.

There you go AGAIN. The IPCC is not agenda driven? Who are you fooling?

You throw out labels like socialist and communist at people who talk about how to deal with a tragedy of the commons situation while completely ignoring the problems of increased CO2 in our atmosphere. You don't give a fuck about global warming because your favoured political talking heads oppose it.

The scientists haven't proven that recent changes in the climate are man made. They just point out that climate changes and want us to believe it's our fault. Your video of ice melting simply proved that ice melted up to 2007. It didn't prove that this was unnatural. Why do you think the IPCC doesn't want a medieval warming period? Because they want us to conclude it's not natural.

I had some sympathy for climate change scepticism in 2005-2006, but I changed my mind in light of learning more about the evidence. You are taking a political position and reposting claims from a right wing echo chamber without a jot of honest active doubt.

Because their arguments have holes in them. The skeptics are poking holes in the theory of AGW. The skeptics didn't make up a theory to be disproven. It's the AGW group that has made a simplistic claim about C02 and temperature and they are getting called out on it as they should. Calling evidence on the skeptic side a "right wing echo chamber" is not an argument and jumping on the bandwagon when it's falling apart is maybe embarrassing for you so you will tow the line. I agree that the right and the left have taken sides (mostly) on this issue but that's because the stakeholders who will benefit from cap and trade are governments and businesses that ally with government or who can trade C02 credits to make profits on it. The people who will lose are those who need energy but don't fit into those categories, so they rely on right-wingers to give them voice. That's the ballot box problem that Maurice Strong doesn't like. If anything there is more evidence for the skeptics now than ever before and I've already posted almost all of it. The climate is much more complicated than targeting C02 and even Al Gore in his new book is downplaying C02 and admitting that new evidence may prevent a consensus at Copenhagen.

Think of it. If you make a simple claim about a complex system like the climate and make disaster scenarios around it that aren't remotely true don't you think that some scientists (many in fact) will find observations that don't match? That's how science works. I already posted Tim Flannery who admits the models are not good enough all the while saying that we should go ahead with world government. Well yeah, it's in his interest to go ahead.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I changed my mind when I was doing a third year unit on palaeoclimatology, I learnt about the methodology and the evidence and was persuaded. I didn't jump on any bandwagon, I am sceptical of cap and trade and don't think fear-mongering is justified.

 

[purpleoscar]

An article written by a respected historian of science and published in the journal Science.BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change -- Oreskes 306 (5702): 1686 -- Science

Key items in the article:

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

Humility my ass! Acting without knowing and damaging the economy effects future generations as well. Talking about overwhelming evidence when it's exactly the opposite is the appeal to authority argument which people are not falling for anymore since the IPCC consensus doesn't exist. The emails clearly show politics. The weather has been cooling since the last El Nino yet C02 has increased. Models have gotten it wrong over and over again. How many times do models have to get it wrong before you begin to be skeptical?

Even using the word obscurantist shows you buy into the appeal to authority.

 

[A_Wanderer]

We don't know everything about the climate system, but we can say with confidence that our carbon dioxide emissions are effecting climates and will have an impact on ocean acidity. The implication of having a complex and dynamic climate system isn't that you can ignore an input (such as more CO2), but that we will have unforseen outcomes that ripple through the system; pushing climate beyond 2 degrees will impact the biosphere and it could trigger a mass extinction.

I used obscurantist to highlight the way that your side deliberately minimises and obscures climate science for political ends, something that the scientific community is able to moderate with its system of checks.

 

[purpleoscar]

We don't know everything about the climate system, but we can say with confidence that our carbon dioxide emissions are effecting climates and will have an impact on ocean acidity. The implication of having a complex and dynamic climate system isn't that you can ignore an input (such as more CO2), but that we will have unforseen outcomes that ripple through the system; pushing climate beyond 2 degrees will impact the biosphere and it could trigger a mass extinction.

I used obscurantist to highlight the way that your side deliberately minimises and obscures climate science for political ends, something that the scientific community is able to moderate with its system of checks.

The problem with the systems of checks is that it checks those who don't agree precisely for political reasons. Especially when they attack McIntyre and Monckton when they want to audit the data. McIntyre was appointed the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of Climate Science in those emails. He's just doing his job trying to compare their base data to the claims.

Here's a Gavin Schmidt trainwreck. These guys are their own worst enemies when they try to defend those emails.

Eyeblast.tv

And on Ocean Acidification I posted an article on that already:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/acidification.pdf

In evaluating global seawater impacts of (1) model-predicted global warming and (2) direct seawater chemical consequences of a doubling of the air's CO2 content, Loaiciga (2006), for example, used a mass-balance approach to (1) "estimate the change in average seawater salinity caused by the melting of terrestrial ice and permanent snow in a warming earth," and he (2) applied "a chemical equilibrium model for the concentration of carbonate species in seawater open to the atmosphere" in order to "estimate the effect of changes in atmospheric CO2 on the acidity of seawater." Assuming that the rise in the planet's mean surface air temperature continues unabated, and that it eventually causes the melting of all terrestrial ice and permanent snow, Loaiciga calculated that "the average seawater salinity would be lowered not more than 0.61‰ from its current 35‰." He also reports that across the range of seawater temperature considered (0 to 30°C), "a doubling of CO2 from 380 ppm to 760 ppm increases the seawater acidity [lowers its pH] approximately 0.19 pH units." He thus concludes that "on a global scale and over the time scales considered (hundreds of years), there would not be accentuated changes in either seawater salinity or acidity from the rising concentration of atmospheric CO2."

I don't think a mass extinction is going to happen from C02 anytime soon. That's another problem. Everything is always about doom and gloom and that we have to ACT NOW to prevent something that scientists themselves admit they don't understand properly.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Your article comes straight from science and public policy institute

The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a global warming skeptics group which appears to primarily be the work of Robert Ferguson, its President.

(It is worth noting that in the late 1990's, George Carlo founded a group known as the "Science and Public Policy Institute" to work on issues such as electro-magnetic radiation and health issues. Approximately eight years later Ferguson founded his group with the identical name, oblivious to the existence of Carlo's group. Ferguson states that after registering his organization in Virginia he discovered that Carlo's group existed but by then his group had created the website and printed their stationery).

The website of Ferguson's SPPI draws heavily on papers written by Christopher Monckton.

Prior to founding SPPI in approximately mid-2007, Ferguson was the Executive Director of the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP), a project of the corporate-funded group, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute.

SPPI describes itself as "a nonprofit institute of research and education dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science." It also proclaims that it is "free from affiliation to any corporation or political party, we support the advancement of sensible public policies for energy and the environment rooted in rational science and economics. Only through science and factual information, separating reality from rhetoric, can legislators develop beneficial policies without unintended consequences that might threaten the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizenry."

Science and Public Policy Institute - SourceWatch

It is a political lobby group, the "paper" that you produced isn't peer reviewed science, it's a cherry picked literature review promulgated by a climate sceptic think tank.

Here is a proper paper on the subject.

Orr, J.C. et al. "Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms", published in Nature in 2005

Today's surface ocean is saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, but increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are reducing ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations, and thus the level of calcium carbonate saturation. Experimental evidence suggests that if these trends continue, key marine organisms—such as corals and some plankton—will have difficulty maintaining their external calcium carbonate skeletons. Here we use 13 models of the ocean–carbon cycle to assess calcium carbonate saturation under the IS92a 'business-as-usual' scenario for future emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. In our projections, Southern Ocean surface waters will begin to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite, a metastable form of calcium carbonate, by the year 2050. By 2100, this undersaturation could extend throughout the entire Southern Ocean and into the subarctic Pacific Ocean. When live pteropods were exposed to our predicted level of undersaturation during a two-day shipboard experiment, their aragonite shells showed notable dissolution. Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.

https://www.up.ethz.ch/people/ngruber/publications/orr_nat_05.pdf

 

[A_Wanderer]

Another review of the e-mails from Peter Sinclair

YouTube - Smacking the Hack Attack

and a clearinghouse for the e-mail leaks

SwiftHack

 

[INDY500]

We don't know everything about the climate system, but we can say with confidence that our carbon dioxide emissions are effecting climates and will have an impact on ocean acidity. The implication of having a complex and dynamic climate system isn't that you can ignore an input (such as more CO2), but that we will have unforseen outcomes that ripple through the system; pushing climate beyond 2 degrees will impact the biosphere and it could trigger a mass extinction.

Even if true, do we have to accept only the most catastrophic projections? Even if we lose land to higher sea levels and suffer droughts in Africa aren't we going to reclaim land (including minerals, coal and oil) previously covered by ice? Won't we have longer growing seasons and other benefits.

Even if true, is the prudent course to forfeit our sovereignty over to unelected international bodies to police and regulate energy usage around the globe?

Even if true, should we really be burdening our economy with even higher taxes during a world-wide recession. Should we really be talking about capping fossil fuels before we have viable replacement energies which would have the effect of choking-off future economic growth and prosperity? (A hidden agenda behind all this anyway I would argue or green advocates would have been trumpeting nuclear energy for the past 15 years-- which most of them still don't)

Even if true, rather than take trillions of dollars out of the economy wouldn't the best course be to stay prosperous and strong as an nation so we can quickly adapt to the temperature that will be higher regardless of what we do? Invest in relocation and dykes and possible solutions for water shortages. As well as high tech or bio projects to lower the albido of the planet to lower the temperature.

I used obscurantist to highlight the way that your side deliberately minimises and obscures climate science for political ends, something that the scientific community is able to moderate with its system of checks.

System of checks? This is what Ronald Bailey said in Reason Magazine about Climategate

In another set of troubling emails, the CRU crew and associates discussed how to freeze out researchers and editors who expressed doubts about the man-made climate change. For example, an email from CRU’s leader Phil Jones saying that he and Kevin Trenberth would keep two dissenting scientific articles out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s next report "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" In addition, the CRU crew evidently plotted to remove journal editors with whom they disagreed and suppress the publication of articles that they disliked. If they actually succeeded, this compounds the tragedy. Eliminating dissenting voices distorts the peer review process and the resulting scientific literature.

 

[Vincent Vega]

 

[INDY500]

 

[BVS]

Even if true, do we have to accept only the most catastrophic projections? Even if we lose land to higher sea levels and suffer droughts in Africa aren't we going to reclaim land (including minerals, coal and oil) previously covered by ice? Won't we have longer growing seasons and other benefits.

This is quite laughable coming from someone who fights so hard for status quo...

 

[melon]

Hah! Isn't that the truth...

 

[anitram]

Even if true, is the prudent course to forfeit our sovereignty over to unelected international bodies to police and regulate energy usage around the globe?

No, it's much better to forfeit your sovereignty to corrupt Middle Eastern sheikhs.

 

[phillyfan26]

Hah! Isn't that the truth...

If that's the truth, then save it because it's apparently an "endangered species."

 

[purpleoscar]

Your article comes straight from science and public policy instituteScience and Public Policy Institute - SourceWatch

It is a political lobby group, the "paper" that you produced isn't peer reviewed science, it's a cherry picked literature review promulgated by a climate sceptic think tank.

Here is a proper paper on the subject.

Orr, J.C. et al. "Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms", published in Nature in 2005https://www.up.ethz.ch/people/ngruber/publications/orr_nat_05.pdf

We know that peer review is used for political purposes. The appeal to authority/lab coat effect is not going to work until skeptics are allowed to engage the debate.

Here's another video showing more "appeal to authority" and destroying the idea that only a few scientists are being affected.

CNN’s “Global Warming: Trick or Truth” | CEJournal

Your video even talking about the economist as "conservative" when they are liberal Keynesians shows the typical argument that Elizabeth May uses (in the Munk Debate) that Margaret Thatcher supported Climate Change years ago is another appeal to authority again (accept with conservatives) while ignoring skeptics. Your video is supposed to make us believe that the skeptics don't believe in warming and uses Beavis and Butthead to say that "some people are dumb" all the while this could be attributed to Micheal Mann who eliminated the Medieval Warming Period. The deniers are arguing against MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING not WARMING. Pointing out warming is not conclusive that man did it but that it's warm. How about studying natural factors in the climate in reality instead of trying to estimate natural factors in 'garbage in, garbage out' climate models?

Thank God there are auditors:

Here's what Mann's hockey stick graph looks like without the cherry picked data:

Voila! The Medieval warming period. Read more on Mann's methodology:

Steve McIntyre’s ICCC09 presentation with notes � Watts Up With That?

More manipulation by Al Gore that went unchecked:

Calibrating Dr. Thompson’s Z-Mometer � Climate Audit [Welcome to our new home!]

McIntyre is still not satisfied:

YouTube - Chris Horner, Stephen McIntyre & Michael Oppenheimer on climategate.

Still manipulating tree data:

Still Hiding the Decline � Climate Audit – mirror site [OBSOLETE!]

On ocean acidification there are new studies casting more doubt:

Ocean Absorption Of CO2 Not Shrinking | The Resilient Earth

Marine calcifiers exhibit mixed responses to CO2-induced ocean acidification — Geology

Whatever the specific mechanism(s) involved, our results suggest that the impact of elevated atmospheric pCO2 on marine calcification is more varied than previously thought.

Barring any massive natural outgassing of greenhouse gas, CO2 levels will not rise as high as those in the fourth test environment, at least not in the foreseeable future. The atmosphere did experience similar CO2 levels during the middle of the Cretaceous period about 100 million years ago. “This is an interval in which many of these organisms lived and apparently did okay, despite the extremely elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 that existed at that time,” Ries said. “The take-home message is that the responses to ocean acidification are going to be a lot more nuanced and complex than we thought.” As usual when Earth's climate changes, there are winners and losers but life carries on.

The science is obviously not settled and more work needs to be done before we blow trillions of dollars.

 

[the iron horse]

Climategate: Gore falsifies the record | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

 

[A_Wanderer]

We know that peer review is used for political purposes. The appeal to authority/lab coat effect is not going to work until skeptics are allowed to engage the debate.

Scepticism is a hallmark of science, in the competitive world of science peer review is a legitimate check and you have to justify your dismissal of it.

All of your arguments from the dismissal of the hockey stick graph to the argument that we don't have the understanding to justify the greenhouse effect have been kicking around the denialist movement for the past decade. You should be more honest about your motives and argue from economics rather than misrepresenting the state of climate science.

 

[purpleoscar]

Scepticism is a hallmark of science, in the competitive world of science peer review is a legitimate check and you have to justify your dismissal of it.

All of your arguments from the dismissal of the hockey stick graph to the argument that we don't have the understanding to justify the greenhouse effect have been kicking around the denialist movement for the past decade. You should be more honest about your motives and argue from economics rather than misrepresenting the state of climate science.

I did justify it with the emails and the studies (some peer reviewed and some not) that question the singling out of C02 as the main driver of climate change since industrialization. If something is banging around for decades and new research is coming to challenge the IPCC with ideas that were banging around for decades it probably means the science isn't settled. There is a serious lack of skepticism towards the IPCC and as Pat Michaels says the email hack or whistleblowing is all for the good because people are now going to ask for backup and to be able to audit the data. This basic due diligence is demanded in public company financial statements to protect shareholders just like we need to start protecting taxpayers from public policy based on science to make sure all stakeholders are represented. Since I'm an accountant and KNOW how those who are audited try whatever they can to get around showing the truth on financial statements I'm not surprised that the scientists aren't eager (to say the least) to release data for others to audit.

Auditors love this stuff:

The Death Blow to Climate Science

Warwick Hughes asked for the data and method he used for his claim of a 0.6°C temperature rise since the end of the nineteenth century. Jones responded, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

BTW I've also responded on economic arguments and since the IPCC champions policies that affect economics I don't see how that discounts what goes on unless you don't really care about the economic consequences of higher food prices on the poor (due to biofuels) or consequences to poor countries that want to develop and enjoy your standard of living. Most people are getting a "not in my backyard" vibe from these AGW supporters. It's easy to say when you're not living in Sudan. It's also important to note whether we are actually going to meet any of these targets (which we haven't in the past). Economic arguments are necessary or else we will live in a "technocracy" where stakeholders don't matter.

Finally some reasoned discussion on realistic economic costs in the U.K.:

Climategate reaches the British House of Lords � Watts Up With That?

 

[A_Wanderer]

What sort of settlement do you want for the science? You are taking a very hardline position akin to the Catholic Church on Copernicanism, as long as there are open questions or the slim potential for other explanations you don't think anything should be done. It is absurd to have such a high benchmark for action, anthropogenic climate change is an established scientific theory that explains observations of climate change both in the past and future, the only reason that you are posting denialist conspiracies is because you are an ideologue and you need to mask your bias with a slew of distractions.

You could take a Bayesian approach and weigh the prior probabilities of climate change, weigh the consensus of professional organisations against the arguments of sceptics. Rather than explain the difference with a conspiracy you ought to look at the evidence and interest of those involved, you ignore the clear interest between denialists and the mining industry (people like Plimer and McIntyre) while inventing unfounded conspiracies to explain the motives of actual climate scientists. Step back from your political position and approach the controversy with some objectivity, because at the moment you are clasping onto political talking points and ignoring all other evidence.

 

[Irvine511]

What sort of settlement do you want for the science? You are taking a very hardline position akin to the Catholic Church on Copernicanism, as long as there are open questions or the slim potential for other explanations you don't think anything should be done. It is absurd to have such a high benchmark for action, anthropogenic climate change is an established scientific theory that explains observations of climate change both in the past and future, the only reason that you are posting denialist conspiracies is because you are an ideologue and you need to mask your bias with a slew of distractions.

this seems worthy of being quoted again.

 

[INDY500]

anthropogenic climate change is an established scientific theory that explains observations of climate change both in the past and future

Future??? Given that none of the models predicted a decade of cooling after a period of warming (causing great distress to leading climate scientists if you read the hacked emails). Given that, a good dose of skepticism about climate models 20, 30 and 40 years out isn't warranted?

 

[purpleoscar]

We don't know everything about the climate system,

Future??? Given that none of the models predicted a decade of cooling after a period of warming (causing great distress to leading climate scientists if you read the hacked emails). Given that, a good dose of skepticism about climate models 20, 30 and 40 years out isn't warranted?

this seems worthy of being quoted again.

Your Catholic church argument is being used on both sides and both are based on believing the other side's premise as being faulty.

BTW Steve McIntyre is doing a good service and anyone who cares about stakeholders knows that. When people wipe out the medieval warming period (despite the historical evidence) what did you expect?

 

[INDY500]

The New Socialism
A metamorphosis from red to green.

By Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer on National Review Online

In the 1970s and early ’80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a “New International Economic Order.” The NIEO’s essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality — wealth redistribution via global socialism — with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ’80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it’s an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt.

But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an “endangerment” to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses, and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech president (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the Left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers, and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality, but saving the planet.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic senator Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.

With the Senate blocking President Obama’s cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d’etat served as the administration’s loud response to Webb: The hell we can’t. With this EPA “endangerment” finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There’s the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society — as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based — you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn’t lurking in CIA cloak. He’s knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

Yes, there's that word again, socialism. And the same people that object to it and call it a boogeyman argument will be the same people that argue in favor of a government run health care system in this forum. Bet ya.

 

[BVS]

Yes, there's that word again, socialism. And the same people that object to it and call it a boogeyman argument will be the same people that argue in favor of a government run health care system in this forum. Bet ya.

And the same people who will use the "socialism" tag are the same that believe quacks like Beck, can't recognize racism, talk smaller government while legislating morality, and wouldn't know science if it bit them in the ass.

And I don't even have to make a bet, that's just fact.

 

[Vincent Vega]

Charles Krauthammer on National Review Online


Yes, there's that word again, socialism. And the same people that object to it and call it a boogeyman argument will be the same people that argue in favor of a government run health care system in this forum. Bet ya.

Are you for real here?