It’s worse than you think… But first, a brief digression: I watch for the use of ‘deniers’ as a flag for the rabid AGW folks. The skeptics generally like to be called skeptics. ‘Denier’ is a propaganda tool intended to link questioning behaviour with deniers of the holocaust. Please avoid it’s use unless you intend to be cast in that light.

For you edification, this is from a thread over on climateprogress.org
-begin quote
Eli Rabett Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Joe, the way to get these guys is not straight on, but the Colbert way

“With reactionaries, never argue on content or with logic. The only thing that works is to make them feel really, really bad and really, really stupid.”

ridicule works.
[...]
cliff Says:
November 30th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Eli Rabett, you are SO right. Ridicule will save the planet.

its just about the only way to convince a rethuglican of anything, put them into a logic chain that makes them realize they are a idiot, without having to tell them they are a idiot.
-end quote

I’ve never heard of a ‘logic chain’ before (despite a formal logic class!) but clearly you can see the problem here. Why indulge in intelligent debate when you can use ridicule?… What a way to think…

Notice also the deliberate use of insulting terms (of which ‘denier’ is one…) such as ‘rethuglican’ which took me a while to figure out since I don’t cast AGW as a republican / democrat issue but as a ‘careful thought’ vs ‘error of thinking’ issue (that is ‘is the science right’).

FWIW, you would also be well served to get a copy of “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. The AGW fervor clearly qualifies for this category.

There are two camps, the deniers of AGW and the apologists of AGW. While the deniers claim that “science is not settled” and a lot of questions have to be answered the apologists predicate that “science is settled” and all (sic!) questions are answered.

So far so good. There is a scientific debate and the apologists of AGW claim that they are right due to a so called scientific consensus.

In a common scientific dispute both parties would try to find proof and falsification for their hypotheses and would try to improve research to let the discussion go. Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher of the so called “Frankfurter Schule”, additionally tought that social and scientific discussions calls for something as a basic condition: respect, even against the background of different interests of the debaters.

But the dispute about AGW is far away from this condition and different from every scientific discussion before, because the AGW-proponents refuse further discussion although their hypothesis still lacks proof and there is even no possibility of falsification for it. Instead of that all findings of the apologets of AGW provide just likelihood of things to happen due to human CO2-emissions. Additionally they introduced into discussion some doubtful computer graphs like the Hockeystick and curves of temperature anomalies which start to trouble them since 1980.

The definition of global climate and global temperature is the average of global “weather” of about 30 years. But since 1980 only 28 years passed and since about ten years of the passed 28 years we watch a lateral movement of temperatures with a little decrease since about 2001.

Against this weak background for a hypothesis it is funny to watch the quite arrogant behaviour of the thousands of proponents of AGW on the internet who claim that they are in possession of truth regarding global warming and condemn sceptics as human beings of lower morality. We know this behaviour very well. Normally it is related to ideology and ideologically exaggerated behaviour is the common attitude of devout believers who condemn everybody who doesn’t share their belief.

Probably this is a tactic of attack is the best form of defense and in order to cover, that the hypothesis of AGW logically can’t be truth because (regarding to theory of cognition) truth is unknowable by science. Science only can try to reach out for truth and may find or find not evidence. Basically every scientific finding is only acceptable under reserve. Even well tested theories like theory of relativity or quantum theory are subject to this reserve. Hence no science and no result of scientific research can and will stay for ever settled, it’s always questionable.

In case of AGW-hypothesis we are far away from truth or even positive proof and still remain on a level of likelihood (likely, most likely = 60 to 90 %) and dubiety. The aggressive and intolerant apologia of the hypothesis of AGW in the morally segregating way we watch worldwide therefore is advocacy of belief and not apology of significant knowledge.

For example: If you are a person suffering from an nasty chronic but not killing disease and a doctor offers you a drug that will heal you from this disease at a likelihood of 90 % but at a risk to die at 10 %; I guess, that you will need a strong belief in this doctor or the science providing this drug for to accept it, and even if you believe you probably will deny to take it.

Many AGW-followers are believers in a hypothesis but they want to suggest that they don’t believe but know absolute truth and condemn all who deny this doubtful “knowledge”.

Regarding the development of belief in AGW I recommend the study of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: “The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change” which you will find here.

But I, Um, er, he, but, redhead!, I, urk. Coffee?

George, well put. I’d only add that farmers and some other folks are interested in the long range weather too. For farmers it’s 3 to 6 months out (and can impact crop selection, yield, fertilizing, pesticide schedules, harvest plans, etc. I remember folks setting up contracts with crop dusters for sulphur dusting peaches when end of summer rain was possible…)

If the weatherman is very reliable and says a slightly longer indian summer is in the cards, farmers will sometimes harvest one crop a bit early at slightly reduced yield and plant a second fast one for a double crop. If early winter is forecast, you let the one crop run for max yield.

Right now I’m camped on the weather watching natural gas (UNG). The price is severely depressed due to the economic slowdown, but a long term very cold forecast would argue for an uptick in prices. The financial channels (Bloomberg, CNBC, FoxBiz) all go ApeSheesh during hurricane season with predictions about hurricane impacts on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production. The start of season prediction moves the prices for oil and gas for the whole nation for weeks. Joe Bastardi at AccuWeather is a favorite because he is very very good (i.e. accurate) and doesn’t give a hoot about what’s PC.

There is no one on the news who is more important than the weatherman. Period. Sports? No way. What happened in Romania today? Or who slandered whom at the local City hall? Don’t make me laugh. My major complaint is local news managers who just want the weather to be about will it rain later today / early tomorrow. Give the guys room to run!

No. They are the ones with the courage to stand in front of everyone and be held accountable, unlike the climatologists who can hide in an office… Oh, and they are also the ones with social skills, presentation skills, good stage presence, a sense of timing and showmanship, …

It is presently possible to map local weather conditions for the next few days on a computer model. We are a LONG way away from accomplishing that on a global model for 100 years into the future.

I agree with Novoburgo (12:24:57) concerning the comments on computer models.

Having been involved with these ignorant machines since “telecommunications” meant handing a computer tape to a courier to drive over to the satellite uplink, I’ve got enough experience in my field to know that you can NOT dump a bunch of half-thought-out hypotheses into a machine and expect a correct answer. It isn’t possible except, as Novo put it, by accident.

Computers do all sorts of really neat things today by the standards of the paleolithic computers I started out on, but they still operate the same way– all they can do is add ones and zeros. Today, they’re simply doing it faster and in more complicated ways. If there is even ONE error in a given program, it will STILL give an incorrect answer. Today, those wrong answers come in faster and more complicated ways… and frequently snowballed WAY out of proportion. ;) I recall an incident where I “moved” an entire Air Force base 200 miles further west and into the Pacific Ocean due to a misplaced decimal on a lat/long calculation. :)

Given that a computer program can have only one wrong calculation in it to turn the entire thing into garbage (or GIGO, as Novo so rightly pointed out!), how is it possible to model the entire world’s climate based upon what are primarily guesses about what the parameters should be?

It isn’t possible. And THAT is the correct answer.

I think it’s cycles of the earth’s climate; I am sure though that pollution doesn’t help things, however I don’t blame the “warming” all on humanity. I’m glad that there’s a significant number in the scientific community doubting its validity.