Despite what was maintained above, the amount of scientists who agree that climate change is real and man-made is overwhelming. BTW, my first position was “Member, Scientific Staff”. Does that qualify to count me as a “scientist” to weigh in on climate change, especially since I have a Bachelor of SCIENCE? Of course not, I make my view as that of layman.

You can stamp your feet and say “no no” about climate change, but so can a child. Rather than buy into arguments by the same crew who “knew” there were WMDs in Iraq and made money off those lies and who also make money on lack of climate control regulations, I choose to remain skeptical of the skeptics.

“The satellite identifies the gas as sulfur dioxide, SO2, the primary cause of acid rain. And Nyiragongo is producing more than any place in the world, up to 50,000 tons per day. That’s more than the amount produced by all power plants, factories and cars in the United States.“
OUCH! (bet he wishes he’d never said that.)

And that is just ONE of the many volcanoes on the planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if CO2 emissions were higher than they are estimating, as well.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/al_gores_inconv.html
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/03/inconvenient-offset-quick-recap-records.html

UN IS, AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW, IN ON IT AS WELL
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/04/uns-ipcc-global-warming-bunko-scam-uns.html

Oh, come on. Everyone knows the planet’s NEVER been warmer!
http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/ecenvir.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20071217144347/http://www.uaf.edu/univrel/media/FY99/013.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041018084253.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/science/ozfossil/ageofreptiles/polar/default.htm
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1737.html

And the seas have NEVER been higher!
http://www.abc.net.au/science/ozfossil/ageofreptiles/climate/default.htm

Only humans could be causing polar ice to melt!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/20/europe/climate.php

Sheesh! Get with the program, already!

//SARC = OFF//

New scientific studies show (Yahoo or Google for them…): fossils of a tropical forest in southern Illinois, fossil of a “tropical” turtle near the pole, trees within 500 miles of the poles..

While in school in eastern North Carolina, the professors (Geology) stated that the ocean used to be closer to I-95 (near Wilson, NC) than where it is today.

I think the earth’s temperatures have been and are in a cycle. The Earth is a dynamic system, and I don’t think man, however well intentioned, can stop the dynamics…

Who is to say that our view of the “current” situation (ice at poles) is the “norm?” By that, I mean do we have enough studies to show exactly how long the ice has been there, if, at times, it wasn’t there, …

We have lots of “unknowns.” Just because man likes to think what we are used to is “normal,” does nothing to help the facts…

Facts show the earth having been warmer and colder than it is now. Perhaps it is “normal” for the cycle to exist. The only think we may need to be concerned over is the “rate of change.”

“It is fascinating to me that you will refuse to believe multiple versions of the 20th century temperature record and multiple versions of temperature reconstructions over the past century, but if you can find one graph that you think supports your views, you don’t question for a moment how they arrived at the data for temperature and CO2 levels going back 600 million years!
You guys have certainly elevated confirmation bias to a new art form!”

Joel, we really do our best but with all the garbage on the internet nowadays, it’s a mighty tough job.

Anyway, if that is where the confusion was, then I am sorry. I thought it would be clear that the “lawyer for the defense” was my own description of what he is doing…and certainly not Carter’s self-description…but whenever I am writing these things I guess there is the possibility that someone can interpret it in a different way than I intended.

Joel I’m assuming you’ve never met Dr. Bob Carter. I have. So, I respectfully suggest that you not engage in putting opinions in the man’s mouth that are actually your own

Anthony, what opinions do you believe that I have put into his mouth? The only part where I quoted or paraphrased him, and thus the only possibility that I can see, is that part about being “agnostic” and just presenting an unbiased view of the facts. So, here is the exact quote from the video that Ron de Haan linked to. (It occurs at about the 1:40 mark if you want to listen to it yourself.):

I am actually agnostic about global warming…ah, human-caused global warming. I have no axe to grind. Let the facts fall where they may.

Do you think my paraphrasing of this as his saying that “he is somehow ‘agnostic’ and is just presenting an unbiased look at the facts” distorted its meaning in any way? I’d be curious to know how.

I have already watched Carter’s entire presentation before. Perhaps it would be a useful exercise for yourself to engage in some REAL skepticism and actually find some of the holes in his presentation yourself.

By the way, I suppose it is Carter’s right to act as the “lawyer for the defense” of CO2 but it is extremely disingenuous of him to claim that he is somehow “agnostic” and is just presenting an unbiased look at the facts! But, hey, if you want to continue believing the junk science you find on the web over the real science available in scientific journals and respected reviews of that literature, there is very little that I can do to convince you otherwise.

REPLY: Joel I’m assuming you’ve never met Dr. Bob Carter. I have. So, I respectfully suggest that you not engage in putting opinions in the man’s mouth that are actually your own – between this and the creationist commentary above, you’ve earned yourself a time out – Anthony

Now – 3 questions – first, later this month NASA will be launching the OCO spacecraft. Why do you suppose they would do that if the science is settled and your references are so accurate?

Who ever said that we know everything so accurately? The likely range for the climate sensitivity is in the range of 2 to 4.5 C for a doubling of CO2…That’s a pretty big range. And, we have only very fuzzy ideas of where climate “tipping points” might lie. That’s just to name just two things.

However, all because we don’t know everything does not mean we know nothing. And, all because we don’t know whether the likely effects of unchecked CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are going to be just very bad or truly catastrophic doesn’t mean that we don’t know enough to want to take action. Like all areas of science, there are puts of the whole climate science thing that are quite settled and parts that are still being debated, much like evolution by the way. And, like evolution, the fact that scientists are still quite uncertain about some things is distorted in a way as to make it appear that they are quite uncertain about things that there is quite broad agreement on by people with certain agendas.

Second – I asked for the numbers you believe to accurate with respect to human CO2 input and you presented dogma, not observed numbers. So – where are your sources?

This is all basic stuff that I gave you some links to. It is not up to me to waste my time providing you with links to stuff that is understood by every serious scientist in the field. If you want to find them, I am sure they won’t be too hard to track down.

Third – what is your source for the following statement?

(and at the highest levels in at least 750,000 years…and probably millions of years)

The last 750,000 years is from ice core data. The “probably millions of years” is from the more uncertain estimates of CO2 concentrations that are available before that.

Have a look at the youtube presentation of Prof. Bob Carter.
There are four short video’s that provide an entertaining presentation.

This is the first part with an introduction of Jennifer Morohasy, look at the links on WUWT.

I have provided you with the calculation of total CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere (est. 3000 Gigatonnes@ 380 ppm) and the link to the scientific report stating the annual amounts of CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels, 5.5 Gigatonnes plus or minus 0.5 Gigatonnes.
I do not see what is difficult or questionable about these figures.

I suggest you re-read what I wrote as many times as it takes to understand. I can’t explain it any clearer. The only thing I will add is to verify that (within rounding errors), the difference between your number of 3000 Gigatonnes and the accepted value of 750 Gigatonnes is simply that your number refers to the mass of the CO2 and the accepted value is the mass of only the carbon in the CO2 molecule. Of course, either number is fine if you are consistent but since your 5.5 gigatonnes per year emitted by burning fossil fuels is a value for the amount of carbon, not the total amount of CO2, it is incorrect to compare the 3000 Gigatonnes to the 5.5 Gigatonnes.

And, of course, the partof my previous post regarding how you compare the two numbers (i.e., one being a total amount in the atmosphere and one being an amount added each year) still holds.

The answer to the third question is this graph.
It shows much higher CO2 levels in the passed an NO link between Atmospheric CO2 and temperature:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

It is fascinating to me that you will refuse to believe multiple versions of the 20th century temperature record and multiple versions of temperature reconstructions over the past century, but if you can find one graph that you think supports your views, you don’t question for a moment how they arrived at the data for temperature and CO2 levels going back 600 million years! You guys have certainly elevated confirmation bias to a new art form!

As for that graph, I have no idea where it came from (although there are a few vague references on the graph that one could try to track down) and there is in fact considerable uncertainty, not surprisingly, in estimates for temperatures and CO2 levels over those sorts of time scales. Furthermore, nobody is claiming that CO2 is the only driver of climate change and over those sorts of times, there are other potential huge drivers including changes in solar luminosity, changes in the locations of continents and mountain ranges, etc., etc.