Grasping at Straws

Hi Charles, link to original article does not seem to work.
cheers
John
Reply: Oh you nit pickers (thanks, fixed) ~ ctm

Had the pleasure last night of seeing the last of Darwin College Cambridge’s lecture series on “Risk”. Given by Prof. Robert Watson of UEA (actually UK “government”) titled “Risk and (human induced) Climate Change”. I expected a world-class twaddle-fest (since a humble apology was hardly likely) and so it proved.
The man is a great speaker; admittedly not in the V I Lenin or A. Hitler class, but still damned good. Fascinating use of multiple fallacies and rhetoric, in particular the weasel-wording of the title which would enable him to say that he’d said he was talking about AGW even though most of his talk was of the “if it gets hotter you won’t like it” type and applied equally to any change whatsoever in the climate. Naturally no mention at all was made of sundry queries about the quality of the temperature curves displayed, or the rather distressing tendency of hurricanes etc. to decrease rather than increase as he kept predicting – whoops, sorry, projecting!
All good stuff, but I’m not at all sure that all the audience was convinced. To judge from my small circle of friends and acquintances, scientists are not misreading the data (for once!) at all.

Trying to do most things in the eye of public forums serves primarily as a distraction most times. Facts lead to direction as misfacts lead to misdirection. If someone really wanted to reduce Greenhouse gases, one would only have to make an alternative that is both more convienent and cheaper. Unfortunately most major industry leaders have already made their methods the most convienent and anything cheaper they bought and buried. We haven’t advanced enough as a society to yet look past out own lives or our own times. One possability would be to take steps to put laws or regulations that keep technological, economical, ecological, and humanitarian progressions from never being added to our society or civilization. (examples: Electric car from the 50’s bought by GM and buried, deregulation of the private section of our economy, global warming & the truth/mistruth, New Orleans compared to Hadies – N.O. everyone complained about Phema/Haties everyone donated money or time to help/Chile everyones just watching) These ignorances we see every day and say it’s a shame. No ones doing anything, everyones waiting for someone to do something, & I don’t know what to do… But I do have some Idease!

I think they’re kidding themselves. If they were more scientific about polls, they would know that trends can take a while to register. And this, I think, is going to be one hell of a trend.

Anyone with substantial experience in social statistics or econometrics knows you can shape your analysis to prove just about anything, at just about any stage of your research. We all take our own inferences “seriously” but know not to take anyone else’s that way. The layers of scope for intentional or unintentional bias are huge, running from theory selection, to specification, to underestimating various uncertainties, to functional identification, to question formation, analytic framework and above all, the process of informal inference and discussion……and quasi-experiments don’t address all the issues. Not to mention all-too-common dodgy standalone stats. Much more to say on this, but this isn’t the place.
The recourse in this article to “push-polling” on climate, then discussing very loosely perceptions, and confidence in science and scientists, is classic rhetorical diversion and classic soc-sci blather ( I say this as an economist).
The conclusion reduces to
– keep going with the agenda, the plebs are distracted, and
– the details don’t matter so long as the story sells.
There’s no point in rehashing Willis’ great article in response to Dr Curry, but similar sentiments certainly arise in reading this.
And what does “Arguments about science do obscure news and television discussions over steps to take in dealing with climate, from investing in nuclear power to regulating coal plants” mean? Stop talking science, it confuses people? Just push out the message and the facts be damned?
Underlying this is an assumption that ordinary people aren’t rational enough to deal with debate. That things have to be sorted out among the cognoscenti before being presented neat and simple for approval. That may appeal to bureaucrats, social engineers and behavioural economics meddlers like Sunstein, but it is just another argument for a revolutionary vanguard. And look where that got us.

Like much of the climate change issue, public opinion is being misread, manufactured and blown out of all proportion.
Few countries have been as brain washed as the UK. Most people here would describe themselves as concerned about the environment and will spout some politically correct dogma if questioned about it. However the bits that stick in their minds are the bits that suit them. It might be some vague concern about pesticides or polar bears or recycling but very little really connects to CO2 reduction. If you question them about their specific CO2 reduction habits most will become vague or trot out excuse after excuse about why they haven’t actually significantly changed their lifestyles or homes.
Most are sure they want something done about reducing CO2 but what they really mean is they want the issue to magically disappear. They want government or big business to reduce CO2 emission, without it costing anything or inconveniencing them in any way. CO2 is a problem, just somebody else’s. Even the highest echelons of AGW find it impossible to match actions with their beliefs and only a few of them like Monbiot seem to be trying. Has no one asked themselves ‘if I can’t change myself, how can I change the rest of the World?’ Apparently not.
Most of those who would call themselves sceptics are equally disinterested. It’s just another excuse to avoid doing what they don’t want to. Very few actually know the real concerns about climate science and frankly don’t care. It’s only as you dig into the science that you begin to have serious doubts about how much scientists really know about the climate and become aware of how mad the current solutions are. Climate change is the ultimate money pit.
It infuriates me that the AGW fraternity and scientists see real sceptics as their enemy. It’s not us, it’s not the people that are looking at the science and seeing the flaws, it’s the people who aren’t looking at all.
Among the most seriously myopic are the climate scientists themselves. Each time they’ve assumed that the science from another department is accurate, without actually asking some fundamental questions, they’ve weakened the science. Each time they’ve accepted a colleague’s work for peer review and not actually seriously reviewed it, they have helped to screw up climate science. Each time they kept quiet when someone was wildly exaggerating, they’ve worked to create the chimera that is ‘robust’ AGW theory.
All these polls on climate opinion are only measuring the levels of self delusion not the levels of enlightenment.

One of the fundamental issues is that the greater population at large are less educated in the ways of science – or should that be the mystical ways of science.
Over the past decade, schools have been escalating emphasis on administration, and political correctness and dragging science into a creationism verses evolution debate.
While this is no slant against those with religious beliefs, but the very fact that the scientific process is in apparent conflict with creationism indicates a deep flaw with the education system. Specifically, creationism and scientific process are two totally different mechanisms – it’s like arguing which should be taught in schools, Math or English?
Therefore, it’s not so surprising that many young adults are putting more faith in scientists because they themselves have no core understanding of science. Up to this point the scientific process has had little bearing on any given individuals life, but now we are all drawn into determining what science actually is. For a lot of us (when we were at school we had to get up before we went to bed and walk up hill both ways) we can have a bit of trouble telling the difference between belly button fluff and an atom.
The majority of people appeal to the scientific authority – it isn’t rocket science, though. A given individual with a (theoretical) high school education may not understand the mathematics and the advanced principles involved, they *should* be educated enough to understand and ask pertinent questions.
Maybe this is too harsh, but the education system is useless to the majority of students, and completely fails those who truly need help with their education.

IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE?
CO2 is known to be a heat trapping greenhouse gas. The theory of man made global warming assumes that the CO2 in the atmosphere (about 0.04% of air) that has increased due to use of fossil fuels by humans has been causing global warming.
In science, the method used to verify the validity of a theory is to compare the theory with actual observations. To verify the theory of man made global warming, we may compare the change in CO2 in the atmosphere to change in mean global temperature during the same period.
In science, for a theory to be valid, it must apply at all times. As a result, to verify the validity of the theory of man made global warming, we can consider the years since 1998. The result of this comparison is shown above.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/normalise/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/normalise/trend
In the chart above, based on the data since 1998, for more than a decade, there has been increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, but there has not been any change in the mean global temperature trend.
As a result, based on more than a decade long data, global warming is not man made.
Cheers

Public opinion about AGW is important to me from an investment point of view. I never bought into the notion that AGW was real or severe or a big problem. It’s no big deal but blown out of proportion by a willingly complicit media and it has been so since its inception.
So when will public support break and when will governments shift the spending focus on something else? It’s already happening in Germany; the subsidies for renewable energy production get reduced by 15 percent for all new installations. New PV installations on the valued agrarian soil of Germany get nothing at all from now on. (It sounds irrational on a factual level as there is enough agrarian land available everywhere east of Germany but makes sense on the political level: You want to stop subsidizing so you use the excuse of scarcity of agrarian land in Germany; it just has to appeal to voters instincts.)
The AGW scientists will never regain their importance. The momentum they once had is just whithering away. They will fade into obscurity. The cool phase of the PDO is their undoing.
Meanwhile we will happily use microgeneration (coupled heat+electricity production at home, hydrocarbon fuel cells like the Bloom box, home PV+batteries) whenever it gives us cheaper energy. This path will be taken by the middle class; the poor will have to buy the ever more expensive grid electricity and pay the price for our green religion. (in Germany, grid providers have to inflate end consumer prices so they can pay the politically fixed prices for renewable energy ; they are forced to buy this energy)
Microgeneration is rapidly becoming viable under these circumstances. Public support for subsidized renewables drops with the ever increasing electricity prices. At the same time, people are just apathetic towards the science, tell’em that the globe is warming and they’ll say alright it’s warming, now where do i get some cheap wood for my fireplace for the next winter.

There is no point in taking polls of the public. Most wouldn’t even understand how a simple watch works so how would they even be close to having a basic understanding of how the climate works. Worse than that the climate is a very complex system, which is to this day not well understood by the cleverest scientists (at least the real ones) and so can’t make any predictions other than just guesses that are meaningless. How will the public ever be convinced they have been duped by the AGW hoax and fraud? I don’t know the answer unfortunately. We appear to be going around in circles yet the media, the governments and the public are still treating AGW by and large as a real threat. I hate to say this but I think truth will lose out this time, at least for the short to medium term. So, I sometimes wonder if we (as in AGW skeptics) are the ones grasping at straws.

Monstrously condescending from ‘inside baseball’ to ‘hacked emails……showing some climate scientists really dislike their critics’. This is shameful and offensive, but at least it’s in a big league newspaper.
At least they’re telling the readers that there is a baseball game on. They missed the anthem and the rout it’s been so far, though.
=============================

And here I had foolishly been thinking that the central concern of natural science was detemining truths about the structure and dynamics of the physical world. Silly me! The central concern of natural scientists, apparently, is to enhance and enforce the prestige of natural scientists.
But of course, there are no absolute truths and it’s all socially constructed anyway. Derrida, Derrida!

” Most wouldn’t even understand how a simple watch works .’
I dunno, it seems to me that to understand how the 30 dollar Cassio on your wrists works would require reading Quantum Mechanics for Dummies.

Ocean2 @ 4:24
Agreed. I’ve been in a couple of online debates on the issue of AGW and have tried to call attention to the turning-on-its-head of science. Of the AGW supporters who responded to questions about falsification the common responses were “what would falsify your denial?” and “when all the experts agree, I’ll agree.”. They have faith in the scientists, but can’t say why. They also saw nothing wrong with keeping data and methods hidden from those who “are only out to disprove the truth”. Such confounding lines as “experts have shown that the sun doesn’t affect earth’s climate” were also entered. The discussion of feedback loops versus buffering of complex systems got good, but for the most part it was a religious discussion rather than a scientific one.

This is all part of a counter propaganda campaign.
It’s just like Pachauri saying we are sinking into the dark ages where ideology trumps reason!
Or Gavin Schmidt who stated that skeptics are full of “paranoia and ClimateGate has allowed the nutters (that’s us) to control the agenda!
We are fine if we concentrate on the science.
There is only one back side of the story.
You can shake hands and make it up with the media and the frauds once, but it won’t happen twice.
As it looks now, the same papers are falling into their old habits.
And we have been promoted from “Deniers” to “Nutters”!
That is the real world.
And the real world to stop this scam is the world of politics.
All we can do now is to get rid of this Government and stop the funding of the AGW Machine.
That’s our reality.

In Europe everything has gone silent on the subject
It is out of the press, there is no information from the political channels.
Just total radio silence.
The reasoning behind it:
If the polls show the public is not interested in the subject, why creating a media hype?
They will do the dirty job behind the scenes.
Last week the Dutch Government crashed and every Government decision has stalled except for a treaty between the Netherlands and Indonesia to fight Global Warming.
We still have a very long way to go!

The writer of the article is just doing his part to bail out the AGW cause. Hopefully he won’t be successful.
Rockmike, Don’t believe fairytales about viable electric cars in the 50’s. GM doesn’t produce very car that is conceived even the gasoline powered ones.

AGW still is being embedded in blank minds very strongly in the K-16 US educational system with no whiff of any skepticism except to repeat the meme of an energy supplier funded conspiracy to deny the science. That won’t change until teachers begin to doubt the veracity of what they’re teaching. The best that might be hoped for is that young scientists will be able to break out of the restrictive group-think going on now and do research that refines the cartoon picture we have of climate. A richer understanding eventually will filter down to the educational system. Counter-acting that, of course, is the need of the MSM and politicians to hype crisis so that they can sell their products. Crackpots on all sides further obscure things with their noise, too. In the end, though, people believe and do what’s in their best interest as they understand it. It’s up to advocates of any position to tell the truth because truth really does have a way of being the last one standing.

IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE?
CO2 is known to be a heat trapping greenhouse gas. The theory of man made global warming assumes that the CO2 in the atmosphere (about 0.04% of air) that has increased due to use of fossil fuels by humans has been causing global warming.
In science, the method used to verify the validity of a theory is to compare the theory with actual observations. To verify the theory of man made global warming, we may compare the change in CO2 in the atmosphere to change in mean global temperature during the same period.
In science, for a theory to be valid, it must apply at all times. As a result, to verify the validity of the theory of man made global warming, we can consider the years since 1998. The result of this comparison is shown above.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/normalise/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/normalise/trend
In the chart above, based on the data since 1998, for more than a decade, there has been increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, but there has not been any change in the mean global temperature trend.
As a result, based on more than a decade long data, global warming is not man made.
————————————–
Using Minitab:
Mean =-.0105
S.D. = .269
Distribution NOT “Normal”. Actually, flat random noise from the -.5 to +.5 realm. RANDOM no pattern.
Max

Ice floes of reality!
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/ice-floes-of-reality.html

No, there are times when no matter how careful (and fair) you are when crafting a question, you still won’t get an answer out of a scientist.
The problem is that scientists want to project certainty (there tends to be an inverse relationship, the less actual certainty, the more they attempt to project certainty) to the general public.
For the objective scientist, “I don’t know,” is a completely valid answer.
But it tends not to win grants, get papers published, or move political agendas — in other words in pure Science, “I don’t know,” is preferred above claiming more certainty than actually exists.
But in the politics of science, “I don’t know,” is a dead-bang loser.
It takes ethics and courage to resist the temptation to over-state your case.
Don’t kid yourself, going along with the crowd is just as easy in science as anywhere else — maybe easier — and more necessary to your professional survival.
But, “going along to get along,” isn’t a profile in courage or the fulfillment of objective scientific responsibility.
Sadly, this corrosive desire to “fit in” has corrupted many a scientist.
— Laboratory Science
— Field Science
Two different animals because Laboratory science can vigorously test a hypothesis and field science often can not test a hypothesis at all.
And the difference in the results can be night and day.

MichaelC58 (04:49:46) :
All three young intelligent people in our LA office at my recent visit there, barely knew of AGW, were not in the slightest concerned about it, knew nothing of the climate controversy or ClimateGate or of Cap&Trade (or health reform for that matter).
——————————————————————-
That’s the issue at hand. THIS is why the AGW crowd have been able to propagate.
Laissez-faire mentality. This is what the AGW’ers are hoping for. Thanks to the ” leaker “, MANN-made global warming ” deniers ” like myself have had a chance to look at some data and opposing views.
Many thanks to this website as well as Steve’s, now my friends and family have a chance to discern what is and what isn’t.
If it weren’t for this place( and Steve’s as well as other websites), they would have never seen the manipulation, destruction, lying and suppression of the Mann-made global warming cronies.

My social group includes two engineers, a physics professor, a pharmacist, a lawyer, and a medical librarian. The economy, the stock market, house prices, and Iraq have been frequent topics of conversation at our gatherings. If the subject of global warming ever came up, I missed it.

The thing about climate science is, it doesn’t matter what opinion polls say, or which scientists made intentional or unintential errors, the climate will be what it will be. Only some vast mass conspiracy on a global scale by hundreds, if not thousands of scientists involving the measurements of everything from sea level, to arctic sea ice and satellite data would be needed to bring about any “hoax”.
Here’s the hypothesis the AGW proposes: Human activity, specifically the production of CO2, is altering the climate. Here’s the expected observable effects from that hypothesis: rise in average global tropospheric temperatures, especially pronounced at higher latitudes, reduction of arctic sea ice (and eventually, Antarctic sea ice) on an annualized basis, the cooling of the stratosphere due to the delay of thermal transmission from the troposphere, an intensification of the hydrological cycle as wet areas will see more intense rain or snow, and dry areas will see more intense dryness, species stress as ecosystems change, acidification of the oceans through the absorption of some the exess CO2, increased release of methane from the melting of permafrost and destablization of ocean deposits through warming waters…
The AGW hypothesis will not be absolutely proven by the occurance of anyone, or even all of these events taking place and being measured and observed, BUT the lack of even a large number of them would be damaging to the AGW hypothesis. So far, the hypothesis remains credible as all of the above effects have been observed, with the exception of the reduction of the Antarctic sea ice on an annualized basis– as it is in fact slightly increasing. Some AGW models account for this through the unusal weather patterns created by the reduction of the ozone layer over Antarctica. If however, in the next few decades, the year to year extent of Antarctic sea ice does not level and then begin to decline, it could be a sign of trouble for AGW. Also, even though the rate of the decline of the arctic sea ice has been greater than the rate of the incline for Antarctic sea ice, if the arctic sea ice also began a long term reversal of its annualized decline, and began to increase and show positive anomalies (over a period of more than just two or three years), that would be a major hole in the AGW hypothesis.; AGW theorists think quite the opposite will occcur, and eventually it will be the Antarctic sea ice that will show a leveling in it’s slow annualized incline, reverse course and begin to decline like the arctic sea ice.
So AGW scientists have made specific prediction, and so far the preponderance of the evidence supports their theory. Only the data…not the pundits, nor politicians, nor the public opinion will change that…and February 2010 continues this year’s trend as one of the warmest on (satellite record) for tropospheric temps, and if the Jan-Feb. 2010 trend continues, then 2010 will be the warmest year on instrument record, and be one more bit of data supporting the AGW hypothesis.

Around 1979 the public got a wakeup call on what life would be like if there were no more oil.
That issue still has traction and to frame an energy policy on reasonable steps to increase efficiency and reduce waste to stretch the existing sources farther would garner a lot of support from the public at large.
But to simultaneously hit us with guilt, shame and a plea to altruism for future generations sake when we can’t see the clear benefit and then witness the experts begin to lose credibility may be reaching a mile too far.
Now we’re entering a PR battle along with a pissing contest.
Bring on the clowns.

Max Hugoson (08:05:15) :
IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
If you take into account UHI, temp station placement, dropping of certain temp stations from the temp record, fiddling with temp data handling methods, bias of acceptance of papers for publication in science magazines and journals, Hollywood continually making global warming movies,
all of which are man made,
then yes, global warming is man made.

[ MichaelC58 (04:49:46) :
All three young intelligent people in our LA office at my recent visit there, barely knew of AGW, were not in the slightest concerned about it, knew nothing of the climate controversy or ClimateGate or of Cap&Trade (or health reform for that matter).]
At least there is hope for the world. The brain washing failed. At least these 3 have not been educated beond their intelligence.

Quoting from Richard Harter’s Piltdown Man page.
“The hoax succeeded in large part because of the slipshod nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately revealed the hoax. This failure to [adequately] examine the fossils went unmarked and unnoticed at the time – in large part because the hoax admirably satisfied the theoretical expectations of the time.
“The hoax illuminates two pitfalls to be wary of in the scientific process. The first is the danger of inadequately examining and challenging results that confirm the currently accepted scientific interpretation. The second is that a result, once established, tends to be uncritically accepted and relied upon without further reconsideration. “

Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
(thank you & forgive me)
———————
If you can keep your head
when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you,
then, with apologies to Kipling,
you might not be a mann-made
psyentist.

I hope someone checks out my figures in the preceding post. Idon’t trust myself.
“Only the data…not the pundits, nor politicians, nor the public opinion will change [evidentiary confirmation of the hypothesis of CO2-driven global warming]”.
The ‘data’ can change nothing. The world does not fall naturally apart into bits of data (at least not in the sense statisticians use the word). Data are human constructs, and valid data refer to reality as signifier to signified.
Anyway, R. Gates, your dispassionate and thought-provoking exposition of the AGW stance was a pleasure to read in the overheated climate of this debate.

“CO2 in the atmosphere (about 0.04% of air) ”
Isn’t this figure an order of magnitude off ? (I ask because I screwed up this calculation before). I’ll stick my head out and go with .00380%.

” temperature ‘trends’ over such short durations ”
Something fell out from that sentence into the ether; ‘short durations ‘ refer to the satellite record (30 years) and the more problematic surface record (200 years of spotty data).

Peter of Sydney (04:50:33) :
Take heart. AGW had a massive head start, a get deal of coin and media backing.
Just give it time and the planet will show how incorrect the climate scientists have been on hanging a shingle on a single gas.
Mike Ramsey (06:41:59)
When you have the ear of the media, you can manipulate the masses and politicians rely on these masses for votes. Unless AGW does a stupid thing, it will take time for the mighty to fall. In which case they will be affecting policies until then.
The problem is that when these scientists fall, ALL of scientists will be painted by the same brush.

Joe said:
“Just give it time and the planet will show how incorrect the climate scientists have been…”
How much time Joe? I am fairly certain, that even if the next 10 years are warmer that the last 10, which were warmer than the 10 years before that, we will see some AGW skeptics who will never accept the data. Likewise, if somehow the arctic sea ice were to suddenly began a long period of positive year to year anomalies, and the troposhere were to go into long period of cooling (like 10 or 20 years) there would still be those who would cling to the AGW hypothesis. Both camps, in the extreme, are True Believers, and will cling their position and ignore all contrary data so as to prevent cognitive dissonance.
Meanwhile, the true scientists will remain objective, and simply see if the data matches the predictions set forth. To the extent they do, and the data checked, verified, and shared with peers, then they report their findings, and the same for the data that does not support the hypothesis. These past few years of the slowdown in the upward march of tropospheric global temps are easily and well justfied as being related to the extended solar minimum and the extended La Nina. Moving forward, already the data is saying that 2010 is starting out to be a record year, most likely the warmest year since measurments began. If this comes to pass, then the scientist will have yet one more piece of data adding to the confirmation of the AGW hypothesis.

Hmm,
leaning too heavily on one poll is dangerous..

Now if this was a set of polls trending the same way thats a different matter.

derek (10:43:11) :
“…the scientists have only themselves to blame for the state of science today.”
Derek, please change it to;
“…the Carbon Cult have only themselves to blame for the state of Climate science today.”
Because the rest of us are watching in disbelief.

Willingness to bend the rules for the sake of climate change advocacy unfortunately isn’t a disease restricted to climate scientists. There are many people within government and within the news media who are similarly afflicted. Warmist zealots in newsrooms are blocking the story from the mainstream media, and warmist politicians are blocking it from the political arena.

Re Arthur Glass (11:49:35) :
“CO2 in the atmosphere (about 0.04% of air) ”
Isn’t this figure an order of magnitude off ? (I ask because I screwed up this calculation before). I’ll stick my head out and go with .00380%.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Percent [%] stands for hundreths
ppm = parts per million
1M ppm = 100% [100 hundreths of a million]
380K ppm = .380 of a million or 38%
38K ppm = ,038 of a million or 3.8%
3800 ppm = ,0038 of a million or 0.38%
380 ppm = ,00038 of a million or 0.038%

Insert after “warming water…” please. Thank you.

Wren (10:05:20) :
Despite the cooling influences of a La Nina and a down-cycle in sunspot activity, the 2000-2009 decade was warmer than the previous decade.
According to NOAA, we’ve been in an *El Niño* Southern Oscillation since November — it’s the culprit that produced a relatively snowless Vancouver for the Winter Olympics.
The 2000 – 2009 charts I’ve seen indicate that temperatures have either flatlined since 1998, or warmed so slightly as to be insignificant. According to the CAGW canon, temps should have continued to climb at a steady pace, matching the increase in CO2, regardless of other factors.

Latitude said:
“The only way is if you eliminate every other thing, including it’s just natural, which is something we can not do…”
Sorry, but that is never the standard for testing a hypothesis. You don’t have to eliminate “every other thing”, for that would take a hypothesis about what “every other thing” would be reasonable, and you’d be chasing your tail forever. The AGW hypothesis simply has to posit certain real world, measureable effects that will happen, gather data to support or deny the existence of those effects, analyze the data, and report the results. This is the scientifc standard.
In the end, even if we see the polar sea ice at both poles melt, the average global temp go up by 9 or 15 degrees, and all sorts of other effects predicted by AGW hypothesis, no one can never say for 100% certainty that it was all caused by AGW related to CO2..but you can say it is likely to very high degree of certainty.

Mr. Gates’ analysis might have been reasoned and dispassionate. It also had nothing to do with AGW. Mr. Gates makes the same mistake that most people do when they look at AGW theory. They approach it backwards. Specifically, AGW does not seek to prove that the world is getting warmer. Rather it seeks to identify the cause. Natural warming can explain all the things that he mentions. These things neither support, prove or disprove AGW and are in fact simply straw-man arguments. The preponderance of the science that deals directly with CO2 as a cause of the warming does not fit with the observations of the natural world. While there is still a slight possibility that the AGW may have some validity, it gets smaller by the day. One thing that he did say was however correct. The climate will be what it will be no matter what politicians, climate scientists and Al Gore and his ilk say or do.

Statistics, it seems, is the new Science!
Consensus, aka “another poll showed”, is now more important than observation, geologic precedence and apolitical objectivity than the shrivelled organ that was once ennobled as “the scientific method”
How did this happen? Was it just because of a societal shift, born of hubristic certainty, that elevated sound-bite answers above heretical questioning?
When, and how, did it happen that second-rate geographers from third-rate universities using fourth-rate (I’m being generous here) statistical comprehension to leap-frog their inabilities to the core of world strategic planning?
I haven’t a clue other than a suspicion that our political guardians may be teetering between grade 5 and “you voted for this moron” status.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (09:50:12) :
…..challenging the notion that people 18 to 35 were any more engaged than their elders on climate change……Statistically, 44% in that age range — matching the national average — found global warming as either “not too important” or “not at all important,” even though they grew up in an era when climate scientists had found it very likely that temperatures had increased over the last century due to fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases.
…………………………………………………………………………..
I find this pretty cool. I like the young generation coming up. There is something about them that is unlike other generations of my lifetime.
My generation is the 60’s early 70’s. Despite the belief that that generation was peace-loving I found (and still find) my generation to be constantly confrontational and always trying to overthrow every and anything that moves—even if that overthrow makes no sense.
The next generations since then until now have not really had an identity expect for maybe video games, the internet, and cel phones. But they seem to not have a particular identity.
But this current young generation seems to have a face. They seem to want to face reality. My generation wanted escape from reality and to create a utopia that never could happen. This current generation seems to be creative about the real world. They seem to want real answers. And they are anything but confrontational.
I like it!
My reply;
I have raised a couple of video gamers myself, I have been talking to my daughter (a young professional web site developer, very savvy on social media trends and mechanisms) about her low levels of concern about the whole spectrum of issues with the AGW fraud and debate.
She has the opinion that the whole issues of global warming in SO a NON-issue in reality to the day to day requirements of working in today’s economy, even from the prospective of marketing and advertising venues and slow volumes, that Natural forces of the general market will “do what they will” out of any bodies control to regulate the system.
That the resources spent talking about, but doing nothing about the weather, are just more of the usual waste, due to expenditures on attempts at manipulation, of the free thinking minds of the smart and educated. Who are swimming with the current where ever it goes, knowing it is totally out of control anyway.

The best version of ‘If’, in my opinion, starts:
If you can keep your wife, while all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you….

RE: Max Hugoson (08:05:15) : “IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN MADE? CO2 is known to be a heat trapping greenhouse gas.”
This happens, I believe, primarily, in three narrow wavelength bands, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM). Most of the effect of any new parcel of CO2 added to the atmosphere is masked by near 100 percent absorption in these particular bands from the CO2 already in the atmosphere.
[Max Hugoson] “To verify the theory of man made global warming, we may compare the change in CO2 in the atmosphere to change in mean global temperature during the same period.”
I do *not* think this constitutes proof. First, I believe, you would have to rule out all other possible coincidental causes, such as recovery from the ‘Little Ice Age’ before you might say this is a proof of your theory or you need to demonstrate that this process is physically capable of driving such an event. As far as I can tell, this has not been done.

A C Osborn (11:01:48) :
‘Wren (10:05:20) :
But that is how CO2 was blamed in the first place because they did match for a few years.
I understand that’s when the magical, mystical “Amplification” number of 2.5 came into being. It was the only way to “Balance the Books”.

royfomr (14:17:26) :
Your comment made me think of the quote below:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. ”
H. L. Mencken

R Gates:
So AGW scientists have made specific prediction, and so far the preponderance of the evidence supports their theory. Only the data…not the pundits, nor politicians, nor the public opinion will change that…
We know you believe this to be true. But that is because you believe the data of GISS and Hansen et al.
I don’t trust their figures. Too many “fiddles” have been exposed for that. I find it totally disgusting that my scientists in my country (NIWA) are prepared to blatantly “fix” the result they want. Because I don’t trust their figures, I remain unconvinced in AGW.
That the 2020’s will be warm is not proof of AGW in any case. The world has been warming for a couple of centuries. You know as well as I do that radically accelerated warming is required. And the figures so far for that are not at all persuasive, even using GISS etc.
Not only that, you need to show that it is a bad thing. People are prone to assuming all change is bad, but that doesn’t make it true. The warming of the last century has been a good thing. Perhaps another degree will make the world better.
I would also like you to consider whether your moderate response here is what the hard-core AGW advocates are proposing. They (Greenpeace, Gore, Mann etc) don’t hold with “the evidence will prove them right” They demand immediate, decisive action NOW, or we are doomed.

he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
Now I wonder why that is? Phhhtttt!

” On the flip side, the acidification of the oceans”
Please don’t say this.
Ocean pH 8-8.2 has a long way to go to become acid.
Saying “ocean acidification” is just more alarmism, and a catch phrase designed to instill fear.
Again, it’s a product of “computer models”, and we do not know enough about that either to model anything.
Even the most hysterical “robust” models still leave the ocean as very alkaline .

Pete H (16:02:58) :
There is a book:
“A Slobbering Love Affair”
by Bernard Goldberg
From Amazon;
“Goldberg shows how the mainstream media’s hopelessly one-sided coverage of President Obama has shredded America’s trust in journalism and endangered our free society.”
I would say it’s certainly true, in the case of CAGW.

The trolls have regrouped. The place is crawling with them.
They had been knocked back on their heels by ClimateGate and had been in hiding under the bridge. But this ‘warmest decade on record’ combined with the high UAH anomaly for two months in a row seems to have given them reason to come out.
I guess the deception practiced among top global warming scientists that ClimateGate conclusively revealed doesn’t mean anything to them—or they’d still be knocked back on their heels. But that’s par for the course for them since real science didn’t mean anything to them in the first place.
So my question now is: what will they do when UAH, and all other data sets, drop precipitously for months when El Nino ends?

wow more global warming
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

Joe (12:06:16):
The problem is that when these scientists fall, ALL of scientists will be painted by the same brush.
I believe that’s what will happen in the end, which is both sad and fitting. I say fitting because I believe the majority of scientists are not so convinced or are against the AGW thesis but are not speaking out in protest. Even if only say 50% of the scientists are in this category, they all should be standing up and participate in “defrocking” the AGW fraud. I understand their pressures and their preoccupation with their work. However, it doesn’t excuse them. As is often said “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.

Arthur Glass (06:08:56) :
“And here I had foolishly been thinking that the central concern of natural science was detemining truths about the structure and dynamics of the physical world. Silly me! The central concern of natural scientists, apparently, is to enhance and enforce the prestige of natural scientists….”
As soon as scientists were paid to be scientists and as soon as scientists were given directives from others “the central concern of natural science to detemine truths about the structure and dynamics of the physical world.” went out the window and “political agendas” took its place.

Patrick Davis (17:11:32) :
I wish there were commercials on tv for WattsUpWithThat.com!

A C Osborn (11:01:48) :
Wren (10:05:20) :
Causal relationships don’t require the dependent variable to change in lock step with one independent variable with other independent variables are involved.
But that is how CO2 was blamed in the first place because they did match for a few years.
Of course you could take the other stated reason “we couldn’t think of anything esle to blame”
***********************************
Take this one step further as some posts on “real climate” do: a few years of correspondence between the climate models and temperatures are proof that they are correct.
The only climate model I would give any credence to is one that gives some reasonable approximation of the past ice ages, their periodicity, and the Daansgard-Oeschger events in between.

R Gates opines that AGW is a hypothesis! At long last we see such an acknowledgement from the pro-AGW side! It is not a theory, far from it, and it is refreshing to see a pro AGW advocate noting this crucially important point relating to the status of the science relating to AGW.
A hypothesis is a mental construct, usually based on an understanding of relevant physical theory, about causal relationships between observed physical phenomena. It requries “verification” through independently verifiable and consistently reproducable experimentation or observation, specifically aimed at defining the causal relationship, and ensuring that such causes are unique to the posited relationships . And if the AGW hypothesis, namely that anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to the post 1850 global mean temperature increase at a 0.n to n.0 degree C magnitude scale, can be so “verified” in independent and consistently reproduceable observations and experiments, the hypothesis may then become a “theory”.
Currently, there is no independent and consistently reproduceable experimental or observational support for the AGW hypothesis. Rather, so far, there is conflict in the experimental and observational data – some data supports the hypothesis, and much doesn’t. And, unfortunately for the AGW advocates, it is a very difficult hypothesis to verify because of the complex dynamics of the climate, and because of the need for extensive time windows, of the order of several hundred thousand years, for example, to gain a more robust definition of what constitues a natural background to the current variability in global mean surface temperatures.
So let us note, AGW is a hypothesis, awaiting robust experimental and observational verification.

Looks like another major mistake has been revealed…
Loss of soil carbon ‘will speed global warming’
Guardian – September 2005
Their findings, published in Nature today, show that carbon was being lost from the soil at an average of 0.6% a year: the richer the soils, the higher the rate of loss. When the figures were extrapolated to include all of the UK, the annual loss was 13m tonnes.
“There was no single factor other than global warming that could explain such changes in non-agricultural soils, they said. “These losses completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, putting the UK’s success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light,” said Detlef Schulze and Annette Freibauer, of the Max Planck Institute, in Nature.”
Guardian has now revealed that this was wrong.
“A national survey of the soils of Great Britain, funded by the department for environment food and rural affairs, claims to have found no net loss of carbon over approximately the same period.”
If this incorrect data has been entered into the climate models it means they have all temperate soils as being a carbon source and not a carbon sink. That’s hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 per year they said was being released into the atmosphere which wasn’t. Staggering!
And I bet they aren’t taking into account earthworms either.
Mean earthworm density was higher under elevated CO2 and worms mixed soil at deeper depths. Mixing deeper low carbon content soil with shallower high carbon soil may result in a dilution of net carbon inputs in forest soils exposed to elevated CO2. (Sánchez-de León, 2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/08/sciencenews.research1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/carbon-dioxide-global-warming-soil

Reply: Oh you nit pickers (thanks, fixed) ~ ctm
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Wait a second, wait a second, isn’t that knit pickers with a ‘k’ ?

R. Gates:
Here’s the hypothesis the AGW proposes: Human activity, specifically the production of CO2, is altering the climate.
Any argument or practice which specifically eschews the Scientific Method as applicable in testing this hypothesis – as exampled by the ipcc’s “Climate Science” – cannot possibly prove this hypothesis.
Only some vast mass conspiracy on a global scale by hundreds, if not thousands of scientists involving the measurements of everything from sea level, to arctic sea ice and satellite data would be needed to bring about any “hoax”.
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax by denying its possibility, the latter which you also present as nothing more than an untethered postulate.

J.Peden (20:27:20) :
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax
Sure I can.
And I can invite you to put your money where your mouth is.

J. Peden said:
“You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax by denying its possibility, the latter which you also present as nothing more than an untethered postulate.”
I completely deny the supposed “fact” that AGW due to rapidly escalating CO2 is pseudo-science. There is solid physics behind the GH forcing mechanism that CO2 and other gases play in the troposphere…and thank goodness they do, or we’d all be…well, non-existent. What real honest to goodness scientists, thousands of them, are seeking to find, through all the natural variation is the data that shows a rapid build up of CO2 since the industrial revolution will cause the earth to warm more than it would have through natural variation alone. There is nothing pseudo about this effort or the science behind it. But even if this data is found, the AGW hypothesis will never be proven in an absolute terms, but only in probablistic terms, with a very high degree of certainty. And of course, no matter how much data or proof is offered, certain mindsets will never accept it, and that’s just human nature.

“Anu (21:36:43) :
J.Peden (20:27:20) :
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax
Sure I can.
And I can invite you to put your money where your mouth is.”
That’s just a stupid bet as it is likely that the next 5 years will be slightly warmer than historically. We are on a steady upward climb from the last ice age. Get back to me when we average 22 degrees and then I’ll bet on a decline. It’s a bit like betting on the population of the world not increasing in the next 5 years.
Sceptics like me don’t say the world won’t get naturally warmer – but that we aren’t responsible for unusual warmth which will be catastrophic.
cheers David

David L (03:38:19) :

I agree. I’m a scientist and I know a lot of scientists. None of them along with all of the nonscientists I know are aware of Climategate. It’s amazing to me how many are more worried about sports news and to a lesser extent the economy and local news. The climate just never crosses their minds.

But David, sports news is so much more important than Climategate.
And when you combine sports news with local news, well, there just is no stopping the discussions.
Here in Denver the media has the perfect storm of all these factors with the local Baal worship of the Broncos mixed in with gang violence; the murder of one Denver Bronco; the involvement of several others including bad boy Brandon Marshall, who apparently was involved, somewhat at the margins with the alleged killer in a New Year’s party, …
See http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14519564?source=pop_section_news
On this blog, we spent hours discussing minutia such as concentrations of CO2. In Denver, thousands upon thousands of hours are spent discussing the color of an SUV and its impact on the murder. The TV and newspaper are filled with all these details.
Why?
Because it sells paper and TV advertising.
And what about Tiger? Now that is at the heart of a truly international religion, golf. How could it be otherwise?
At the local watering hole I scandalized everyone present when I suggested golf is only a pastime; certainly entertaining, but hardly worth the emotional energy being poured into the fall from grace of its current patron saint.
I can still drink beer there, but I can tell I’m being watched closely for anymore wayward behavior. Anymore social gaffs like that and who knows how much further I’ll fall in the index of social acceptability.

James F. Evans (08:18:43) :
“… in the politics of science, “I don’t know,” is a dead-bang loser.
It takes ethics and courage to resist the temptation to over-state your case.
Don’t kid yourself, going along with the crowd is just as easy in science as anywhere else — maybe easier — and more necessary to your professional survival.
But, “going along to get along,” isn’t a profile in courage or the fulfillment of objective scientific responsibility.
Sadly, this corrosive desire to “fit in” has corrupted many a scientist….”
Unfortunately the latest fad in industry is being a “Team Player” I can think of nothing worse for the advancement of science than turning whole generations of scientists into “yes man slaves” and thanks to John Dewey and his education theory of “codependency” that is exactly what has happened.
Summary of Dewey’s Philosophy of Instrumentalism – http://wilderdom.com/experiential/JohnDeweyPhilosophyEducation.html
* Dewey’s philosophy was called instrumentalism (related to pragmatism).
* Instrumentalism believes that truth is an instrument used by human beings to solve their problems.
* Since problems change, then so must truth.
* Since problems change, truth changes, and therefore there can be no eternal reality.
From Andrew Agostino – http://www.ifets.info/journals/2_4/agostino.html
“John Dewey was an American philosopher and educator whose work has had a tremendous impact on progressive education as a whole… His theory of knowledge characterized as instrumentalist and related to pragmatism advanced the idea that in order to study learning, one must consider the context in the social world where learning occurs. He defined education as a nurturing, cultivating process where mature members of a social group accommodate newer members through specific, social interaction. The environment or “medium” sets up those ambient factors that encourage or hamper the development of human beings (Dewey, 1916)… Consequently, the environment encompasses all of those things that significantly shape activity. Dewey goes further to characterize the social environment as encompassing all those other human participants who are associated with the individual and whose expectations, demands, endorsement or condemnation of action frame the social situation. After all, no one can be engaged in an activity without taking into account the connection with the activity of others. This connection is fundamental to the understanding of the social environment because an individual’s actions will always be interrelated in meaningful ways to all others within the social medium… Once membership is established, the individual becomes cognizant of the emotional attitudes, beliefs, tools, goals of the group and pretty much begins to share the same supply of knowledge that the group possesses. Accordingly, this shared experience forms an emotional tendency to motivate individual behavior in such a way that it creates purposeful activity evoking certain meaningful outcomes. Prawat (1995) refers to this shared experience as ‘idea-based, social constructivism’, learners are engaged in discourse communities where they can come up with and apply functional ideas…”
This is the educational philosophy shaping the training of our scientists for the last one hundred years. The AGW scandals and the changes we have noted in “the scientific method” is the logical outcome of this type of education system. Truth is fluid and based on “evoking certain meaningful outcomes” Is it any wonder that skeptics, people who are not team players, are viewed as heretics and traitors to be punished harshly?

R. Gates (22:18:53) :
CO2 drives the Climate is DEAD
CO2 leads “temperature” oops
“Hot spot” in troposphere” oops
increase in “heat trapping clouds” oops
“Oceans getting warmer” oops
“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” oops
“The Hockey Stick” oops
“Roman Warm Period” oops
CO2 has a greater correlation that PDO, La Nina, El Nino, Sun’s activity and the Moon’s orbit. oops
“Climatgate” BIG OOPS.

Pascvaks (05:56:02) :
(Back to “Academics”)
Joe the Plumber and his family are concerned about really ‘real’ things, sooo… His biggest concern about the climate war is how it impacts him, right?
Fat Albert and friends want to get their hands in his pocket -we don’t.
Fat Albert and friends want to… (well, actually, that’s pretty much everything Fat Albert and his friends want to do).
Joe and Jane Plumber and the kids don’t have much and what they have they want to hold onto. Ergo.. Fat Albert & Friends have already lost the Mann-made Global Warming ponzi scheme.
What happens to Global Corporations and Banks and Investors and Politicians and Psyentists who supported Mann-made Global Warming and Fat Albert and his friends? Joe and Jane and the kids don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, these wierdos don’t exist.
Now if Joe and Jane think there is no problem, is there really a problem? Are the psyentists going to take over Science? Is a scheme of tax credits for a bunch of carbon going to go anywhere? Is their Congress’person’ going to get reelected by supporting some break-Ft-Knox giveaway, …ah, honestly?.. that’s a toss-up. Is the price of gas going to go to $8.999 a gallon?
Not if Joe and Jane have anything to day about it!
PS: Don’t worry about the Plumbers. Focus on the thieves out to steal your life savings from you and sell you $8.999 gas.

R. Gates:
I completely deny the supposed “fact” that AGW due to rapidly escalating CO2 is pseudo-science.
No matter how completely you deny this fact, any argument or practice which specifically eschews the Scientific Method as applicable in testing this AGW hypothesis – as exampled by the ipcc’s “Climate Science” – cannot possibly prove the AGW hypothesis and is therefore “pseudo-science”.
And of course, no matter how much data or proof is offered, certain mindsets will never accept it, and that’s just human nature.

kwik (12:56:02) :
well put.

This is a good time to just check on my understanding, please let me know if I have it wrong.
1) UAH monthly temperaure anomalies are not cumulative and only reflect an increase or decrease for that individual month against an arbitrary baseline period. They do not show any perspective to temperature over the entire interglacial period. At this point in time, the anomaly really has no significance but you have to start somewhere so that eventually, over a much longer period of time, it will have meaning.
2) Eventually the Earth will return to it’s more normal state of glaciation and there isn’t much we can do about it short of changing the orbit or axis tilt.
The return to normal will be complete in about 5,000 years from now.
We don’t know when the start of this inevitable change will happen.
In the time frame of Earthly changes of this type, 1,000 years one way or the other is insignificant.

R. Gates (09:48:59)
I respect your opionion and you do have many valid points.
The issue will probably never be settled until a catastophic even occurs where many lives are lost to get public attention.
For now governments love the IPCC option as it encompasses all no mater if it is cooling or warming under the guise of “Climate Change”.

R. Gates (09:48:59) : Be that as it may, the pursuit of many dedicated and highlly trained scientists to find the connection between increased human caused GHG and climate change is a nobel one, often solitary, and often involving months away from their families at remote sites around the world.
What’s the Latin name of THIS logical fallacy: argumentum ad sacrificium?
I busted my tail, deprived my family, traveled to the ends of the earth — therefore everything I say is factual.
I bled all over my field forms. I pulled my hair out. I got frostbite. Therefore, I’m right.
Poppycock and balderdash. Shades of the Greenpeace expeditions. It doesn’t matter one whit, R, whether the scientists in question eat caviar or pork ‘n beans from a can. The truth is not for sale or rent.

R. Gates (10:01:17) :
Yes, I personally am not 100% convinced, but the majority of climate scientists are.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Would you provide a list of these so we can know for sure you aren’t making this up?

Regarding “CO2 ‘traps’ heat. Hardly, and a significant misnomer. The theory is that some wavelengths of IR going outward from the surface is “intercepted” by CO2 molecules, and re-radiated back to the surface, undoubtedly so. But there is certainly an opposite effect as well. The same wavelengths of IR inbound from the sun must be also be being intercepted, and being re-radiated back away from the planet. Thus, there is also a preventing of warming of the surface by the same CO2 molecules.
So, while higher concentrations of CO2 would cause a somewhat higher percentage of these wavelengths of IR outbound from the surface to be re-radiated back to the surface, by the same process, more inbound from the sun IR would be re-radiated back away from the planet, reducing the total quantity of IR reaching the surface, which would mean less available IR to be re-radiated back to the surface by the CO2 molecules. A higher percentage of IR would be re-radiated back to the surface, but of of a lesser total amount.
Looks to me as if this would be a “push”, as gamblers would say, regarding warming, and since IR is radiated spherically, higher concentrations of CO2 might well have in total a slight cooling effect from an overall basis.
If CO2 radiates IR back to the planet, with a warming effect, CO2 is most certainly at the same time preventing IR from reaching the surface, which has a cooling effect.

LarryOldtimer (10:56:25) :
Here is Roy Spencer talking about negative feedback:
part 1

R. Gates (10:41:00) :
Smokey,
AGW represents a hypothesis, and as such, you look for data to support it. Because the climate is a large and complex system, there are many variables, and so each one needs to be accounted for and understood.
Not all the variables are accounted for.
No salinity changes? That effects evaporation. Added salt will also hinder solar radiation from penetrating.
Mechanical understanding of evaporation? Evaporation itself is a highly complex process involving a number of factors.
Mechanical understanding of rotation that allows the gases and vapours to rise. Mechanical understanding of the atmosphere that is very elastistic itself and has multi-layers. The shape of our atmosphere. The lateral different longitudes of the planets shape that encourages energy to move.
Just being on an axis and rotating brings in many different energies compare to a stationary circle. Science is studying the planet like a stationary circle without understanding rotation incorporates a great deal more forces.
We have many past mistakes in theories due to studying this planet as a stationary object and not like a rotating object.

Richard Holle (14:22:07) :
“I like the young generation coming up. There is something about them that is unlike other generations of my lifetime.
But this current young generation seems to have a face. They seem to want to face reality. My generation wanted escape from reality and to create a utopia that never could happen. This current generation seems to be creative about the real world. They seem to want real answers. And they are anything but confrontational.”
I have noticed exactly the same thing. My son and his friends, dont care much about politician-talk. Dont watch TV much. Only interested in real everyday problems.
Its very interesting. I think the politicians will have to change their ways in order to captivate them.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (11:18:32) :
LarryOldtimer (10:56:25) :
Here is Roy Spencer talking about negative feedback:
part 1
my reply;
One of the natural variability features of the global circulation is pointed out in this selection by Roy Spencer, as the peaks of moisture production then the decrease post peak is actually the effects of outer planetary Synod conjunctions on the atmosphere.
Where by the electro-magnetic fields coupling through the solar wind, from the sun through the outer planets causes this influence he speaks of as the homopolar generator field effects of the earth shift ion charges into the atmosphere. Building up the moisture to the point of closest alignment, then as the fields drop the resurgence of negative charges build the “ice” cirrus clouds post peak. what Roy Has found here is the proof of the mechanism I have been talking about for 20 years.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (11:19:40)
Why the IPCC Models are wrong?
Try page 111 of the IPCC WG3 report. 30 Gt/CO2emissions now, 60 Gt/C02 emissions by 2030, 100 Gt/CO2 emissions by 2100.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter1.pdf
All the coal in the world amounts to 800 Billion Tonnes which we burn currently at a rate of 7 billion tonnes a year. If we doubled our coal burn to 14 million tonnes a year by 2030 we would completely run out of coal by 2075.

rbateman (07:50:34) :
Is the “OMG, it’s Global Warming” novelty wearing off for you?
How often do you mentally flog yourself for your participation in the usage of fossil fuels in your daily life routines?

I figure one very effective way to force the young to consider the results of fraudulent global warming “solutions” is to tell them, “very well, you must sacrifice your computer, IPOD and cell phone to stop global warming.”
Does anyone really think teens and 20-somethings are going to hand over their energy-intensive toys so easily?

harrywr2 (13:56:38) :
And we should try to do that!

R. Gates (10:41:00) :
Smokey,
‘AGW represents a hypothesis, and as such, you look for data to support it. Most climate scientists say this level has been reached, (Hockey Stick, OOPS, “Hide the decline”, OOPS, “China’s UHI Effect”, OOPS, PEER REVIEWED “NEW and IMPROVED HOCKEY STICK”, OOPS)…………. but for some AGW skeptics, no matter what the data say, the uncertainty will always outweigh the certainty.
Data Does not support “CO2 Drives the Climate” thing. Computer models do the not the Data. Then again, I don’t live in a computer model but I have worked out in “this” Climate/Weather for almost 40 years.
By the way. Do you want to buy one of those “Space Blankets”? No refunds.

Roger Knights Thank you for the link and information.
It substantiates my thirty years of experience as an industrial chemist. I found dishonesty to be the norm not the exception. I even consulted a lawyer about my rights and obligations because of my concerns on the dishonesty issue.

toyotawhizguy (04:45:15) :
“….While establishing correlation is important, it is NOT proof of causation. In order to establish causation based on observations, all other variables must be eliminated, or at least accurately accounted for. Then the observations must be repeated ad nauseum to establish statistical significance (i.e., to demonstrate that the observations are not due to random variability). For the climate, collecting data over just a few decades is inadequate. Establishing causation is virtually impossible to do in the laboratory for something as complex and macro as the earth climate system. (As far as the computer models go, well… garbage in, garbage out.) Since the variables cannot be eliminated, the best that can be done is too attempt to measure and quantify them. This quantification is a rather precarious endeavor for the climate, due to the high complexity, the large number of variables, and the immense quantity of data required to do so. AGW skeptics are not satisfied that climatologists have done this quantification properly and thoroughly, and therein lies much of the controversy.”
Thank you for a very nice summary of the skeptics view point.

Vergano says ‘what if …scientists are misreading thse poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent publid-relations black-eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake?” BLACK-EYES? MISTAKE?
How can a radical environmentalst’s baloney be included in a “sacred” IPCC document and be called a “MISTAKE”? How many other “MISTAKES” were included to mislead the non-scientist non-comprehending public? Are they trying to bamboozle Joe Sixpack and are afraid he is going to rebel?

old construction worker (14:15:49) :
“R. Gates (09:48:59) :
‘Response to Gail Combs (06:30:01) :
Your rather long post seems to indicate you believe that some group of very powerful rich people want to force us into some kind of economic slavery by controlling the AGW issue. To this I say, why would they need the climate issue to do so? In the U.S., our government is already well controlled by large corporate interests, and the recent Supreme Court case allowing even a great pipeline of money to flow between the corporations and those who supposedly represent “we the people” only reinforces this issue.’
You left out the influence peddling of NGOs. Groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Tides Foundation.”
The NGOs were one of the more brilliant moves of Maurice Strong. It is thought that he got the idea from his early work with YMCA international. Strong worked for Rockefeller in Saudi Arabia in the fifties and is a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.
“Your rather long post seems to indicate you believe that some group of very powerful rich people want to force us into some kind of economic slavery by controlling the AGW issue.”
The long and the short of it is Corporations and bankers want to eliminate competition from the aggressive startup companies and they want to eliminate the pesky national borders and differing national regs that get in the way of doing business worldwide.
Rockefeller make it very clear that there is indeed a conspiracy. “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world … If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
However AGW is only one issue. Kissinger was also very blunt in his statement in the mid 1970’s “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
If you control CO2 you control the use of energy, so CAGW takes care of part one – control of oil or more percisely energy. So what about food?
That is covered too. Actually the food issue, Animal ID to be specific, is where I started unraveling this mess. Animal ID lead back to NIAA or National Institute for Animal Agriculture, that lead back to the World Trade Organization that lead back to IPC, a group created in 1987 explicitly to drive home the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at the Uruguay talks. International corporations find national borders and national food safety regs to be a royal pain in the rump and WTO ag rules are designed to eliminate those borders and safety regs. The WTO also has teeth in the form of trade sanctions to force nations to comply with WTO rules thereby trumping national food safety regs. WTO and NAFTA were also instrumental in eliminating many of the small farmers allowing consolidation of a world wide food monopoly. Ten corporations now control most of the world food supply.
The same media manipulation and slanted science seen in AGW is duplicated in the food safety scares used to persuade the masses that farming regs are necessary. Again the ultimate goal is international regs favoring large corporations and eliminating the small guy.
I do not have to be a conspiracy nut to realize the USA has been driven to the edge of bankruptcy by the financial policies of the Federal Reserve and the US Congress. All I have to do is read what has been in the recent news: I am amazed that the US government, in the midst of the worst financial crises ever, is content for short-selling to drive down the asset prices that the government is trying to support….The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen still prevails and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector.” Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts250209.htm
“Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, agrees. It is now “statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations”. http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/08.09/metastasis.html
Food References:
http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2009/12/the-festering-fraud-behind-food-safety-reform/
http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html
An example of what is happening to the food security of other countries:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publication/rg/RGRich.shtml
http://www.countercurrents.org/mohanty230608.htm
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/savePolishCountryside.php

Mike D. (10:38:54) said:
“What’s the Latin name of THIS logical fallacy: argumentum ad sacrificium?
I busted my tail, deprived my family, traveled to the ends of the earth — therefore everything I say is factual.”
Mike, the point here isn’t about what the data do or do not say, the point is the integrity of the men and women who are out, diligently, honestly, looking and researching the data. The vast majority of these climate scientists honestly gather and report exactly what they find, and dedicated and interested in only one thing…finding the truth. When I hear talk of conspiracies, and the whole “trilateral, Federal Reserve, UN, etc etc.” I just have to laugh at the ignorance.
But I can say this about the AGW skeptics…either they will go down in history as the biggest heros to ever challenge the supposed dark cabal of the AGW “conspiracy”, or they will be known someday as a group of 21st century flat-earthers, who caused a great deal of confusion on the most important issue of our time.

Gail Combs:
That was a great article by Paul Craig Roberts. As usual, Roberts was incisive and he usually has a great handle on the US economy. And it is a very disturbing picture, indeed. I have feared for a long time that we were on the brink of something really bad, economically speaking. My fears may be coming to fruition.

Larry (01:01:44) :
“That was a great article by Paul Craig Roberts. As usual, Roberts was incisive and he usually has a great handle on the US economy. And it is a very disturbing picture, indeed. I have feared for a long time that we were on the brink of something really bad, economically speaking. My fears may be coming to fruition.”
Thank you.
I really hope R. Gates is correct “….When I hear talk of conspiracies, and the whole “trilateral, Federal Reserve, UN, etc etc.” I just have to laugh at the ignorance….”
However the direction the USA has been going in the last century leaves doubts. When I read articles like that by Paul Craig Roberts
OR reports such as”
“In a sweeping move that has garnered surprisingly little attention this week the United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership that will see regulatory standards “harmonized” and will lay the basis for a merging of the US and EU into one single market, a huge step on the path to a new globalized world order.” The BBC reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6607757.stm) from the Summit in Washington on Monday: http://stopspp.com/stopspp/?p=122
When the FDA here in the USA bluntly states:
“The harmonization of laws, regulations and standards between and among trading partners requires intense, complex, time-consuming negotiations by CFSAN officials. Harmonization must simultaneously facilitate international trade and promote mutual understanding, while protecting national interests and establish a basis to resolve food issues on sound scientific evidence in an objective atmosphere. Failure to reach a consistent, harmonized set of laws, regulations and standards within the freetrade agreements and the World Trade Organization Agreements can result in considerable economic repercussions.”http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/int-laws.html
Yet during the debate on approving the WTO Agreement, Congress was justifiably worried that the multinational pact was in conflict with U.S. Sovereignty. Arguments for ratification were vehemently endorsed by Clinton Administration officials who were eager to get the agreement passed Congress. Congressional fears were lulled by pointing out Congress is ultimately responsible for changing the laws of the United States; and second, the U.S. is entitled to withdraw from the WTO. Also a feature of the Uruguay Round agreements are described as follows:
“United States Law to Prevail in Conflict The URAA puts U.S. sovereignty and U.S. law under perfect protection. According to the Act, if there is a conflict between U.S. and any of the Uruguay Round agreements, U.S. law will take precedence regardless when U.S. law is enacted. § 3512 (a) states: “No provision of any of the Uruguay Round Agreements, nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, that is inconsistent with any law of the United States shall have effect.” Specifically, implementing the WTO agreements shall not be construed to “amend or modify any law of the United States, including any law relating to (i) the protection of human, animal, or plant life or health, (ii) the protection of the environment, or (iii) worker safety”, or to “limit any authority conferred under any law of the United States, including section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.” http://www.eastlaw.net/research/wto/wto2b.htmd
OR when I see that as soon as the democrats were back in control of Congress in 2009, Rosa Delauro, wife of globalist Stan Greenberg, rolled out HR 875, placing our ability to grow our own food in jeopardy I see evidence supporting D Rockefellers statement.HR 875 places the growing of food under regulations similar to the manufacture of drugs, an industry I worked in as a Quality Engineer/lab Manager so I know the regs when I see them. The crucial phase was this:
“in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.”
This means the fact you are growing veggies for you and friends does not exclude you from the regulation.
The Commerce Clause: A farmer was growing wheat for his own use “The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it — and that affected interstate commerce” The Supreme court found against the farmer!!!
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0895g.asp
“Enter Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio dairy and poultry farmer, who raised a small quantity of winter wheat — some to sell, some to feed his livestock, and some to consume. In 1940, under authority of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the central government told Mr. Filburn that for the next year he would be limited to planting 11 acres of wheat and harvesting 20 bushels per acre. He harvested 12 acres over his allotment for consumption on his own property. When the government fined him, Mr. Filburn refused to pay.
Wickard v. Filburn got to the Supreme Court, and in 1942, the justices unanimously ruled against the farmer. The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it — and that affected interstate commerce.
The Court’s opinion must be quoted to be believed:
[The wheat] supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce.
After Wickard , everything is mere detail. The entire edifice of civil rights legislation stands on the commerce power. Under this maximum commerce power, the government has been free to regulate nearly everything, including a restaurant owner’s bigotry. The Court has held that if Congress sees a connection to interstate commerce, it is not its role to second guess.”
As I said I really really hope I am seeing “conspiracy theories” under the bushes, but the recent actions of the FDA, USDA and people in Congress make me doubt it. The more I dig the more I find the USA is no longer a sovereign nation. The fact we have a chief scientist advising the president who co-authored a book earlier in his career that discussed the merits of adding a sterilant to public drinking water supplies to reduce population growth. A book that goes on to note that “compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution.”
And couple that with the USDA funding Epicyte, who in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. http://www.matchdoctor.com/blog_85536/Covert_Sterilization.html
Or a USDA who was also part of the development of Terminator gene, now held by Monsanto – W.Koelz, of the USDA who collected the wheat samples with the Terminator gene is specifically named in the Biopiracy lawsuits in front of both in the Indian Supreme Court and in the European Patent Office http://www.countercurrents.org/en-shiva270404.htm

R. Gates:
But I can say this about the AGW skeptics…either they will go down in history as the biggest heros to ever challenge the supposed dark cabal of the AGW “conspiracy”, or they will be known someday as a group of 21st century flat-earthers, who caused a great deal of confusion on the most important issue of our time.
Ok, Gates, I’ll bite: what do you know about the Scientific Method and how did you come by this info? What is your scientific background?

R. Gates (11:59:22) :
J. Peden,
My background is not important, as I am not putting forth any original research or adding to the sum total of AGW models already available. I am simply making educated extrapolations.
Your background is in fact important, if indeed you were never exposed to the processes involved in the Scientific Method.
If you don’t know what the Scientific Method is and requires – and, as far as I’ve seen, you have so far refused to advocate its use in Climate Science – then you don’t know what the critical problem is with Climate Science. And you therefore can’t make any “educated guesses” about CAGW because you and Climate Science are not even in the ballpark, much less playing the game.
Until you face the fact that Climate Science is not based upon the Scientific method, all you will do is fool yourself – as your three decision points also indicate.
Do yourself a favor and find out that the Scientific Method requires open acesses to “materials, methods, including code” so that the “science” of any study or conclusion can be “replicated”, which is also perhaps the first rule of true scientific scepticsm and it’s built right into the Scientific Method. There is no true science without scepticism, Period. The Climate Scientists themselves appear to have not asked, “What’s wrong with my hypothesis”, which they should have done before even publishing.
Btw, Peer Review by a few select reviewers was never designed or warranted to insure the “given truth” of the studies reviewed. Never ever! The real Peer Review starts after a study’s publication, as Steve McIntyre, for example, has proven once again – with great difficulty.
Then ask your Climate Science buddies what they think about this crucial failure of Climate Science. They won’t like you, but that’s going to be a price of your “education”. You have to start at the beginning and that’s all there is to it.
Also, btw, I myself would have never thought that scientists operating at the level of the ipcc’s Climate Science simply would not be doing real Science. But I looked starting back in 2000 and saw it myself, much before I’d ever heard of Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts. I was surprised, but there it was.