If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want. ~ charles the moderator
Scientists misread data on global warming controversy
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Well-publicized troubles have mounted for those forecasting global warming. First, there was last year’s release of hacked e-mails from the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, showing some climate scientists really dislike their critics (investigations are still ongoing). Then there was the recent discovery of a botched prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 in one of the Nobel-Prize-winning 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Instead, the glaciers are only shrinking about as much as glaciers everywhere, twice as fast as they did 40 years ago, suggest results from NASA‘s GRACE gravity-measuring orbiter.
The recent controversies “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science,” according to atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Cicerone was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month on a panel calling for more communication and release of data to rebuild lost trust for scientists. IPCC chiefs have made similar calls in the handling of their reports.
Scientists see reason for worry in polls like one released in December by Fox News that found 23% of respondents saw global warming as “not a problem,” up from 12% in 2005. Also at the AAAS meeting, Yale, American University and George Mason University released a survey of 978 people 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.
But what “if” (apologies to Kipling again) scientists are misreading those poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent public-relations black eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake? What’s really happening, suggests polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, is “scientists are over-reacting. It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.”
Krosnick and his colleagues argue that polling suggesting less interest in fixing climate change might indicate the public has its mind on more immediate problems in the midst of a global economic downturn, with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.7%. The AAAS-released survey of young people, for example, finds that 82% of them trust scientists for information on global warming and the national average is 74%.
“Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade,” 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.”
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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.
R. Gates (12:39:05) :
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…..”
You can not separate CAGW from big oil and banking, but the connection is not what the AGW crowd thinks.
If the power behind CAGW has their way in 10 to 20 years it will not matter. The World Bank and UN will have succeeded in enslaving us all, the gloves will be off, there will be no more middle class, freedom or democracy. For that matter most of the “useless eaters” will find themselves sterilized.
“Silvia Ribeiro, who heads the ETC Group’s office in Mexico City, has noted with
concern that the California-based Epicyte corporation boasts a spermicidal corn
for use as a contraceptive. “The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological
weapon is very high”, she warned, and reminisced about the use of forced
sterilizations against indigenous peoples.” – http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/biopharm32905.cfm
AGW has never been about science it is about manipulating the masses. It was started in 1972 at the First Earth Summit by Maurice Strong, big man in Canadian oil, the World Bank and the United Nations.
Strong very bluntly stated his goal:
“”It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle-
class… involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and
convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, small electric appliances, home
and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable” …
But how would you go about forcing change? Well, Maurice Strong, like all the
other Hidden Rulers, has been pretty vocal about the blueprints. After all, it’s not like
has much to worry about, he’s already in power and people are, by and large, very
stupid animals. ” – http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/maurice_stong_another_hidden_ruler/
If you do not believe we have hidden rulers just checkout who started World Wildlife Fund a real big player in todays CAGW and environmental movement. It was founded in 1961 by Prince Philip of Britain and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Then there is David Rockefeller, big in banking and oil too. Rockefeller has hosted luncheons at the family’s Westchester estate for the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors, following the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and IMF for years. Rockefeller’s Chase Bank served as training grounds for three World Bank presidents, John J. McCloy, Eugene Black and George Woods. Again David Rockefeller is quite blunt about his agenda
In his 2002 autobiography “Memoirs” on page 405,” Mr. Rockefeller writes:
“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political
spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents… to attack the Rockefeller
family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and
economic institutions. 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.”
Given David Rockefeller and Maurice Strong’s major connections to the World Bank, is it any surprise that the Copenhagen conference contained a bait and switch where the World Bank was substituted for the UN as the controller of Climate Change policies?
“The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol …
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”…. “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN.” – http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text
Before you blindly jump on the CAGW bandwagon I suggest you look at exactly where that bandwagon is headed. Take a good hard look at the bankers.
“Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over 12 years,… To me, resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples… I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the name of your predecessors, and under your official seal. ” http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/Budhoo_IMF.html
“In the dozens of countries where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), the people who have seen deterioration in their standards of living, reduced access to public services, devastated environments, and plummeting employment prospects…” – http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html
An analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries shows the world’s finances are in the hands of a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first report of global concentration of financial power ..http://www.insidescience.org/research/study_says_world_s_stocks_controlled_by_select_few
Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.’s…. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/magazine/leveraged-buyouts-american-pays-the-price.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all New York Times
The Bankers Manifesto of 1892 (Revealed by US Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, SR from Minnesota before the US Congress) –
“The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.
When through the process of the law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders.” http://argoray.net/files/manifesto1892.htm
The US Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and its history:
A PRIMER ON MONEY prepared by the Sub-committee on Domestic Finance, House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Currency — 88th Congress, 2nd session, August 4th, 1964 (about 125 pages)
http://famguardian.org/Subjects/MoneyBanking/Money/patman-primer-on-money.pdf
A short version is here: http://www.michaeljournal.org/feddebunked.htm
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.
Roger Knights (03:01:51)
Jack Simmons (04:24:54)
I commend you both for excellent insight.
I did not get into the AGW debate and could have care less about it.
But the area of science I was researching and studying dragged me into it.
Ostersized for being different is was society does best, so being guarded at what is said is the norm. Especially keeping your mouth shut about religion in order to do business, survive and have a social life.
I have talked with a few physicists and scientists and their minds are set in stone. Whatever was taught or in a book is absolute and no amount of math, physical evidence, conclusive experimentation will change that.
I had one physicist say “where did you get the fantasy of salinity changes? From a Marvel Comic Book?”
Dropped him with the website from a well respected oceanographer!
I found a huge area science missed studying and thoughly understanding.
ROTATION
This area evolved from creating the math and finding the conclusive science to power generation and how the rotational turbine pulls only 2% of the energy from water.
Evolution is strange in following the many paths that leads from it.
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.
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 [Anu] can.
Anu, you cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax by claiming that this fact is impossible.
kwik (12:56:02) :
well put.
Gail Combs (06:30:01) :
An awesome collection of evidence, really great.
R. Gates (22:18:53) :
“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.”
I am glad to see that you agree that they HAVEN’T YET FOUND IT.
The science is not settled.
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.
I think there is far too much paranoia on both sides of the issue of AGW, and certainly the rich and powerful (who have always run the world, will continue to do so, regardless of how the AGW issue plays out. The only thing really as stake in the AGW issue from a financial standpoint is WHICH rich and powerful group of people will get to be in power. We the people will always remain their loyal subjects, so long as we allow them such easy access to our seat of power. The onlly way to solve this would be to have a massive popular uprising and institute such sweeping campaign finance reform that the umbilical cord between the corporate and financial elite and our branches of government is forever and irrevocably severed.
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. Many of these scientists I know personally, have spent many hours discussing the issue with them, know of their personal dedication to finding the facts, and also know that most of them don’t listen to the political rattling around them, but rather, listen to the subtle messages that the data might be telling them.
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.
A C Osborn (09:22:03) said:
“I am glad to see that you agree that they HAVEN’T YET FOUND IT.
The science is not settled.”
Yes, I personally am not 100% convinced, but the majority of climate scientists are. I’m at about 75% convinced, and if the next few years (between now and 2015 or so) see new summer time minimum sea ice extent modern records being set, and new instrument records for average global temperatrues, I will slip into the convinced category. On the other hand, if the arctic sea ice rebounds and we see many years of positive anomalies and we get back and see a trend of cooler years (not related to a solar minimum or la nina!) then I could become a skeptic of the AGW hypothesis. We are definitely at those watershed years for certain. I know many of my climate scientists friends think I’m being too cautious in waiting to fully say I’m 100% certain that the climate is warming and humans are the cause, and certainly to do know and understand the data better, but I’m naturally a conservative person, and always take a bit more convincing.
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):
So it’s not if there is a connection between human caused GHG [moving the goal posts away from CO2; can’t blame you for that], but to “find the connection.”
Thank you for posting that fine example of the difference between scientific skeptics and AGW true believers.
Believers have the assumption that human activity is causing the planet’s climate to change, and they know that it’s just a matter of finding that evasive connection – that ‘noble’ endeavor – while skeptics simply want testable, verifiable evidence of what is so far an empirically baseless assumption.
I’ll bet you don’t even realize that your mind is already made up, and closed to the possibility that human activity has not changed the planet’s climate to any measurable degree.
It’s natural variability, Gates. That’s all. Occam’s Razor agrees: there is no need to invoke more entities than necessary to explain the climate.
But if and when you can provide some testable, empirical and verifiable evidence that anthropogenic CO2 causes any measurable global warming, I’m all ears.
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.
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. The AGW hypothesis states several things that will occur if it is accurate, from warming of the troposphere to the cooling of the stratosphere, gradual melting of glaciers, acidifciation of the oceans, extreme hyrdological events, rising of sea levels, etc. Even if these events occur (and most if not all are) then it doesn’t prove aboslutely that the AGW hypothesis is correct, it only says it is correct to a certain degree of certainty. Most climate scientists say this level has been reached, but for some AGW skeptics, no matter what the data say, the uncertainty will always outweigh the certainty.
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?
What will the trolls do when UAH drops rapidly after El Nino ends?
I could make a guess that comes from experience with tham and say we will rarely see comments from them.
They are feeling bold now because of 2 months of fairly high anomaly in UAH. But this boldness shows the inconsistency in their message. Because they say no one should ever use short term occurrences in weather to prove what is happening in climate.
They always want to talk about the long term—unless it comes to the long term from the Medieval Warm Period to today.
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.
I think before any believer in dangerous co2 warming can try to convert others to their beliefs they first have to do the math on Ferenc Miskolczi’s greenhouse law. For more than 2 years no one has shown his math wrong. I know RealClimate commenters have conjectured that it is wrong but that would just be opinions. No one has shown it is wrong.
If there are those who have done the math work and found Ferenc Miskolczi to be wrong then please submit your work to the scientific community, and to Ferenc Miskolczi himself, for scrutiny to see if your work is correct.
LarryOldtimer (10:56:25) :
Here is Roy Spencer talking about negative feedback:
part 1
LarryOldtimer (10:56:25) :
part 2
(5:10 to 6:22 is particularly important)
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.
it’s easier to to say the debate is over and stay in your comfort zone than to do the math
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.