From his blog http://www.drroyspencer.com/ which I’m repeating here to help get wide exposure.
A Challenge to the Climate Research Community
I’ve been picking up a lot of chatter in the last few days about the ’settled science’ of global warming. What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of published research on the topic simply assumes that warming is manmade. It in no way “proves” it.
If the science really is that settled, then this challenge should be easy:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Studies that have suggested that an increase in the total output of the sun cannot be blamed, do not count…the sun is an external driver. I’m talking about natural, internal variability.
The fact is that the ‘null hypothesis’ of global warming has never been rejected: That natural climate variability can explain everything we see in the climate system.
Myrrh – One other note I forgot to put in my last post: D-O events were not even theory until the Greenland GRIP and GISP2 cores were drilled. Only after those regional transitions were identified did they go back and look at the Vostok (Antarctica) cores to see if they showed up there at all. D-O events had little if any effect on the Southern hemisphere.
Smokey said February 5, 2011 at 6:30 pm “the CO2 rise has not been small. It is up almost 40%”
Smokey, this is what is part of the problem . . . If I raise the nominal tax rate from 3% to 6%. That is a 100% increase but, only a 3% rise. . . .
We are talking parts per million here my friend . . . What is the percentage rate increase in CO2 as 100% of the air.
Many would “rest their case” right here. Do you “honestly”, think you making one?
1) Anecdote is not the singular of “data.” You will need to show systematic abuse of peer review to establish that it is, in fact, so totally broken.
2) Journals like Nature and Science tend to be reviewed by experts whenever possible. It’s not as if Al Gore was approving them. What do we have to go by in establishing that his papers are rejected simply because there is a “propagandist” reviewing them? His suspicions? Allegations are not evidence. And if you want to cite the hacked CRU emails as evidence of peer-review being subverted, you’re actually arguing against your case. The only time they discussed the peer-review process at a journal was when the process had been breached so severely that it let through a terrible paper and saw half the editors resign when it was clear that the process wasn’t going to be fixed at that journal.
Failing to disprove a null hypothesis within a single paper does not prove that the null hypothesis is in fact real and accurate. If one wants to establish that “natural, internal variability” really does explain the current climate, one has to actually do the work to show that this is so. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that someone challenging the scientific consensus on a subject should have to do the math and submit it to the community to make their case. Scientific research does not stop at failing to disprove the null hypothesis. Do you think Spencer is totally justified in sitting on his laurels and doing nothing while claiming he’s right because of some vague, undefined “null hypothesis” he doesn’t see being disproven in the literature?
More generally, the idea that humans are significantly altering the climate is one that’s well-established in the literature by studying the basic physics and decades of observations to see how they meet expectations. It has gotten to the point where science is reasonably justified in taking AGW as the default explanation for the current warming trend. This doesn’t make it an assumption a priori, but a conclusion that has been reached again and again to the point that we can use it as an assumption going forward.
Dr. Spencer wants to challenge that assumption? Then he’s going to have to do some footwork to show that it’s wrong. Pretending that everybody but him is held to a higher standard of peer-review is disingenuous. He needs to do the math and submit the results for publishing through the same venues he challenges the consensus to use otherwise it’s just apples and oranges. Do you disagree?
Laurie Bowen – “We are talking parts per million here my friend . . .”
OK, then – I guess you wouldn’t mind doubling the amount of mercury in your fish sticks, then? After all, it’s only a couple of parts per million? Just a trace element? And would anyone like a few ppm of cyanide as a side dish? /sarcasm
I get very tired of the “it’s only a trace gas” arguments. A doubling will change things significantly if what’s doubling is one of the few relevant chemicals present.
WheelsOC says:
“You will need to show systematic abuse of peer review to establish that it is, in fact, so totally broken.”
WOC needs to read A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He will see the well documented, systematic abuse of the climate peer review system, which is totally corrupted. It’s hard to believe that anyone who reads WUWT is ignorant of that fact.
For a taste of the book, read Montford’s article here. WOC needs to get up to speed on the corruption endemic to climate peer review.
Next:
“And if you want to cite the hacked CRU emails…” *Sheesh*, he is so far out of the loop it’s embarassing. WheelsOC needs to provide just one fact showing that the Climategate emails were “hacked.” Even the police have been unable to show that the emails were hacked. It was very likely an inside job.
Next:
“Scientific research does not stop at failing to disprove the null hypothesis. Do you think Spencer is totally justified in sitting on his laurels and doing nothing while claiming he’s right because of some vague, undefined “null hypothesis” he doesn’t see being disproven in the literature?”
I’m glad WOC asked that question. It has nothing to do with the wacky first sentence, but the fact is that Dr Spencer reports regularly on his blog about his work. The comment above is just projection on the part of a true believer. In reality it is Michael Mann, Phil Jones and their crowd who are resting on their laurels. Now, about WOC’s ignorance regarding the null hypothesis:
WOC says the null is “vague” and “undefined.” He simply doesn’t grasp the concept, which is quite clear. Here is the definition, which has been given repeatedly here at WUWT: The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data.
While WheelsOC is getting his head around that definition, I would point out that the null hypothesis is critical to many industries, such as pharmaceuticals. Belief in CAGW is simply a placebo effect. There is no evidence whatever that the current climate is any different than the climate during the Holocene prior to the industrial revolution. In fact, today’s climate is generally more benign than the Holocene average.
Next:
“Failing to disprove a null hypothesis within a single paper does not prove that the null hypothesis is in fact real and accurate.”
That is just more evidence that WheelsOC is ignorant of the null concept. The null is simply the prior climate record, against which any alternative hypothesis must be tested.
Since there is no measurable difference between the null hypothesis and the current climate, the CAGW conjecture fails. In fact, the very mild natural warming cycle over the past century is entirely consistent with similar warming cycles throughout the past ten millennia. Nothing unusual is occurring.
Next:
“It has gotten to the point where science is reasonably justified in taking AGW as the default explanation for the current warming trend.”
Within WheelsOC’s echo chamber home [realclimate? climateprogress?] that statement would get a bunch of head-nodders all misty-eyed. But in the real world it is complete nonsense: the onus is on those those proposing a hypothesis such as CO2=CAGW, not on skeptical scientists questioning it. Skeptics have nothing to prove. Ignoring the scientific method is a universal hallmark of the alarmist clique.
Finally:
“If one wants to establish that ‘natural, internal variability’ really does explain the current climate, one has to actually do the work to show that this is so.”
Prof Richard Lindzen shows that natural, internal variability does in fact fully explain the 7 tenths of a degree temperature rise:
WheelsOC’s post above is a prime example of the skewed view of reality that results from spending one’s time in a climate alarmist echo chamber, soaking up nonsense passed off as facts. Those poor souls don’t hear the other side of the debate due to the censorship of skeptical views, and they always seem a little shocked to find that not everyone has drunk the CAGW Kool Aid.
KR said February 7, 2011 at 10:44 am “OK, then – I guess you wouldn’t mind doubling the amount of mercury in your fish sticks, then? After all, it’s only a couple of parts per million? Just a trace element? And would anyone like a few ppm of cyanide as a side dish? /sarcasm
I get very tired of the “it’s only a trace gas” arguments. A doubling will change things significantly if what’s doubling is one of the few relevant chemicals present.
KB, Mercury comes from earth, just like diamonds & coal . . . . just like everything else except astroids . . .
We don’t swallow stuff like peach pits on purpose . . .
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=cyanide+peach+pits&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C10&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
We boil or clean our water, unless you happen to live by and have access to a spring . . .
Heck, with that attitude you would get rid of fish because they ‘poop’ in that place . . .
Laurie Bowen – I’ve read through your last post several times, and it’s left me scratching my head; there’s absolutely nothing of relevance to the effects of doubling trace chemicals in it.
Methinks you are trying to change the subject.
Smokey
I could apply your quote to any number of other people…
“
WheelsOC’sSmokey’s post above is a prime example of the skewed view of reality that results from spending one’s time in a climatealarmistskeptic echo chamber, soaking up nonsense passed off as facts. Those poor souls don’t hear the other side of the debate due to thecensorshipself-censorship ofskepticalscientific views, and they always seem a little shocked to find that not everyone has drunk theCAGWskeptic/denial Kool Aid.”Spencer needs to propose a testable hypothesis to be taken seriously, one with predictions that can be checked against the data, and which can be shown to be consistent or inconsistent with that data. Barring that, he’s talking about leprechauns.
KR says:
February 7, 2011 at 1:09 pm “Methinks you are trying to change the subject.”
Change the subject from what to what KR?? . . . . if you swallow a peach pit you might choke to death, but you are probably not going to die from something that is naturally occurring in trace amount . . . If you want to worry about some parts per million fine. . . but it is not a earth shaking, life changing, world suffering, something we should freak about event . . .
I could see if O2 increased or decreased 20% , effectively lowering O2 to approx 16% of air or raising it to 24% of air . . . regardless of the cause . . . then I would be concerned . . .
The whole AGW man made climate change thing, is/was/and always will be a tax scheme . . . . Gee, ever read the Old testaments, (I think Isiah) where he complains about the ‘clergy’ blaming FALL on the sins of ‘hue’mans to effect more tithes . . . .
“Methinks, you don’t think much”
Not so simple. A parallel can be drawn with biology: the theory of evolution does not need any work done to “prove” that it works and is a real factor in biology that must be taken into account. There is still work to be done to explain how it applies to and explains certain observations such as what mechanism(s) drove the origin and success of sexual reproduction. But we don’t have to constantly prove that sex evolved at this point. Indeed, if some “skeptic” maintained that it’s wrong to assume that sex evolved in the first place, that skeptic would need evidence to support their position with evidence that it didn’t. By your argument, any “skeptic” of evolution (whether about the origin of sex or the origin of species) would simply be able to sit back and say “Nope, evolution isn’t proven yet, prove it to me or my null hypothesis wins!” The “null hypothesis” in this case doesn’t explain the origin of sex or the origin of species, in fact it doesn’t explain anything.
That’s why failing to disprove the null hypothesis is not enough to establish a position, even if we didn’t already have papers that do what he asks (we do, check out Meehl et al. 2004 for example). At this point one has to assemble the evidence that anthropogenic activities are NOT changing the climate as predicted.
Regarding the Holocene, I hope you’re not referring again to Easterbrook’s blunderings. I remember trying to reason with you in that thread and failing to get through.
As to Lindzen’s essay claiming that CO2 hasn’t driven the temperature up to expectations, he totally ignores the role of aerosols without rigorously justifying their exclusion, as well as ignoring the lag in temperature rising compared to forcings due to thermal inertia. He’s been corrected on this latter issue by his peers more than once. He even cites his and Choi’s 2009 paper, which has been pretty well demolished (even Dr. Spencer gave it a smack). This is not even passable, and definitely not peer-reviewed work of the kind that would be needed to disprove AGW. It wouldn’t satisfy Spencer’s requirements if it were offered to him under the reverse of his challenge.
From Wikipedia:
“The null hypothesis typically corresponds to a general or default position. For example, there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or a potential treatment has no effect… It is typically paired with a second hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis, which asserts a particular relationship between the phenomena.”
In other words, two outcomes, a default and an alternative, with statistical testing of the data to see which outcome is supported by that data.
It really doesn’t matter which is the default and which is the alternative for the purposes of statistical analysis – you can flip a coin for that. What does matter is that both make testable predictions so that you can determine which one is supported by the data.
WheelsOC says:
February 7, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Not so simple. A parallel can be drawn with biology: the theory of evolution does not need any work done to “prove” that it works and is a real factor in biology that must be taken into account. There is still work to be done to explain how it applies to and explains certain observations such as what mechanism(s) drove the origin and success of sexual reproduction.
The theory of evolution does have some evidence to support it. Dr Spencer has provided evidence in support of his alternative theory to co2 causing climate change and should be given some respect also. The theory of man made climate change is weaker than the theory of evolution; at least in biology they have real science to do when the public takes no notice of them. When your science is simply to prophesy doom what can you do when the public loses interest in what you have to say, as they are doing now.
KR says:
February 7, 2011 at 6:09 am
D-O events are clear evidence of a phase transition, a sudden offset in climate behavior. Best educated guesses – not firmly established yet – are that they (and likely Heinrich events, too) occur due to a redirection of the North Atlantic circulation.
And what would cause such a circulation change? Well, some base variable changing over a range from stable for one state to instability to stable for the other state of circulation. A base variable such as temperature, total ice mass/instability, etc.
What don’t you understand when I say I don’t care what causes them, except as CO2 relates to them? How many times do I have to say it? Are you deliberately avoiding answering me properly?
If, in the spring, I see a large icicle break off and fall, I can’t claim that’s not due to warming because it was too sudden.
? Who in their right mind would? Why are you avoiding giving me proof that CO2 ‘feedback’ drives global warming? Because you haven’t any?
A question for you, because at this point in the discussion it’s a bit hard for me to tell: “I’m (Myrrh) asking you for proof on two specific and as yet unproven AGW assumptions which you keep meming” Would you mind telling me which two items you are asking about?
Certainly.
1 Prove that there is this mechanism ‘feedback’ by CO2 which has driven temperature changes in the past through all our global glacials and interglacials for hundreds of thousands of years in our Ice Age.
[When all data show it to be totally and utterly irrelevant. Because, it is always seen to lag behind temperature changes and by so many hundreds of years that the only explanation in AGW for CO2 driving such changes is by magic, they call it ‘feedback’.]
2 Prove that the causes of all these changes, both gradual and dramatic, have stopped, and that CO2 is now the only driver.
[The AGW meme that you are pushing here, is that there is nothing else to explain our current warmth, therefore, you need to prove that all the causes of these great climate changes from glacial to interglacial and back again around every 100,000 years, repeating and often rapid and dramatic warming in decades, are no longer going on; prove that they have stopped.]
Do you understand what I’m asking for?
Unless you can give conclusive proof, heck, now I’d settle for a logical, note logical, hypothesis, then YOU CANNOT IN REAL SCIENCE keep repeating these assumption memes claiming it comes from real science. Do you see the problem I have with your claims here? They’re nonsense.
As I’ve said before, I often get the impression that AGW’s are simply repeating something they’ve been led to believe is basic fact, when they’ve never actually stopped to examine any of the AGW claims. They simply assume such are facts because they’ve been told they are ‘well known science’. But if one actually takes the time to stop and think about what these claims are saying, the only, only, conclusion one can come to, is that that they don’t make any sense.
We have ‘magic’ CO2 unchanged and having no affect on the climate for thousands of years staying the same for a great many hundreds of years AFTER OTHER CAUSES have driven global temperatures into massive warming to take us out of the ICE AGE we’re in and into Global Warming Interglacials.
These interglacials are the REAL global warming in our climate cycles. Temperatures REALLY rose many many degrees. Gazillions tons of ice mile plus deep weighing down land masses REALLY melted. Sea levels REALLY rose hundreds of feet.
This is what we mean by Climate Change. We’re in it.
AGW can offer no proof, not even a reasonable argument, that this has stopped or that CO2 has anything to do with it.
It’s just like an urban myth gone viral. When you’ve seen it for what it is, nonsense, have a look at the other claims of ‘AGW basic well known science assumptions’..
My favourite is ‘that CO2 stays up in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years accumulating’…
Oh, re your D-O having no effect on the Southern Hemisphere. The research on how our global climate changed and what happened in these changes locally is very much on-going. There’s research showing the Antarctic ice was far greater in extent, for example, and that the monsoon came much further South in interglacials. When you’re no longer using the information we are gleaning from natural science’s explorations to prove the unprovable AGW dogma, you’ll be able to enjoy it for what it is, for the knowledge it gives us.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data3.html
“Even though Heinrich and D-O events seem to have been initiated in the North Atlantic, they had a global footprint. …During cold phases in the North Atlantic large regions of North American and Eurasia became colder and drier. A southward shift of the tropical rain belt mostened many parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Antarctic ice cores show warming, consistent with a reduction of northward heat transport from the Southern Hemisphere.”
Neither KR nor WheelsOC yet understands the concept of the null hypothesis. KR writes as if the “data” he refers to is actual raw data. In fact, it is almost entirely massaged, “adjusted”, and beaten into submission. But try to get the metadata used to manipulate the data; good luck with that.
And the testable hypothesis is: CO2=CAGW, not the null hypothesis, which is the real world data against which alternative hypotheses are tested. It’s astonishing that the alarmist crowd is still unable to get the fact that skeptics have nothing to prove. They really are dense on that point.
As a true skeptic I have to laugh at the convoluted attempts to deal with the long-accepted climate null hypothesis of natural climate variability, which has been around long before the UN/IPCC. Or the UN, for that matter.
Every climate cycle we currently observe is no different than past cycles. Occam’s Razor tells us to take the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation is that the exact same climate cycles have occurred throughout the Holocene, and are still occurring. Nothing is any different today.
Where is the catastrophic global warming?? The fact is that it simply doesn’t exist – except in the fevered imaginations of the Climate Cult of Doom. Skeptics look at the climate cycles and ask, “Where’s the beef?” While alarmists look at natural variability and see looming catastrophe – and always avoid asking themselves why their decades-old CAGW predictions have never panned out.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance explains it: the
flying saucerrunaway global warming didn’t arrive on schedule. But that doesn’t mean there is noflying saucerrunaway global warming. It will be here pretty soon, just you wait and see.☺Myrrh – Thank you, now I can formulate a response to your issues.
“Prove that there is this mechanism ‘feedback’ by CO2 which has driven temperature changes in the past through all our global glacials and interglacials for hundreds of thousands of years in our Ice Age” – Strawman argument – I very clearly did not say that. As I have stated repeatedly, CO2 did not drive the glacial cycles, but simply amplified them. A bit ‘o warming occurred, oceans gave up some CO2 (500 year delay, as stated), water vapor, albedo, cloud feedback occur, some more warming occurred, some more CO2, albedo, water vapor, until the positive feedback damped out. When insolation decreased, CO2, water vapor, albedo also changed, amplifying the 3.4 W/m^2 insolation change.
“Prove that the causes of all these changes, both gradual and dramatic, have stopped, and that CO2 is now the only driver.” – Another strawman. Take a look at IPCC AR4 Section 2.1 (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html), or a good overview here (http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-is-not-the-only-driver-of-climate-intermediate.htm), and a good set of graphs here (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/). We know (within some limits) what forcings drove the last few glacial cycles, and we know where those forcings are now – we should be slowly cooling based upon the natural forcings. CO2 is a large, but by no means the only, driver of climate now. It just happens to be the largest warming influence at the moment due to the 29GT of CO2 we pump out each year.
CO2 isn’t “unchanged” – it’s 100 ppm above where it’s been for the last half million years, over 1/3 higher. Now it’s a forcing, not a feedback, because of us. 29GT of CO2/year is _not_ chump change.
—
Smokey – I have never stated “C”AGW. That’s (Catastrophe) a skeptic meme, intended to make the issue seem silly. You brought it up, I did not – it’s just a strawman argument.
Not that it isn’t serious. If you really care about the environment (which I have seen no evidence for), take a look at this – http://player
And then try to dismiss the 20 different threads of evidence with “alarmist memes”.
Smokey – Climate variability is such that we need about 30 years of data to identify trends; mostly due to the ENSO and other oscillatory effects.
Climate trends of 30 years or so length average out such variability, and provide statistically significant trend measurements.
We know what the ENSO cycles are like, the Arctic Oscillation, etc. Spencer has proposed “natural cycles” without actually defining what cycles he means – and that is not a null hypothesis, it’s leprechauns.
Until Spencer defines which cycles, the cycle lengths, where he sees them in the temperature record, and how to check whether _they are actually the cause_, a disprovable hypothesis – he’s not doing science.
We’re currently warming an order of magnitude faster than anything in the historic record, short of (possibly) the PETM event. And I hope we’re not going through one of those! We have absolutely no record of such global warming anywhere in our temperature records. And the historic forcings that drove the climate cycle are moving in a cooling direction, not a warming direction.
It’s not a natural cycle, no matter how much you seem to wish it to be. The evidence simply contradicts that.
>>
KR says:
February 6, 2011 at 7:05 pm
We’re warming at about the rate we should expect . . . this discusses two recent claims regarding very fast and very slow warming).
<<
This is wishful thinking. As I said earlier, the required atmospheric warming is missing. This means that rising surface temperature (assuming there is a surface warming) and rising CO2 levels are just coincidental.
As for your AWG beliefs, I’m reminded of that Sidney Harris cartoon where in the middle a miracle occurs.
Jim
KR,
You are so wrong on your supposed facts that it would take more time than I’m willing to spend getting you up to speed. I suggeat reading the WUWT archives, instead of wasting your time in the realclimate echo chamber.
You say: “We’re currently warming an order of magnitude faster than anything in the historic record, short of (possibly) the PETM event. And I hope we’re not going through one of those! We have absolutely no record of such global warming anywhere in our temperature records.”
That is flat wrong. Where do you get your misinformation?? Alley shows that temperatures have increased 15°C in only a decade. And don’t pass on the horse manure that this is only regional. Other ice cores show similar rapid rises – charts on request.
Temperatures have been significantly higher throughout the Holocene. Current temperatures are anything but “unprecedented.” One of the best charts showing the Holocene is this simple chart of Vostok ice cores. It clearly shows that we are presently near the Holocene average.
“Runaway global warming” is just a scare tactic promoted by climate alarmists. And you still fail to understand the concept of the null hypothesis. It is the record of past climate variability, against which any alternative hypothesis such as CO2=CAGW must be tested.
The null is a function of the scientific method, which you also have trouble understanding; for the umpteenth time: skeptics have nothing to prove.
There is no difference between current and past natural variability, thus falsifying the failed CO2=CAGW conjecture. The climate null hypothesis has been in continuous use for over a century. Trenberth doesn’t like the obvious implications, so he wants to throw out the long-accepted null hypothesis, and replace it with his own personal cherry-picked “null hypothesis.” That, more than anything, shows that the CO2=CAGW canard is on the ropes. It’s taken four or five torpedoes, and it’s going down.
CO2 is a harmless and beneficial trace gas that is essential to life. More is better. And the climate is acting completely normally, despite the red faced, spittle-flecked arm waving of the CAGW crowd.
I’ve always been rather bemused by the “skeptic” attitudes on this topic.
Understanding the causes, issues, and potential implications of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) involves understanding at least some of the physics, looking at the last 150 years (since that’s when the enhanced greenhouse effect was first described) of science, the >95% consensus of people working in the field, and the data we’ve collected on forcings, our own economic activities, etc. The conclusions are that we’ve had a considerable effect on global temperatures, especially over the last 50 years, and that we haven’t seen all of the effects yet due to thermal inertia. Climate variability is certainly present, which is why ~30 year running averages are necessary to look at trends rather than weather, but we have good records of the various forcings affecting the climate (including Holocene variations), and right now a major one is CO2.
Personally, I have experience and training in radiative exchanges, spectroscopy, statistics, and even a philosophy degree emphasizing the philosophy of science. The data holds up.
The “skeptic” point of view seems to require that for some reason thousands of scientists across the world (who make their reputations by being more correct about reality than their colleagues) over the last 50-100 years have been involved in a massive conspiracy, systematically distorting records of: air, ocean, and satellite temperatures, ocean acidity, coral reef health, spectrometry, etc., all for some sort of vague “one world government” control or economic extortion goal. That all of us are being hoodwinked by the agreement of every science association on the planet. That the opinions of a very few people with science credentials – many of whom with ideological axes to grind, strong ties to energy industries making money in “business as usual”, and/or whose science has repeatedly been criticized for cherry-picked data and bad logic – that those few loners and emeritus professors expressing often contradictory opinions outside their field are sole purveyors of The Truth and our protection from the dern revenuers!
I hate to say this, but belief in massive conspiracy theories seems more than a little over the top. Applying Occams razor of the simplest explanation to (A) a century of data and consistent theory versus a (B) century of secretive conspiracy, and I’ll take the data and consistent explanations.
I’ve spent enough time in the skeptic echo box for a while, folks – time to get some other things done. Enjoy.
KR has drunk the CAGW Kool Aid, and is reduced to making appeals to his own authority.
There is no difference in the climate between now and the past 10,000 years, despite a rather large increase in CO2. Obviously, if there is no measurable difference, then CO2 cannot be nearly the actor KR believes it to be. Whatever warming it may cause is insignificant. <— [that ia a real world observation, while KR gives us “what ifs”.]
Finally, most of KR’s “thousands” of un-named putative scientists know very well that the CO2 scare is trumped up in order to generate the $billions in taxpayer dollars shoveled out every year for “climate studies.” As evidence, note the many scientists who have changed their runaway global warming views 180° after they retired, and can now speak their minds without fear of reprisal.
Contrast KR’s fictional “thousands” with the more than 31,000 – including over 9,000 PhD’s – who have co-signed the following statement:
When tens of thousands of scientists state categorically in writing that there is no convincing scientific evidence that GHG’s are a problem, that carries plenty of weight. And all the self-serving statements of alarmists amount to only a small fraction of that number. Observe the real consensus, my friend. It’s on the side of rational skeptics.
Oh, yes, we certainly not forget the Oregon Petition! (http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/what-if-the-oregon-petition-names-were-real/)
Certainly the opinions of thousands (social scientists) of (dentists) with (forestry managers, engineers) advanced (MD’s) degrees (veterinarians), and a very few (~40? 50?) climate scientists (many of whom withdrew their names when they figured out what was going on) who signed a petition postcard about catastrophic climate change, accompanied by an article fraudulently formatted as an National Academy of Science publication, and distributed by F. Seitz, science gun for hire (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz) should be considered – 31,000 people, representing 0.3% of the people of science grads, and almost none of the people who actually do climate research (http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project-intermediate.htm).
On the other hand…
The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) was also surveyed, and 84% of AAAS respondents (not counting any other organizations) felt that “warming is due to human activity” compared to only 10% who felt that “warming is due to natural causes.” The AAAS has 10 million members, so 8.4 million. Of that 84% there are roughly 6000 working climatologists in agreement (as opposed to the perhaps 40-50 in the OP postcard survey). Those climatologists actively publishing, actually studying the data, agree at 97% (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf).
If you want to play with the numbers and consensus, Smokey, consider some of those.
KR,
How do I get the 3 – 4 minutes of my life back that I wasted reading that ridiculous greenfyre opinion piece? What a waste of pixels. The only thing it tells me is that the alarmist contingent is desperately trying to discredit the OISM Petition signers by implying that they aren’t real. The fact that KR would even post such hogwash is embarassing.
What is even more embarassing is the low caliber of those who hold the CAGW view. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the difference between qualified scientists and the clowns making CAGW noises.
When you can’t attack the science, attack the source… KR cannot refute the plain facts stated in the Petition: there is no evidence that any global harm has occurred as a result of the large increase in beneficial CO2. And linking to a blog run by a professional cartoonist does nothing to enhance KR’s credibility, which is further degraded by his provably false claim that “8.4 million members” of the AAAS are in agreement with Catastrophic AGW globaloney. I challenge KR to produce those names and signatures, as I have here. Put up or shut up. Let’s see those names.
KR said February 7, 2011 at 8:53 pm
‘We have absolutely no record of such global warming anywhere in our temperature records.’
KR, Just a question of clarification of your above statement. Does that mean that there has been no such global warming in our climate history? As for me, I am of the opinion that it is one of the problems with ice core analysis. . . . If there is warming, the ice would melt, leaving no evidence in that area of what becomes the core.
Smokey – http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html for the survey. Certainly some debate over the range of results, but the vast majority agree that we’re seeing human-caused global warming.
This includes this interesting tidbit: ‘Five percent of climate scientists say they have been pressured by public officials or government agencies to “deny, minimize or discount evidence of human-induced global warming,” Three percent say they have been pressured by funders, and two percent perceived pressure from supervisors at work.’ Hmmm… doesn’t sound like a government conspiracy to _promote_ AGW science to me… very much the opposite, a consistent effort by multiple people to deny global warming.
I’ve posted multiple links to CO2 effects, the radiological profiles (reduction in emissivity due to GHS’s, leading to higher temperatures for the same outgoing power as per the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) can be dug out in 5 minutes with Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissivity, http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm, and especially http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap7.html – see the notches in outgoing radiation) – I’m done here for a while. Do your own homework.
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KR,
For both of my regular readers, I would like to point out that your poll is from 2007, and attitudes have changed mightily since Climategate exploded the myth that climate scientists – specifically, the Mann clique and its followers – are acting ethically. Those naive days are gone for good.
I note that an almost equal number of scientista in that poll reported being pressured by NGO’s and QUANGOS to push CAGW. Funny how KR missed that. And those NGOs shovel more money out to alarmist scientists by far.
With the U.S. government officially pushing the wild-eyed belief that CO2 is a “pollutant,” and with the $multi-billions going into government climate grants every year, there is ample motive to lie about runaway global warming. Anyone who believes that Kevin Trenberth and Michael Mann are telling the truth is a credulous fool. They deliberately lie for money and status.
But where is that endlessly predicted runaway global warming? It is nowhere to be found. Planet Earth is not being affected by the rise in CO2, except for increased food production. There is no global harm from CO2. The desperate attempts by the globaloney contingent to link Egyptian riots to AGW are typical of the climate BS being shoveled.
So we can believe those who get paid big bucks, and who are sent on extravagant publicly funded vacations. Or we can believe our lyin’ eyes – and Planet Earth. I believe Planet Earth is telling us the truth: nothing unusual is happening. Nothing.
Where is that constantly predicted, but never found runaway global warming, eh?