Exploring different views on climate change
Goal of ClimateDialogue.org
ClimateDialogue.org offers a platform for discussions between invited climate scientists on important climate topics that have been subject to scientific and public debate. The goal of the platform is to explore the full range of views currently held by scientists by inviting experts with different views on the topic of discussion. We encourage the invited scientists to formulate their own personal scientific views; they are not asked to act as representatives for any particular group in the climate debate.
Obviously, there are many excellent blogs that facilitate discussions between climate experts, but as the climate debate is highly polarized and politicized, blog discussions between experts with opposing views are rare.
Background
The discovery, early 2010, of a number of errors in the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report on climate impacts (Working Group II), led to a review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC by the InterAcademy Council (IAC). The IAC-report triggered a debate in the Dutch Parliament about the reliability of climate science in general. Based on the IAC-recommendation that ‘the full range of views’ should be covered in the IPCC-reports, Parliament asked the Dutch government ‘to also involve climate skeptics in future studies on climate change’.
In response, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment announced a number of projects that are aimed to increase this involvement. Climate Dialogue is one of these projects.
Topics
We are starting Climate Dialogue with a discussion on the causes of the decline of the Arctic Sea Ice, and the question to what extent this decline can be explained by global warming. Also, the projected timing of the first year that the Arctic will be ice free will be discussed. With respect to the latter, in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, IPCC anticipated that (near) ice free conditions might occur by the end of this century. Since then, several studies have indicated this could be between 2030-2050, or even earlier.
We invited three experts to take part in the discussion: Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Walt Meier, research scientist at the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado; and Ron Lindsay, Senior Principal Physicist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Future topics that will be discussed include: climate sensitivity, sea level rise, urban heat island-effects, the value of comprehensive climate models, ocean heat storage, and the warming trend over the past few decades.
Our format
Each discussion will be kicked off by a short introduction written by the editorial staff, followed by a guest blog by two or more invited scientists. The scientists will start the discussion by responding to each other’s arguments. It is not the goal of Climate Dialogue to reach a consensus, but to stimulate the discussion and to make clear what the discussants agree or disagree on and why.
To round off the discussion on a particular topic, the Climate Dialogue editor will write a summary, describing the areas of agreement and disagreement between the discussants. The participants will be asked to approve this final article, the discussion between the experts on that topic will then be closed and the editorial board will open a new discussion on a different topic.
The public (including other climate scientists) is also free to comment, but for practical reasons these comments will be shown separately.
The project organization consists of an editorial staff of three people and an advisory board of seven people, all of whom are based in the Netherlands. The editorial staff is concerned with the day-to-day operation of researching topics, finding participants for the discussion and moderating the discussions between the experts. The main task of the advisory board is to guard the neutrality of the platform and to advise the editorial staff about its activities
Editorial Staff
Project leader is Rob van Dorland of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). Van Dorland is a senior scientist and climate advisor in the Climate Services section and is often operating at the interface between science and society.
The second member is Bart Strengers. He is a climate policy analyst and modeler in the IMAGE-project at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and has been involved in the discussion with climate skeptics for many years.
The third member is Marcel Crok, an investigative science writer, who published a critical book (in Dutch) about the climate debate.
Questions
We welcome comments on this blog and are happy to answer any questions regarding this project. You can send an email to info [at] climatedialogue [dot] org.
Website: ClimateDialogue.org
Jim Cripwell said “I dont think Climate Dialogue will be any more than a pale imitation of RealClimate.”
I’ll return to that in a minute. He also said that he posted one or more comments there, and when I visited I saw comments referring to his comments. But his comments seemed to have disappeared (or did my eyes just not see them?). WUWT? Does this mean that censorship at ClimateDialogue is going to be severe, like at RealClimate and others?
On reflection, I agree with others that the site chose a very bad starting topic: Arctic ice. Because, this is about the only proxy for global warming just now that the alarmists have something to give them cheer. So if ClimateDialogue is hoping to be unbiased, they should have started with a more neutral topic, such as “how can we best explain the global temperature fluctuations of the last 100 years?” – plenty of grist for both sides there.
To conclude, I think it will be a scintillating imitation of RealClimate 🙂 But it will be interesting to see how it progresses.
Rich.
RACookPE1978 says:
November 16, 2012 at 8:23 pm
absolutely! The facts and scientific ‘proof’ of those facts should indeed be binary (i.e. proven or not proven) before any subsequent discussion and usage of subsequential effects of those facts.
FWIW I think any new discussion must start from a completely blank page – in the context of the first article – Arctic Ice – the headline/posit should be something like ‘Arctic Sea Ice is seen to vary – why?’ (note, with no mention of AGW!)
so straightaway, we have started in a neutral position. The discussion should then be ‘led’ by the experts in a constructive and meaningful way: such as:
X et al, observed sea temperature variations in area A which seem to correspond to the variations in sea ice. Hence, X et al, believe warmer waters into Area A are causing increased icemelt or slower ice formation…etc, etc.
This could then be discussed and validated as correct (if indeed so!), tied in with some other work/observations and hopefully, in the end, we would be able to state as FACT – that sea temp variation causes some ice loss due to some sea current or other!
then they would move onto another set of observations: e.g
Y et al, observed a low pressure system which led to apparent break up of weak ice and reduced extent…etc, etc Again, the end result being that Arctic storms will cause increased sea ice loss.
Z et al, have observed ‘dirty’ ice and conclude that when air currents deposit soot on certain areas, increased ice melts, etc, etc…
a slow process I admit – but in order to satisfy the skeptics and alarmists alike – this is fundementally necessary. (this was really the remit of the IPCC, was it not? – to look into the science and report back! – but we know how that turned out!)
this is really the only way to build up a selection or list of scientific accepted FACTS (backed by scientific EVIDENCE, not consensus!) without introduction of confirmation bias.
From said list, one can then start to decide which FACTS are likely to be human induced/affected or natural, or indeed a combination of both! and thence onto discussing the SCALE of any suspected human influence (this is fundemental – it’s no good simply deciding that dirty snow is human induced, but to have previously concluded that it only causes about 0.5% of any extra melt, whereas the warm sea water causes 90% of the extra melt!) Again, this really should have been the objective of the IPCC !
It follows that given the large magnitude of such a task – this will likely not be done – instead, it is more likely that stuff will be slapped on the table and accepted as ‘read’ without full ‘proof’ to a reasonable scientific level of rigour.
It also follows that, as facts lead onto to other queries, the cause and effect ‘line’ has to be followed backwards. So, in the case of the warm sea currents, the next issue would be ‘warm sea currents are seen to vary – why?’ – etc, etc.
Now, I don’t doubt that at each stage of constructing these scientific facts, there will be an option to have an anthropogenic element, and in many cases it will be genuine – but we still have to return to the scale issue, whereby the determination of the ratio of human/natural variation is reasonably well assessed.
I personally don’t believe in the alleged magnitude of the various human induced effects on the actual climate – but I do accept that there may well be some. The alarmism that blows up the anthropogenic content out of all proportion (hence the alarm!) is where scientific application is needed to obtain some ‘quantification’ and that cannot be done from a biased position.
The CAGW alarmists have had it easy – being able to ‘tag’ any works with the CO2 meme – but without any real direct proof or quantification (certainly relative to known natuiral variation) and just holding up a Mauna Loa CO2 graph as evidence!!
Seems like another forum to accommodate those with an inate propensity for involuntary micturation.
Yawwwwn…………….
Without a baseline of what is ‘normal’ for arctic ice, the discussion of cause, natural/anthro, is ridiculous. If this is their approach, there is nothing worth seeing there.
This is a Netherlands BEST project. While the parliament has had the right idea, the implementation is of the type where the questions in discussion already assume the answers as in:
“How much does Global Warming affect the Netherlander parsimony with money?”
Unfortunately, this is to be expected – the framers of the first debate doubtless thought that they were going out on a ‘denier’ limb as being steeped in ‘green’ religion almost from birth anthropogenic global warming is to them as real as the sky being blue. It is a sine qua non so why even debate _that_ part? Thus totally missing the point of the debate.
But all this is as nothing compared to the unqualified use of the term “global warming”. “Global Warming” has unfortunately succumbed to the determined and deliberate distortion of language by CAGW campaigners. “Global Warming” now means “man-made global warming”, “climate change” now means “man-made climate change”, the “climate” in “climate sceptic” doesn’t mean “climate” at all, “carbon” means “carbon dioxide”, “emissions” means “carbon dioxide emissions”, “clean” means “does not emit carbon dioxide”.
Thank you Mike Jonas. If we allow the term “global warming” to become synonymous with “man-made” global warming, then there is nothing left to debate. Or are skeptics supposed to start using the term “natural” global warming? Language matters.
Presently there is no proper explanation why Arctic sea ice grows and diminishes annually as a consequence of the orbital behavior of the planet or better still,the annual global fluctuations in latitudinal temperatures known as the ‘seasons’ rely on two separate rotations to the Sun which can be verified immediately.
The tendency of readers is to throw good information after bad rather than expand views in certain areas of streamline other areas and there is nothing like actual observations to drive interpretation as opposed to graphs and other non visual data.
This issue will be lost at the high school level or younger as a generation has now grown up with well meaning teachers mixing pollution with global climate even while planetary climate has yet to be defined properly.Throwing around graphs and wild assertions at the peer review level may entertain academics who travel in those circles but without the fundamentals of climate understood at a level students understand these things,a tragedy can be avoided.
Something else is happening in the Netherlands. Does anyone know anything about this development? Is it likely to become a big deal?
A new Dutch book written by ‘the climate-lawyer’ Roger H.J. Cox has sparked a lawsuit being filed against the Dutch government, claiming that the Netherlands is under a legal obligation to reduce its CO2 emissions by as much as 40% by 2020 and up to 95% by 2050.
The book provided not only the impetus but a blueprint for such lawsuits, and a call for similar suits to be levied against many other Western nations.
The book is backed by world-renowned American climate scientist James Hansen, who was the first to receive an English translation of the work at the book’s launch in The Hague.
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/11/17/new-book-sparks-climate-suit-against-the-netherlands/
MattS says:
November 16, 2012 at 7:08 pm
They censor comments over there no point in pointing out the massive failure that they are when at best it will be posted in the “borehole”.
Dennis Nikols says:
November 16, 2012 at 7:48 pm
I hate when people use this argument most of all involving freedom or science. In both the only answer is the extreme of freedom and science. “Balance” is merely a subjective perspective used to prevent sanity. Your statement is is best remodeled as such “Nazi’s want to put all the jews in ovens, jews want to be freedom. We will put the jews in camps but not kill them. Neither extreme is happy so it must be good.”
The EU signed the Kyoto accords. Then the EU made it into a directive. So technically this is correct. Practically it’s a non starter ofcourse.
temp,
“They censor comments over there no point in pointing out the massive failure that they are when at best it will be posted in the “borehole”.”
Evidence for this?
Poptech says:
November 16, 2012 at 7:10 pm
“Mick J, I was compiling quotes like those some time ago relating to the Holocaust.
You might find this helpful,”
Noted, thanks.
MattS says:
November 17, 2012 at 9:34 am
Have you been there? If you were you would see that it is censored. Also I posted the comment policy above which says they censor. Note post temp says: November 16, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Thanks Anthony for posting our guest blog and thanks for all the feedback. It’s obvious that when you start a new project in the highly polarized global warming debate you cannot satisfy everyone.
I saw many comments saying this is a step in the right direction. This is how I also see it. I remember that after climategate Jerome Ravetz organised a conference in Lisbon for which he invited both mainstream and skeptical scientists. The main question at this conference was how we could get the different ‘camps’ back at the table. Talking about the science itself was a step too far at that time, thought the organisers. Now hopefully we can make the next step and start talking about the science.
Why Arctic sea ice as the first topic? The main reason is that this was recently in the news with the 2012 new record low. The same applies for the lack of warming in the last 15 years. This will be another topic that we are going to discuss soon.
People should realise that this whole approach (discussing (controversial) scientific topics with scientists having a range of views) seems very logical, but as far as we know the platform we are now setting up hasn’t been tried before, neither in climate or any other field (if you know of one please let us know, we could learn a lot from it). So we feel like pioneers this week.
We decided in advance to seperate the comments of the invited (expert) scientists from the other (public) comments. But the first day already we realised we needed a third category, off-topic comments. Over a RealClimate somebody already suggested we should add a fourth category, where we can upgrade comments from wel known climate scientists that now end up in the public comments to a category “spontaneous expert comments”. This of course raises new problems, because which comments are you going to upgrade? So we now bring an interesting comment to the attention of the invited scientists and ask them to react on it.
Several people here asked why we didn’t include Antarctica in our first topic. Overall we are talking about global warming in our introductory article. I now agree that the term ‘global warming’ in our article was not well chosen. The three invited scientists know what we mean by it of course (warming due to greenhouse gases) but it’s much better to be precise. It should be possible to ask scientists what evidence there is that the current decline of Arctic sea ice is (partly) caused by greenhouse forcing. The Arctic and Antarctic are two totally different areas, so it seemed not prudent to treat them in one discussion. We already see how broad the discussion about the Arctic has become. So we’re thinking about making future topics even more narrowly focused (e.g. how much is Greenland melting and what are the causes?)
Then the discussants. Jim Cripwell complained a lot about there not being a real skeptic. I explained him that we spent quite some time finding scientists who have published in the peer reviewed literature and who have a skeptical viewpoint. Judith Curry is quite skeptical (about models, about attribution) and she published quite a few papers about the Arctic sea ice. I am open to any suggestions who we might have missed. We received the same criticism from the more ‘alarmist’ side. Why didn’t we ask Peter Wadhams. The funny thing is that we did ask Peter Wadhams and he agreed to participate early on. But unfortunately when the deadline came closer, he was too busy and in the end couldn’t make it.
So for the first topic I am really happy with Judith Curry, Walt Meier (one of the reasons I asked him is that I knew he has contributed to discussions at WUWT in the past, so he is willing to discuss with ‘opponents’) and Ron Lindsay. Discussions so far are constructive and this is also one of our goals, to organise a constructive dialogue between scientists with opposing views.
One final remark about the moderation. Moderation is done by a scientist of KNMI. This was decided by the Dutch government. In practice this means we are not (yet) a 24/7 blog like WUWT. This means that sometimes it can take quite some time before your comment is approved. This is a disadvantage, but on the other hand, we discuss one topic for maybe several weeks and in this period quality is more important than speed and quantity.
Thanks again for all the feedback. I have noticed that many WUWT readers have visited our site and have made comments there as well. We take all suggestions seriously and will try to improve the format every day,
Marcel Crok, science writer
Editorial staff of ClimateDialogue.org
Marcel Crok,
To be honest, you need to allow skeptical scientists to choose their own representative. It taints the process when a blog like ClimateDialogue presumes to select someone to represent skeptics, because that person in reality represents the one who selects him or her.
This is a recurring problem. I suggest that you do it in an honest way, and ask a group of well known scientists such as Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Watts, and other like-minded individuals to provide a list of names names to represent the skeptical point of view. Because if the selection is made by ClimateDialogue, it will of course lack legitimacy.
Either ClimateDialogue wants an honest debate, or they want to stack the deck. Which will it be?
Marcel Crok says:
November 17, 2012 at 12:07 p
There are some very basic assumptions that have yet to be determined in the atmospheric sciences. This is first and foremost of the scientific method and remains undetermined. Any discussion beyond that is useless. Some shark jumping is occurring in your “discussion”.
Marcel Crok – Thanks for your constructive comment. Much of it will resonate here, and although much of it will be regarded with (very healthy) scepticism, the sentence which most hits the target is “Talking about the science itself was a step too far at that time, thought the organisers. Now hopefully we can make the next step and start talking about the science.“. Those of us – and there are many – who can see that the IPCC report is a biased load of pseudo-science have been dismayed to find that the scientists who support it refuse to debate the science with sceptics, with few exceptions. If you can genuinely achieve this, then you will be doing the world a great service.
Just as you now recognise that the use of the term “global warming” was not well chosen, hopefully you will also recognise that a lot of what you set out with had the assumption built into it that the IPCC report was correct. It is hard to step back and look at everything with the new assumption that the IPCC report might be wrong, but IMHO that is what you have to do in order to have credibility.
One more point – Judith Curry is a very capable commenter, and has spent a lot of time highlighting the uncertainties in the IPCC report and in mainstream climate science, but is regarded by many here as being very “middle ground”. Please can you consult with Anthony Watts in future on who would be suitable to put the sceptical case for future topics.
You seem to be taking a lot of advice from Gavin Schmidt (RealClimate). That is asking the fox what is best for the hens. Please, when seeking advice, can you also consult Anthony Watts.
Sorry to sound rather negative, but I repeat – thanks for your constructive comment. I will follow climatedialogue.org with interest.
Clarification – I didn’t mean that Judith Curry should not be commenting at climatedialodue.org, rather that when choosing three scientists, it would be appropriate to have one supporter of the IPCC position, one sceptical scientist, and Judith Curry as the third in the middle ground. I think that in this role, Judith could provide good continuity and hold the whole dialogue together very well.
See – owe to Rich – “He [Jim Cripwell] also said that he posted one or more comments there [climatedialogue.org], and when I visited I saw comments referring to his comments. But his comments seemed to have disappeared“.
I noticed that too.
Marcel Crok says:
November 17, 2012 at 12:07 pm
“I saw many comments saying this is a step in the right direction.”
Many people assumed that when this project started that it would be legitimate. Many of those comments were made before they visited your site and saw that your stated goals and real goals were quite different. I was one of those people…
“Why Arctic sea ice as the first topic? The main reason is that this was recently in the news with the 2012 new record low. The same applies for the lack of warming in the last 15 years. This will be another topic that we are going to discuss soon.”
I think its pretty clear that you chose it because its a great propaganda opening piece. This is in fact supported by this statement later in your comment. Dealing with the whole 15 years without warming is another propaganda talking point that the cultists are desperate to deal with.
“Overall we are talking about global warming in our introductory article. ”
Aka its already proven.
“It should be possible to ask scientists what evidence there is that the current decline of Arctic sea ice is (partly) caused by greenhouse forcing. ”
Note that you assume that global warming is a cause(partly). So already you are not only picking a hugely bias and propaganda based opening question but you admit that you automatically ascribe global warming as the cause. The only debate is how much global warming is effecting it from minor to OMG doomsday.
“We decided in advance to seperate the comments of the invited (expert) scientists from the other (public) comments. But the first day already we realised we needed a third category, off-topic comments. Over a RealClimate somebody already suggested we should add a fourth category, where we can upgrade comments from wel known climate scientists that now end up in the public comments to a category “spontaneous expert comments”. This of course raises new problems, because which comments are you going to upgrade? So we now bring an interesting comment to the attention of the invited scientists and ask them to react on it.”
Basically a very poor excuse for censorship. If skeptics want to be censored we can go to realclimate and end up in the “off topic” section they call the “borehole” or be deleted. Supposedly your whole project is to get the sides talking… well thats never going to happen when you have a comment policy that is exactly the same as every doomsday cultist web site. Add in do you even bother to read your own comment policy?
Ad hominems – avoid using ad hominems (criticizing a person’s character, conduct, expertise or interests); they are detrimental to the discussion.
By your own comment policy your already breaking the rules because your labeling people as experts. Not only should this term “expert” not be used for comments but it shouldn’t be used for the people starting the debate. The people in the debate should be called debaters or primary debaters(or something along that line). NO ONE SHOULD BE CALLED AN “EXPERT”. Its hard to take a site that supposedly wants a free and open debate seriously when they are doing everything possible to create propaganda and to create the outcome that they want which you off handily admit is pro-global warming. Add in the fact that censorship is by definition an Ad hominem attack. Just because someone is mean doesn’t make the scientific argument they make any less valid. When you censor you are launching an Ad hominem attack against that person through the subjective measure of what you view as “mean” or anything else along that line.
“We already see how broad the discussion about the Arctic has become. So we’re thinking about making future topics even more narrowly focused (e.g. how much is Greenland melting and what are the causes?)”
Yeah lets talk about “GLOBAL warming” in insanely small niche events… thats the way to go.
“Judith Curry is quite skeptical (about models, about attribution) and she published quite a few papers about the Arctic sea ice. ”
Judith Curry is a recently reformed doomsday cultists who woke up to the reality that the evidence supporting global warming is mostly based in propaganda not in the scientific method. Maybe in another 5 years we can label her a “skeptic”.
” I am open to any suggestions who we might have missed.”
I would start with picking up a book on the scientific method. Then one on how to start a scientific debate. Let me sum up a few things from them for you to make it easier.
1. Start by defining words. I would suggest the first ones being what climate is vs weather. Climate as anyone should know is long term weather pattern. I would say the shortest possible climate cycle you should use is 1,200 years long. I think most people would ask that it be made into the 12,000-25,000 year range. Everything below that would be considered weather.
2. Start by defining the hypothesis of “global warming”. You can have more then one(I would try to keep it under 5 though) and make the debaters choose the one that they believe is right and from which they will debate. People who don’t believe in man made global warming would not be required to pick one since they are not proving a hypothesis. I would suggest for the first “lightest version/non-alarmist” you have something along the line of
Hypothesis: The doubling of CO2 increasing temperature by 0.XX degrees C(can’t remember what numbers have been batted around for it). We base this number on empirical data from X paper. Mr Watts I believe would fall mostly in this group as he believe that CO2 does warm the planet ever so slightly though you should probably talk to him for a more exact number that he would ascribe.
Then work from there to include all the climate “sensitivity” BS. Which causes it to become all the way to something like +10 degrees C.
The greatest problem skeptics have always had is that everything proves global warming and nothing disproves global warming. Whenever an event happens global warming is quickly rewritten to make that event fit into the religion…. which is what it is… religion. A great point to this is the fact that the IPCC has stated in the IPCC 4 report that for global warming to be real sea ice at both polars would reduce. Thus since its not we have shown global warming is not real(at least from a true scientific perspective anyway). Until such time that global warming is forced to be based in science no amount of debate will ever amount to anything. Your project is failed before even starting. A scientific debate must have words that mean something and be defined. It must also have a hypothesis to prove or disprove. You are not hosting a scientific debate you are hosting censored chit chat.
3. Have separate sections for the “purely theoretical/pie in the sky fantasy” science vs “practical science”. IE lets take something like dark matter, dark energy and such debate. First you start with only dark matter… then along came dark energy soon will come the third type which we can label dark bobo the cloud. When we look at the debate no one is pushing saying that dark energy is going to kill us all, so we need to spend trillions to make a dark energy protector shield and blah blah blah to save us all. The “purely theoretical” which does not want to see action taken should have a section in which they can flop around and figure things out as they see fit. They can use all the projections and fantasy junk science they want.
The second section would be the “practical” section in which all skeptics would of course be apart of and everyone that believes we must do something within the next 100 years to stop global warming. So in basic anyone that supports/opposes carbon taxes, carbon trading, banning/controlling CO2 or other “greenhouse gases”, Creating industries to fight global warming(such as solar), banning industries(such as coal), etc, etc, etc.
The “practical” section should COMFORM RIGIDLY to the SCIENTIFIC METHOD. That means only empirical or observational data. AKA NO FRICKING COMPUTER MODELS. Projections of any kind should be strictly forbid(projections belong in the pie in the sky fantasy section). Predictions based on computer models would be acceptable if the prediction is not based on a projection. AKA a paper can not write “we have a projection and we are making this prediction based on this projection”. Either the computer model makes predictions or it belong in fantasy section.
Predictions must be made beforehand to be valid… far to often we have the cultists rewriting the models after the fact and then claiming they predicted an event and thus this is proof.
Predictions must also be for GLOBAL WARMING not a tiny regional event. If the model is not global it should be kept in the fantasy section. Only predictions that come true for the global models could be submitted as proof and that doesn’t mean picking and choosing that means either the model is 100% correct or 100% WRONG. Just because your model predicts say the arctic well doesn’t mean anything when your talking about a global event. Either take your model and merge it with another that is global or keep it in the fantasy section.
I highly doubt you will enact these simple and basic scientific actions as the fact they would result is complete refusal by the doomsday cultists to play. They have zero interest in science unless it supports the religion they believe in. The scientific method is directly opposed to the sort of actions that the doomsday cultists are taking. They know this as we know this. They never have and never will have a debate based in the scientific method as they know that religion will always lose even to the most common of person.
Marcel Crok says:
“Why Arctic sea ice as the first topic?”
===============================================================
Right, why? Why start with secondary topics? Why not start with the primary one?
Actually, there are 2 primary topics. The first one is the calculations of “global warming”. I looked into this one (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf) and found it scientifically outrageous.
But the most important is the second one, about the so called “CO2 forcing” or “greenhouse gases forcing”. According to the second IPCC report, “greenhouse gases” warm by returning some IR the surface radiates back to the surface. I have asked warmists on various blogs, including Judith Curry, what the pure physical experimental proof is, that the returned/back radiation as such really warms or slows down the cooling rate. Guess what the result was: ZERO. The second IPCC report does not provide any scientific references about it either.
So, I suggest, after having been done with the Arctic sea ice you start, you know, from the beginning, with the most basic issues.
Marcel Crok,
“Then the discussants. Jim Cripwell complained a lot about there not being a real skeptic. I explained him that we spent quite some time finding scientists who have published in the peer reviewed literature and who have a skeptical viewpoint. Judith Curry is quite skeptical (about models, about attribution) and she published quite a few papers about the Arctic sea ice. I am open to any suggestions who we might have missed.”
Marcel, I am very concerned that you have this much trouble identifying who a real skeptic is. Pretending that Judith Curry is remotely a skeptic is insulting to everyone here at WUWT.http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/05/truth-about-judith-curry.html
Highly credentialed skeptical scientists are well known to anyone who has spent any remote time in this debate such as; Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Robert Carter, Willie Soon, Nicola Scafetta and Henrik Svensmark (among many others).
Stating you “spent quite some time finding scientists who have published in the peer-reviewed literature and who have a skeptical viewpoint” means you either really did not spend a lot of time or have no idea what you are doing. You can find plenty here, including all those I mentioned, http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
If you are not going to take the skeptics position seriously please do not be dishonest and lie about Judith Curry representing it.
NetDr says:
November 16, 2012 at 11:58 am
Did all alarmists sleep through thermodynamics ?
________________________________________
Probably. If they were not in physics, chemistry or engineering they got a really watered down version and that was for the post grads only at least at my school. ( “Engineering among the top 10 engineering programs in the nation and top 40 in the world.” )
Petrossa says:
November 17, 2012 at 9:28 am
The EU signed the Kyoto accords. Then the EU made it into a directive. So technically this is correct. Practically it’s a non starter of course.
____________________________________
Why?
If they want a CO2 free world why not give it to them as the Jews were given Israel? If all the western government are all so sure they want KYOTO why not BUY a large chunk of land (Russia may be willing to sell some) and put all these gung-ho anti-CO2 types from all walks of life there to show us how to build a CO2 free economy. I am sure there must be millions to choose from. Mike Mann, Jim Hansen, Phil Jones, Stephan Lewandowsky, Maurice Strong, Ted Turner and Al Gore among others can lead the way. Heck Maurice Strong, Ted Turner and Al Gore can even foot the bill! Isn’t it time for them to put their money where their mouth is? (No I am NOT being sarcastic)
Many years ago I wrote a parody which included a place called “Free Speech park”. There was no communication, just noise. People standing on soapboxes, yelling. People with boomboxes playing atonal sounds lacking melody, harmony, or even rhythm, calling it music. Others using their voice, streaming profanity. The guide said it was great. The protagonist said it was pointless.
Perhaps this will not be something there, “Alarmist!” and “Denier!” Shouted in an antiphonal manner.