NationStates Jolt Archive

Topics to be discussed:

Kyoto Protocol
-What does it really propose?
-Is it worth it?
Abrupt Climate Change
Ramifications of Global Warming
-Rising sea levels, melting ice caps, spread of diseases, increase in extreme weather

Who (or what) is at fault?

What should be done?

Can anything be done?

Scientific evidence (either way)

Any other topics that I could not come up with are welcome. These are a few of the more prominent aspects in the global warming debate, meant as a guide for discussion.

Let's begin with a definition of global warming:
-Global warming is a theory. It claims that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, and this increase is as a result of the so-called Greenhouse Effect. This rise may also be attributed to other, natural causes, but the mainstream debate revolves around whether this is a man-made occurrence, as this would imply that it could, in fact, be remedied.

We've all heard the stories; most of us are aware that the Earth is suposedly heating up at a dangerous level that could result in catastrophic events in the near future (say, 100 years or so). So by the year 2100, if we don't act NOW, the world as we know will have disappeared, with global temperatures rising well beyond current levels and resulting in flooding, crop destruction, famine, poverty, disease, atmospheric destruction, etc, etc.

However, this doomsday prediction is, in my opinion, largely a dramatic overstatement of an unlikely threat. Conclusive scientific evidence in this area is scant; in fact, there is much to refute many of the claims made in support of the catastrophic worldview of global warming. most of it is perpetrated by radical environmentalist organizations that, despite their rhetoric, do as much to harm the environment as the big, bad industry conglomerates. Additionally, much of it has become highly politicized. Quite frankly, I am firmly of the opinion that the US was right in failing to sign Kyoto, which is an inherently flawed document that seeks to propose a short-term solution that, if implemented and acted fully upon, would yield results that are infinitely short of affecting any major change. Global warming is a misguided idea whose proposed imminent ramifications are impossible to verify and predict. The forces that govern climate are just too complex for us to comprehend, and any reason to think that we could change our course through any legislation or act of will is foolhardy and will inevitably result in unintended consequences that are contrary to the original purpose.

That said, I do not propose we do nothing at all. Certainly, we should make efforts to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Not abolish them, but make the air just a little bit cleaner (seriously--if you've been to LA, you know what I'm talking about). Additionally, we need to focus our efforts on third world nations and work to bring them out of poverty. Not gonna happen in my generation, but lay the groundwork for the next, by directly aiding them in creating efficient economies and industry. Many times environmentalists argue that industrializing third world nations will result in more greenhouse gases and further compound the problem. But, in fact, much of what is wrong in terms of the environment is a direct result of poverty--people don't care about the environment when they're starving. Trees provide fuel for fires and money for food--what practical reasons do they have to preserve them? Considering that carbon emissions are not nearly as big of a concern as they are made out to be, certainly basic education and better economies for the malnourished will serve to preserve the environment much better than any international legislation may accomplish. So, these are my thoughts. Let's see how things heat up--heh, so to speak ;)

Catastrophic threat, ahem.

Both ;)

Okay, let's see your reasoning. :)

Both ;)

spot on

Both ;)

Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't see that option with my monotone vision.

I happen to think media hype is justified in the case of a catastrophic threat.

*sigh* come on guys, a debate is very debate-like if all we do is make generic statements...let's see some argumentative muscle!

Both ;)

Right. So...why both? Here, I'll toss you a bone: I think it's either one or the other. Convince me otherwise. ;)

Like everything else, Americans exaccagerate.

It IS a problem don't get me wrong, but it's not a problem for the reasons you think.

It IS melting the polar ice-caps, but they'd melt anyway, our Earth is going through a transsion, all things must die and reincarnate, including mother earth..

However, I'm more concerned about the foundation of our society, if the politicians don't get off thier lazy butts and do something, then we're going to be right smack dab in the middle of an energy crisis come fourty years. They need to work on making solar powerd and electric cars now while they still can, rather then wait till we have no oil left to spare and everybody go's insane and kills one another because the oil industry collapses, millions of people lose thier jobs, and millions of others panic cause they can't get to work. I'm realistic, the world isn't going to blowup cause of global warming. But it's going to get very hot, very sticky, millions of people and animals will die, and we're going to have a very miserable time unless we do something about our problems now. Democrats are too busy placing blames and Republicans shut thier ears. Both are neglecting the issue.

Conclusive scientific evidence in this area is scant; in fact, there is much to refute many of the claims made in support of the catastrophic worldview of global warming.

bullshit. there evidence is conclusive and overwhelming, and nobody appears to be publishing any papers in peer-reviewed science journals that contradict the scientific consensus on global warming.

The forces that govern climate are just too complex for us to comprehend

which explains why our climate models appear to work remarkably well at this point...

they'd melt anyway

evidence?

Like everything else, Americans exaccagerate.

It IS a problem don't get me wrong, but it's not a problem for the reasons you think.

It IS melting the polar ice-caps, but they'd melt anyway, our Earth is going through a transsion, all things must die and reincarnate, including mother earth..

However, I'm more concerned about the foundation of our society, if the politicians don't get off thier lazy butts and do something, then we're going to be right smack dab in the middle of an energy crisis come fourty years. They need to work on making solar powerd and electric cars now while they still can, rather then wait till we have no oil left to spare and everybody go's insane and kills one another because the oil industry collapses, millions of people lose thier jobs, and millions of others panic cause they can't get to work. I'm realistic, the world isn't going to blowup cause of global warming. But it's going to get very hot, very sticky, millions of people and animals will die, and we're going to have a very miserable time unless we do something about our problems now. Democrats are too busy placing blames and Republicans shut thier ears. Both are neglecting the issue.

I have to disagree with you here. First, the polar ice caps are not melting. Incredulous, yes, arrogant, yes, but here's my facts: Antarctica, which contains 90% of the worlds frozen water, is, in fact, cooling down. Less than 2% of Antarctic ice is "melting"--that leaves 98% still intact, and actually increasing in volume. In the Arctic regions, it is widely speculated that the Greenland ice cap may melt sometime in the next 1000 years or so. Maybe. Meanwhile, Iceland's ice is actually growing. And yes, the Earth is in the middle of a transition, we're actually in what is known as an interglacial period. Technically, we're due in for another ice age sometime soon. Furthermore, oil is not going to run out in the next forty years. We should, again, defintiely look toward other sources of energy, and politicians are a huge part of the problem--which is why they can't be counted on to fix it. What one party does will be reversed by the next. So, change needs to instituted by nonpartisan external organizations that are willing to adapt and change according to criticism and suggestion.

Natural global warming - A natural process that has happened over the Earth's life over and over again - For example we are not in the ice age still are we? So we must have warmed up at some point. This would be seen as a natural process as there is no evidence that vast quantities of greenhouse gases being realeased 60,000 years ago, at least in comparison to what has been released since the start of the industrial revolution.

Man-made global warming - no 'hard' evidence but it is highly likely that greenhouse gases do insulate. It would appear that these gases lock in the heat radiated from the Earth and therefore warm it up just like what happens in a thermos flask.

The question is whether global warming is a problem. The actual heat the world is at is actually less than what it was 600 years ago according to ice core samples. However it is the rapidity at which the world is heating up is what concerns scientists. A large proportion of greenhouse gases emitted are absorbed by the oceans and this, coupled with rising temperatures, is having a noticable affect on delicate marine ecosystems.

evidence?
What do I look like, google? I heard it from a friend and he made a decent point. It sounded simaler to Greenhelm..

bullshit. there evidence is conclusive and overwhelming, and nobody appears to be publishing any papers in peer-reviewed science journals that contradict the scientific consensus on global warming.



which explains why our climate models appear to work remarkably well at this point...

The climate models seem to be working remarkably well, really? Am I missing something here? We can't even predict the weather accurately more than ten days in advance. Heck, scientists can't even decide what global warming would do to clouds and water vapor. If anything, climate models are failing miserably...unless you can provide an example proving otherwise? Nearly all predicitons from the past thirty years have proven false. Models cannot predict the future, climate is just too complex. The computer models vary by 400%--not working too well by anyone's standards. We can only guess the future, not predict it.

bullshit. there evidence is conclusive and overwhelming, and nobody appears to be publishing any papers in peer-reviewed science journals that contradict the scientific consensus on global warming.

*sigh* And I presume you have extensive knowledge of every science journal. And what would this "scientific consensus" be? Because, to my knowledge, such a thing does not exist. It is hardly a consensus.

A while ago they had a major oil exec on the news (I think it was CNN, I'm not sure.) and when they asked him about global warming, he basically said something like "Yeah, we know it's a man made problem, and it's something we're going to have to focus on. I don't know why the president is pretending that it isnt."
If the OIL INDUSTRY EXECS are saying it's manmade, there's not much left to the other side of the argument.

A while ago they had a major oil exec on the news (I think it was CNN, I'm not sure.) and when they asked him about global warming, he basically said something like "Yeah, we know it's a man made problem, and it's something we're going to have to focus on. I don't know why the president is pretending that it isnt."
If the OIL INDUSTRY EXECS are saying it's manmade, there's not much left to the other side of the argument.

If AN oil industry exec says its man-made, then, clearly, no argument can be made. If A democrat opposes abortion, clearly ALL democrats oppose abortion. There is a connection between carbon dioxide content and man-made emissions, but the extent of this in relation to global warming is undetermined, and minute at best.

The climate models seem to be working remarkably well, really? Am I missing something here? We can't even predict the weather accurately more than ten days in advance.

climate /= weather. we're damn good at climate.

The computer models vary by 400%

michael crichton is not a reliable source

A while ago they had a major oil exec on the news (I think it was CNN, I'm not sure.) and when they asked him about global warming, he basically said something like "Yeah, we know it's a man made problem, and it's something we're going to have to focus on. I don't know why the president is pretending that it isnt."
If the OIL INDUSTRY EXECS are saying it's manmade, there's not much left to the other side of the argument.

It is never going to be entirely man-made. We have been for the last 300 years been warming up since the mini-ice age experienced in the late 1600's. Ice Core samples have told us this.

I should also say that wirters of the time have also told us it was colder 300 years ago. It was written that the Thames used to freeze over for months in the early 1700's (I can't remeber who wrote that though!) something that hasn't happened for a long time... not scientific but still a reference (as long as I haven't invented it lol no... I am sure I heard that somewhere!)

*sigh* And I presume you have extensive knowledge of every science journal. And what would this "scientific consensus" be? Because, to my knowledge, such a thing does not exist. It is hardly a consensus.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686


...
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
...

check it out. peer-reviewed research on what the peer-reviewed research on climate change says. it's like meta-science.

and notice that they found precisely no dissenting papers whatsoever. not even a single one. clearly they must have missed them all somehow. be a dear and cite a few dozen for us.

The actual heat the world is at is actually less than what it was 600 years ago according to ice core samples.

this is false

this is false

evidence? I am willing to go along with that if you can prove it... In the mean time I will try and find the article that I got the actual 'scientific proof' (I am always sceptical about what is considered proof... money goes a long way *ahem*) although I have a feeling it might have been in a science magazine... :rolleyes:

a little reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
not wholly reliable

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/23/MNG6UJJ9RQ1.DTL
don't know what that one is trying to prove

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/886494/posts
seems to be large concencus on the internet about this... unfortunatly I do not have any scientific journals to hand so no evidence as such.

evidence? I am willing to go along with that if you can prove it... In the mean time I will try and find the article that I got the actual 'scientific proof' (I am always sceptical about what is considered proof... money goes a long way *ahem*) although I have a feeling it might have been in a science magazine... :rolleyes:

600 years ago was dipping into the little ice age. and the slightly earlier medieval warm period was still cooler than today (assuming it actually was a global deal, and not just a north atlantic current thing). it even says so on the wiki page.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686



check it out. peer-reviewed research on what the peer-reviewed research on climate change says. it's like meta-science.

and notice that they found precisely no dissenting papers whatsoever. not even a single one. clearly they must have missed them all somehow. be a dear and cite a few dozen for us.
And if he can cite half a dozen without ties to an oil company, I'll pee my pants and rename myself Michael Crichton.

Yeah... I guess that's right. It would make sense because England had a wine growing culture in the medieval times that produced wine similar to that of champagne and to develop similar wines you need the same climate and conditions. Champagne is quite a warm (relative to England) region in France, however vineyards in Sussex and Kent are begining to develop simialr wines to champagne again which points to a warming climate. So the only thing that is certain is that the Earth is warming up in places but there is little concensus on one thing or the other. Like I say money goes a long way in science *cough* oil firms *cough*.

I have to disagree with you here. First, the polar ice caps are not melting. Incredulous, yes, arrogant, yes, but here's my facts: Antarctica, which contains 90% of the worlds frozen water, is, in fact, cooling down. Less than 2% of Antarctic ice is "melting"--that leaves 98% still intact, and actually increasing in volume. In the Arctic regions, it is widely speculated that the Greenland ice cap may melt sometime in the next 1000 years or so. Maybe. Meanwhile, Iceland's ice is actually growing. And yes, the Earth is in the middle of a transition, we're actually in what is known as an interglacial period. Technically, we're due in for another ice age sometime soon. Furthermore, oil is not going to run out in the next forty years. We should, again, defintiely look toward other sources of energy, and politicians are a huge part of the problem--which is why they can't be counted on to fix it. What one party does will be reversed by the next. So, change needs to instituted by nonpartisan external organizations that are willing to adapt and change according to criticism and suggestion.
Gravity measurments (made as part of a an experiment not related to global warming) indicate Antartica has lost some 36 cubic miles of ice. That's a lot of ice. Notice that's not bullshit about ambient temerature combined with another unrelated assumption. That's a measured net loss of 36 cubic miles of ice.

I'd like to take a moment to point out to the consensus crowd that there was once a 'scientific consensus' against continental drift. And another that was against germs causing disease. And that it would be possible to go faster than light (Newton said it, not me). And that we were going to run out of oil about 100 years ago. And again sometime last decade. And again in the not too distant future. You'll have to forgive me for being a bit skeptical about 'scientific consensus'.

The climate models seem to be working remarkably well, really? Am I missing something here? We can't even predict the weather accurately more than ten days in advance.

I'm with you on this one. Our Meteorologist is about as accurate as the horoscope. Seriously. "Hey, guess what Georgia - its HOT! I mean really HOT! There's a small probability of rain in the next 10 days." No kidding genius. I also check wunderground a lot during storm season and check the computer models on hurricanes, which incidently have in bold letters do not use for planning purposes.

Catastrophic threat, ahem.

Comrade, I agree completely. We need to use global warning as the reason to start involving government more with corporate decisions. This is because alone companies don't care about the environment. While I don't defend third world countries, at least they don't use 40% of the world's resources while having only 4% of the world's population.

I'm with you on this one. Our Meteorologist is about as accurate as the horoscope. Seriously. "Hey, guess what Georgia - its HOT! I mean really HOT! There's a small probability of rain in the next 10 days." No kidding genius. I also check wunderground a lot during storm season and check the computer models on hurricanes, which incidently have in bold letters do not use for planning purposes.
'Before you go much further, it’s important to think about the difference between weather and climate.
Weather describes the conditions in an area for a short period of time…for example, you could describe the weather for today, this week, or this month.

Climate describes the conditions over much longer period of time. You could describe the climate conditions in an area by telling what the average temperature or precipitation is for that period over many years.

So…The conditions this September would describe the weather…the conditions in September averaged out over the past 30 or 50 years would tell you about the climate of the area."
http://www.mobot.org/education/02programsresources/mappingenvironment/mynaturalcommunity/weathervsclimate.htm

Gravity measurments (made as part of a an experiment not related to global warming) indicate Antartica has lost some 36 cubic miles of ice. That's a lot of ice. Notice that's not bullshit about ambient temerature combined with another unrelated assumption. That's a measured net loss of 36 cubic miles of ice.

indeed. we can measure all these things, and we do (hooray for science!). if anything, the breakup of the ice sheets is happening alarmingly faster than we first thought they could.

'Before you go much further, it’s important to think about the difference between weather and climate.
Weather describes the conditions in an area for a short period of time…for example, you could describe the weather for today, this week, or this month.

Climate describes the conditions over much longer period of time. You could describe the climate conditions in an area by telling what the average temperature or precipitation is for that period over many years.

So…The conditions this September would describe the weather…the conditions in September averaged out over the past 30 or 50 years would tell you about the climate of the area."
http://www.mobot.org/education/02programsresources/mappingenvironment/mynaturalcommunity/weathervsclimate.htm

or to put it another way, "the weatherman was wrong when he told me that it wasn't going to rain yesterday, therefore i don't need to own a winter coat this december."

Comrade, I agree completely. We need to use global warning as the reason to start involving government more with corporate decisions. This is because alone companies don't care about the environment. While I don't defend third world countries, at least they don't use 40% of the world's resources while having only 4% of the world's population.
So...you know what's good for people more than they do? Got some news for you: when it belongs to everyone, it belongs to nobody. Everyone takes and no one gives back when something is made public. Private corporations have motive for keeping things clean and running smooth. If the world goes to hell, where will they get their money? Not the most noble reason but it gets the job done.

Weather is what you get, the short term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place. Climate is the long-term manifestations of weather.

or to put it another way, "the weatherman was wrong when he told me that it wasn't going to rain yesterday, therefore i don't need to own a winter coat this december."
That would be the logic.

So...you know what's good for people more than they do? Got some news for you: when it belongs to everyone, it belongs to nobody. Everyone takes and no one gives back when something is made public. Private corporations have motive for keeping things clean and running smooth. If the world goes to hell, where will they get their money? Not the most noble reason but it gets the job done.

Weather is what you get, the short term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place. Climate is the long-term manifestations of weather.
A corporation will send you flying off into the deep end and make money by selling you diving equipment.

What?

I don't know. I'm going now.

Catastrophic media hype over the promise of global warming

A corporation will send you flying off into the deep end and make money by selling you diving equipment.

What?

I don't know. I'm going now.
No...facist governments do that. Facist governments commit genocides, supress liberty, and ruin the world. If you don't believe me just look at the Soviet Union. Oh wait, you can't because it doesn't exist anymore. That's another thing that happens to facist governments; they collapse!

bullshit. there evidence is conclusive and overwhelming, and nobody appears to be publishing any papers in peer-reviewed science journals that contradict the scientific consensus on global warming.



which explains why our climate models appear to work remarkably well at this point...


Baloney.

Every planet in the Solar System is warming at this point in time. This is mostly due to a recurring flare up of sunspot activity. This is a cyclical event. It has been going on since the earth came into existance.

A corporation will send you flying off into the deep end and make money by selling you diving equipment.

What?

I don't know. I'm going now..

Wouldn't that limit their market??? :rolleyes:



PLEASE think before you post!

Baloney.

Every planet in the Solar System is warming at this point in time. This is mostly due to a recurring flare up of sunspot activity. This is a cyclical event. It has been going on since the earth came into existance.
Yes but the sun's cycle, like the Earth's cycle sometimes breaks and a new one starts. Still, global warming has been observed on Mars. That's another reason I have doubts we're behind this. And try to keep everything you have to say in a single post even if you have to edit. Posting twice in a row isn't pleasent to look at.

*set*

I was under the impression it was a proven scientific fact, as far as you can prove a scientific theory. Co2 and methane= global warming, and humans make co2 and methane, so therefore humans=global warming and the more humans there are then faster it will happen. So, catastrophic threat basically.

Baloney.

Every planet in the Solar System is warming at this point in time. This is mostly due to a recurring flare up of sunspot activity. This is a cyclical event. It has been going on since the earth came into existance.

and, of course, nobody has ever thought to try to quantify this idea. oh wait, they have and it didn't match the actual data of climate change...

It's true. There are too many scientists with evidence saying it's true. The few that say it isn't true can't get published in any scientific reviews (periodicals, whatever they're called), and are on the payroll of people who want to create doubt about global warming.

What to do about it is a different question.

Yes but the sun's cycle, like the Earth's cycle sometimes breaks and a new one starts. Still, global warming has been observed on Mars. That's another reason I have doubts we're behind this.

any evidence that co2 and such don't have climate forcing properies? any evidence that atmospheric co2 concentrations haven't been increasing dramatically? any evidence that humans aren't pumping out massive amounts of the stuff - more than enough, in fact, to explain the increases in atmospheric concentrations?

I suggest everyone read this page: Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective (http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html), which contains several graphs which may be of interest.

The last modification was May 20, 2002, so it's decently current.

This site shows evidence that global warming, as we are currently observing, is a natural occurence, not the result of human activity.

Liasia']I was under the impression it was a proven scientific fact, as far as you can prove a scientific theory. Co2 and methane= global warming, and humans make co2 and methane, so therefore humans=global warming and the more humans there are then faster it will happen. So, catastrophic threat basically.
Um Ok, I'll just start with CO2 and Methane. Water is the primary cause of the 'greenhouse effect.' Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect - about 70% is likely due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds. The remaining portion comes from CO2, methane, ozone and other minor 'greenhouse gases.' CO2 does have a strong lead over the trace gasses but really can't compare to water.

I've heard the little boy cry wolf so many times...The world is not coming to an end. It's a lot harder to destroy than those spy films would have you believe.

Um Ok, I'll just start with CO2 and Methane. Water is the primary cause of the 'greenhouse effect.'

of course, we aren't talking about the greenhouse effect in general. we're talking about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. you know, the additional warming caused by all the shit we pump into the air.

pop quiz - what is the major factor in determining the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere?

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686



check it out. peer-reviewed research on what the peer-reviewed research on climate change says. it's like meta-science.

and notice that they found precisely no dissenting papers whatsoever. not even a single one. clearly they must have missed them all somehow. be a dear and cite a few dozen for us.

Pwned.

Global Warming: Soft fuzzy kitten, or warm wiggly puppy?!?!?!?/!!?!??1?!!?!1!!?!?!

I don't see much point in moving on to a discussion of Kyoto. It's pretty obvious where the OP is going to stand on regulating industry, from the position taken on industrialization in the third world.

The only sign I see of concern for anyone, or for the planet is 'I don't like breathing smoke.' In fact, pollutants create an effect called "global dimming," which very likely moderates the warming caused by increasing greenhouse gasses. OP got even this tiny concession to scientific beliefs wrong.

I call Troll!

And if he can cite half a dozen without ties to an oil company, I'll pee my pants and rename myself Michael Crichton.

"Without ties to an oil company" is impossible--virtually every major research project or so-called "environemental organization" is funded at least partially by major oil and industry conglomerates. But your insinuation that because something has "ties" to oil it inevitably des "oil" research, yes, is true; but the same can be said about the other spectrum as well, being funded by environmentalist groups under environemental expectations. Bias is inescapable so long as funding is a direct result of favorable results.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/stationdata/
--Provides actual data with regard to location around the world. Draw your own conclusions from looking at actual facts.

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ghcn/ghcn.html
--Global Historical Climatology Network, for long-term climate analyses

Those are some sites that provide raw data and facts, regardless of subjective reporting in science journals.

climate /= weather. we're damn good at climate.



michael crichton is not a reliable source

You're right, on both counts. Climate is the long-term observation of weather patterns, and thus is not weather. But we are not "damn good" at climate. Take a look at the climate models from the past. We can't predict the El Nino weather patterns. Our climate models from the past thirty years have been incorrect and flawed. Yes, Michael Crichton is not a reliable source. Research and facts never are. The reality is, climate models do vary by an enormous percentage--unless you can prove to me that models have and continue to predict correctly the weather patterns (climate) of at least the past ten years, within a reasonable margin of error, say a variation of no more than 50%.

.

Wouldn't that limit their market??? :rolleyes:



PLEASE think before you post!
No, it wouldn't limit the market for the makers of diving equipment. It would expand it. But Jesus... it was an offhanded, sarcastic, ridiculous remark.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686



check it out. peer-reviewed research on what the peer-reviewed research on climate change says. it's like meta-science.

and notice that they found precisely no dissenting papers whatsoever. not even a single one. clearly they must have missed them all somehow. be a dear and cite a few dozen for us.

Alright, so mainstream science seems to have no dissenting opinions. Not like this hasn't happened before. Let's check out the early twentieth century. Eugenics was believed by mainstream science to be absolutely true. Dissenters were discredited and few. Now, any trace of support for eugenics has been glossed over, because it was not what it was supposed to be. It was a tremendously overhyped publicity affair. Now, it seems, global warming bears much in common in this regard. Not to mention that thirty years ago, scientists were concerned over global cooling.

No, it wouldn't limit the market for the makers of diving equipment. It would expand it. But Jesus... it was an offhanded, sarcastic, ridiculous remark.

I know how you feel, man. Forum posts can be misconstrued in so many ways. :)

I think it's a combination of both.

Over thousands of years there have been both gradual and abrupt changes, some much bigger and more significant than any we are currently experiencing.

On average, there has been a rise of between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Centigrade during the last 150 years, but there has also been some cooling as well. Some people argue that current measures, such as those from corrected satellite, still indicate overall cooling.

It simply isn't true that climate change is brought about by just one or two factors, such as carbon dioxide emissions, and we must grasp the fact that curbing human-induced greenhouse gases will not halt climate change. It may help, but the focus needs to be wider and on more large scale contributors.

The media need to stop making your average Joe feel so responsible for 'carbon footprinting' the plantet.

Anway, yes in it's eventuality it could, and probably will, be catastrophic - rising water levels are going to mean loss of land in some areas.

It's something we should be aware of, but it's definatley over hyped.

I don't see much point in moving on to a discussion of Kyoto. It's pretty obvious where the OP is going to stand on regulating industry, from the position taken on industrialization in the third world.

The only sign I see of concern for anyone, or for the planet is 'I don't like breathing smoke.' In fact, pollutants create an effect called "global dimming," which very likely moderates the warming caused by increasing greenhouse gasses. OP got even this tiny concession to scientific beliefs wrong.

I call Troll!

Hey, learn something new every day. I didn't know about "global dimming." And why can't we move in to Kyoto? Because I took a stand? I thought that was the whole idea of debate...

I'm with you on this one. Our Meteorologist is about as accurate as the horoscope. Seriously. "Hey, guess what Georgia - its HOT! I mean really HOT! There's a small probability of rain in the next 10 days." No kidding genius. I also check wunderground a lot during storm season and check the computer models on hurricanes, which incidently have in bold letters do not use for planning purposes.

Ha, so funny, yet so true.

"Without ties to an oil company" is impossible--virtually every major research project or so-called "environemental organization" is funded at least partially by major oil and industry conglomerates. But your insinuation that because something has "ties" to oil it inevitably des "oil" research, yes, is true; but the same can be said about the other spectrum as well, being funded by environmentalist groups under environemental expectations. Bias is inescapable so long as funding is a direct result of favorable results.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/stationdata/
--Provides actual data with regard to location around the world. Draw your own conclusions from looking at actual facts.

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ghcn/ghcn.html
--Global Historical Climatology Network, for long-term climate analyses

Those are some sites that provide raw data and facts, regardless of subjective reporting in science journals.
Take a look at some of the sites I got through NASA. Hey! Realclimate! Hey! Union Of Concerned Scientists!
http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Resources/FAQs/glob_warmfaq.html

I know how you feel, man. Forum posts can be misconstrued in so many ways. :)
It's true... it's true.

or to put it another way, "the weatherman was wrong when he told me that it wasn't going to rain yesterday, therefore i don't need to own a winter coat this december."

No, you're confusing climate and weather. And yes, I realize you were making a sarcastic remark. A more appropriate analogy would be "the weatherman said it was going to get colder thirty years ago, so I bought a winter coat, but now he's saying its getting warm, so I don't need it anymore."

Take a look at some of the sites I got through NASA. Hey! Realclimate! Hey! Union Of Concerned Scientists!
http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Resources/FAQs/glob_warmfaq.html

Pretty straightforward evidence that doesn't really support either theory--just raw data that fails to concretely support global warming.

Pretty straightforward evidence that doesn't really support either theory--just raw data that fails to concretely support global warming.
With a direct link to fact such as this:

"Human CO2 emissions are small compared to natural CO2 exchange.

Fiction: The 4.5% of the world's greenhouse gases that humans generate is insignificant when compared to the 95.5% generated by nature.

Fact: It is indeed true that human emissions of CO2 are a small percentage of the total carbon cycled through the different components of the Earth system: plants, soils, rocks, the oceans, and the air. But these human emissions are by no means insignificant. For the last 420,000 years, until the beginning of the industrial revolution (~1750), this cycle of carbon exchange was in a quasi-stable equilibrium, i.e., the continual release and uptake of carbon kept CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere fluctuating between 180 ppm (parts per million) and 280 ppm. Since 1750, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31%, to a present level of 367 ppm. This increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation and land-use change. These human activities have forced the carbon cycle out of the state of equilibrium and out of the known range of variation."
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/fact-vs-fiction-on-climate-change.html

?

With a direct link to fact such as this:

"Human CO2 emissions are small compared to natural CO2 exchange.

Fiction: The 4.5% of the world's greenhouse gases that humans generate is insignificant when compared to the 95.5% generated by nature.

Fact: It is indeed true that human emissions of CO2 are a small percentage of the total carbon cycled through the different components of the Earth system: plants, soils, rocks, the oceans, and the air. But these human emissions are by no means insignificant. For the last 420,000 years, until the beginning of the industrial revolution (~1750), this cycle of carbon exchange was in a quasi-stable equilibrium, i.e., the continual release and uptake of carbon kept CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere fluctuating between 180 ppm (parts per million) and 280 ppm. Since 1750, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31%, to a present level of 367 ppm. This increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation and land-use change. These human activities have forced the carbon cycle out of the state of equilibrium and out of the known range of variation."
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/fact-vs-fiction-on-climate-change.html

?

I don't deny the fact that carbon dioxide facts are increasing. But take a look at that last line--out of the known range of variation. We don't know what effect it has or what will happen. And most of the carbon dioxide emissions could be alleviated somewhat by helping to put a halt to "deforestation and land-use change."

I don't deny the fact that carbon dioxide facts are increasing. But take a look at that last line--out of the known range of variation. We don't know what effect it has or what will happen. And most of the carbon dioxide emissions could be alleviated somewhat by helping to put a halt to "deforestation and land-use change."
You're grasping a bit there. We're part of the problem. What I don't get is people not willing to make small sacrifices to help alleviate the problem. Yes, major change won't happen without government intervention but without the support of the people, the government will be slow to act due to the manipulation of companies which have a stake in things remaining business as usual. Be conscious of the energy you use. It saves the consumer money both long and short term.

Ok
Then all is in order...
No smoking policy solved the trouble.

Next gw bush will establish a non farting bill to induce our cows to take seriously that bullshit of earth North pole falling to the South.

See An Inconvenient Truth for god sakes, then post. (Or read Boiling Point) Global warming is real.

I do believe global warming is a threat. But for a really good perspective go to www.comedycentra.com videos, browse all videos, the Colbert Reprot: Big Deal. I don't have a link sorry.

of course, we aren't talking about the greenhouse effect in general. we're talking about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. you know, the additional warming caused by all the shit we pump into the air.

pop quiz - what is the major factor in determining the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere?
Well I can see where you're trying to go with your pop quiz so I'll just say it. When you burn hydrocarbons in the presense of oxygen you get CO2 and water. Still, our contribution is so insignificant in comparison that I doubt we're having the catastrophic effects that some claim. A single volcanic erruption spews more junk into the atmosphere than the whole of humanity does in a year and there are hundreds of active volcanoes around the world. All are doing more to contribute to the 'greenhouse effect' than we are. Do you propose that we cap them to stop the pollution? I wouldn't. I hope you wouldn't either.

Ever since man learned to speak someone has been preaching doom and gloom and then claiming they can save everyone. It's like some doom prophet saying we're all going to hell unless we all convert and give him and his church money.

Another big problem with this is that if happens, you'll just say "I told you so." But if doesn't happen, you'll say "it was all of our hard work that saved the day." No matter what happens, you'll claim victory.

You're acting as though you have all the facts, all the information and can come to a conclusion. You're acting like there are no holes in this when they're painfully obvious.

Doom prophets speak of melting at the poles when the southern one has been getting consistently colder. The temperature reach a minimum of between −85 °C and −90 °C in the winter and about 30 degrees higher in the summer months. It never gets warm enough for the ice there to melt. Antarctica is colder than the Arctic for two reasons. First, much of the continent is more than 3 km above sea level, and temperature decreases with elevation. Second, the Arctic Ocean covers the north polar zone: the ocean's relative warmth is transferred through the icepack and prevents temperatures in the Arctic regions from reaching the extremes typical of the land surface of Antarctica.

And Doom prophets say that if the Artic ice were to melt, sea levels would rise even though the ice is already displacing all the water it ever will because it's floating freely on the water. If you stick an ice cube in a glass and then fill it to the rim with water, the cup will never overflow even after the ice has melted because it was displacing all the water already.

But ignoring those little facts, let's push on and say that the current trend continues and sea level rises at 20 cm every century. By 2100, oceans would be a little less than a foot higher. That won't put very much underwater. But let's double the rate to 40 cm over the next 100. We'd get a foot an a half. Again not much. Let's kick it up to absolute maximum predicted rise from the IPCC of 77 cm. Still less than a meter. And the maximum SRES prediction of 88 cm is still under a yard. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that NY ain't gettin' drowned any time soon.

And as for those 'hockey stick' graphs, just take a look at Michael Mann and his 'Tree-ring Circus.' Stephen McIntyre claims that many statistical methods used to generate Mann's hockey stick were applied incorrectly and that Mann used data known to be faulty. You don't use just one tree to reconstruct the climate of the last 1000 years. You use a hundred trees or more. That'd be a tad more acceptable.

Off topic:
Please, everyone, don't post twice in a row. Keep what you have to say to a single post at a time. Give someone else a chance to respond first. It's a pet "PISSES ME OFF!!111!" Erm, I mean peeve.

[Edit]
any evidence that co2 and such don't have climate forcing properies? any evidence that atmospheric co2 concentrations haven't been increasing dramatically? any evidence that humans aren't pumping out massive amounts of the stuff - more than enough, in fact, to explain the increases in atmospheric concentrations?
I'm not saying that CO2 doesn't influence the climate, it does. What I'm saying is that it's not as potent or as large a part of the atmosphere as water. CO2 has gone from 280ppm to 350ppm but that's still less than a tenth of a percent of the atmosphere. And temps fell from 1940's-1970's when CO2 was on the rise. The only consistent correlation between CO2 and temperature was during the last 25-30 years. I'm not sure why temps dipped while CO2 rose during that time but it happened.

Media hype. Global Warming is to liberals as terrorism is to conservatives.

This increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation and land-use change.

CO2 is not as much a threat as CH4 because the insulating properties of CH4 are a lot greater. Large producers of this are rice plantations and large-scale cattle farming (yep all that cow shit is releasing tons of methane each day). This is what makes the deforesation of the amoazon for cattle farms worse... huge CO2 production through the burning of trees, large natural 'sink holes' in the rainforest where greenhouse gases are not absorbed and the production of methane due to intensive cattle farming for the worlds fast food restaurants.

Liasia']I was under the impression it was a proven scientific fact, as far as you can prove a scientific theory. Co2 and methane= global warming, and humans make co2 and methane, so therefore humans=global warming and the more humans there are then faster it will happen. So, catastrophic threat basically.


That is certainly what the press and the enviromental extortionists would have you believe.

Well I can see where you're trying to go with your pop quiz so I'll just say it. When you burn hydrocarbons in the presense of oxygen you get CO2 and water.

since your answer is wrong, i'll guess that you don't actually know where i was going.

You're acting as though you have all the facts, all the information and can come to a conclusion. You're acting like there are no holes in this when they're painfully obvious.

i certainly seem to have more than you, and you certainly seem unable to pick out any of these alleged holes.

Doom prophets speak of melting at the poles when the southern one has been getting consistently colder.

but only for two decades, while it has warmed overall in the past five.

It never gets warm enough for the ice there to melt.

it doesn't need to. all that needs to happen is for the ice to flow towards the warmer continental margins (which it does). if anything, the dramatic breakup of the ice there is actually making this happen faster.

And Doom prophets say that if the Artic ice were to melt, sea levels would rise even though the ice is already displacing all the water it ever will because it's floating freely on the water.

no they don't. everyone who is anyone is talking about the greenland and west antarctic ice sheets causing sea level rises. big ones.

But ignoring those little facts, let's push on and say that the current trend continues and sea level rises at 20 cm every century. By 2100, oceans would be a little less than a foot higher. That won't put very much underwater. But let's double the rate to 40 cm over the next 100. We'd get a foot an a half. Again not much. Let's kick it up to absolute maximum predicted rise from the IPCC of 77 cm. Still less than a meter. And the maximum SRES prediction of 88 cm is still under a yard. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that NY ain't gettin' drowned any time soon.

old data, at best - more of the ice is breaking up faster than was originally thought, because we didn't have enough understanding of the physics at work in them. the real story (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/catastrophic-sea-level-rise-more-evidence-from-the-ice-sheets/#more-276) is even more alarming than was thought. we're looking at meters of sea level rise over the next few decades.

And as for those 'hockey stick' graphs, just take a look at Michael Mann and his 'Tree-ring Circus.' Stephen McIntyre claims that many statistical methods used to generate Mann's hockey stick were applied incorrectly and that Mann used data known to be faulty. You don't use just one tree to reconstruct the climate of the last 1000 years. You use a hundred trees or more. That'd be a tad more acceptable.

yeah, well, mcintyre claims lots of things,but they never seem to work out for him (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/national-academies-synthesis-report/).

What I'm saying is that it's not as potent or as large a part of the atmosphere as water. CO2 has gone from 280ppm to 350ppm but that's still less than a tenth of a percent of the atmosphere.

we're at more like 380 at this point. of course, the difference between 280 and 200ish is the difference between it being quite pleasant outside my apartment here in wisconsin right now and there being a mile of ice over my head.

And temps fell from 1940's-1970's when CO2 was on the rise. The only consistent correlation between CO2 and temperature was during the last 25-30 years. I'm not sure why temps dipped while CO2 rose during that time but it happened.

it's funny that you aren't sure why that happened, considering it is well known and understood by the scientific community. but hey, what do they know, right?

and it's just a tiny bit silly to claim that the only consistent correlation between co2 and temp is over the past few decades. we've got solid data going back 650,000 years now, and the relation holds up quite nicely through multiple glacial and interglacial periods.

That is certainly what the press and the enviromental extortionists would have you believe.
Environmental extortionists? If this were about money, they'd go to where the money is like the rest of the hacks. I hear ExxonMobil has tons.

I'm usually a skeptic but...guys...we're in deep sh*t.

...that is, unless someone can answer to these points:

http://uspolitics.about.com/b/a/207395.htm

Besides, even if there is no imminent catastrophe, we shouldn't be polluting anyway! It damages property and health and should be somehow accounted for in the cost of doing business.

I have to disagree with you here. First, the polar ice caps are not melting. Incredulous, yes, arrogant, yes, but here's my facts: Antarctica, which contains 90% of the worlds frozen water, is, in fact, cooling down. Less than 2% of Antarctic ice is "melting"--that leaves 98% still intact, and actually increasing in volume. In the Arctic regions, it is widely speculated that the Greenland ice cap may melt sometime in the next 1000 years or so. Maybe. Meanwhile, Iceland's ice is actually growing.

You're saying this like it indicates that global warming is not a threat. According to global warming models, there is going to be some growth of ice sheets in certain areas. As temperatures rise, more water vapor will linger in the atmosphere to then condense on ice sheets. If global warming weren't occuring the tops of those ice sheets would erode, and slowly get replenished by water underneath them freezing and the occaisional blizzard, instead of a steady moisture bath. Eventually, the rising temperatures will result in more melting because instead of having, lets say, 100 tons of ice at -40 in the winter, you've got 200 tons of ice at -10 in the winter. Then comes summer, and you've got floods.

I believe that we're running out of oil, and that will precipitate global war, nuking, and general mayhem.

We'll be reduced to vestiges of civilization, which will solve the global warming problem.

Getting hot from the CO2 in the atmosphere is less of a threat than wholesale nuclear war and throwing smallpox around.

The answer to this question, the more I read and look around, is "yes."

Unenlightened self-interest on both sides seems to be the M-O of this entire debate. The warming-positive folks are pushing their radical environmentalist views, while the wamring-negative folks want to keep making money without any consideration for, well, anyone but themselves, really.

Seems to me that the answer, as it so often needs to be but never is in human affairs, is somehwere in between.

Unenlightened self-interest on both sides seems to be the M-O of this entire debate. The warming-positive folks are pushing their radical environmentalist views, while the wamring-negative folks want to keep making money without any consideration for, well, anyone but themselves, really.

Well, pretty soon there wont be an Earth to profit off of. And if you think theres no profit in alternative energy sources, youre an idiot.

since your answer is wrong, i'll guess that you don't actually know where i was going.
Wow, I didn't know you were that...D-did you fail chemistry? Or have you not taken it yet?

When you burn hydrocarbons under ideal conditions, with plenty of oxygen, you get carbon dioxide (from the carbon atoms), water (from the hydrogen atoms) and lots of heat.

i certainly seem to have more than you, and you certainly seem unable to pick out any of these alleged holes.
Actually I do seem to know more than you. Especially about basic chemistry. And the biggest hole I wanted to poke was that water is a bigger part of this than CO2. Which it is. And that we're not strong enough to destroy the world. Which we aren't.

but only for two decades, while it has warmed overall in the past five.
Actually, over 95% of the continent hasn't. The only observed warming has been on a northern. The rest has been consistently colder.

old data, at best - more of the ice is breaking up faster than was originally thought, because we didn't have enough understanding of the physics at work in them. the real story (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/catastrophic-sea-level-rise-more-evidence-from-the-ice-sheets/#more-276) is even more alarming than was thought. we're looking at meters of sea level rise over the next few decades.
Wow, you realize that you're using Michael Mann's website there. Propaganda usually isn't the best objective source. It'd be like using Greenpeace's numbers on the Chernobyl accident. Gross over estimation.

yeah, well, mcintyre claims lots of things,but they never seem to work out for him (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/national-academies-synthesis-report/).
Do you really think it's the best idea to use the website of the guy who was discredited? And he was. At least on the hockey stick.

we're at more like 380 at this point. of course, the difference between 280 and 200ish is the difference between it being quite pleasant outside my apartment here in wisconsin right now and there being a mile of ice over my head.
Well, we're only in the 370's according to NOAA as of 2005. We won't have the '06 numbers until the year is out though. Don't you just hate waiting to draw a conclusion.

CO2 ain't the only 'GHG' numbnutz. NO absorbs about 270 times as much energy as CO2. And water vapor is also a big problem since it is the most abundant by far and absorbs more energy than CO2, though not nearly as much more as NO. The Earth isn't so fragile. Get over it.

it's funny that you aren't sure why that happened, considering it is well known and understood by the scientific community. but hey, what do they know, right?
Really? Why was that? You can't just say that you know something and then tell us. Well, you can but it doesn't make you look smart. Please show me an objective source where this is explained.

And I just love getting flamed. When you can't respond, just insult. I'm just an evil nut who wants to boil the planet, right? In fact, you should probably lynch me and everyone like me because we'd just destroy your precious gem of a world with our DeathStar fleets if we got the chance.

and it's just a tiny bit silly to claim that the only consistent correlation between co2 and temp is over the past few decades. we've got solid data going back 650,000 years now, and the relation holds up quite nicely through multiple glacial and interglacial periods.
Yes, from Micheal Mann's one tree. I know that there are other, more credible researchers out there who have found a correlation but there is also a correlation between temp and water, NO, CH4, and other junk. But those are reconstructed records, as in we weren't actually there with a thermometer 650,000 years ago. And you need lots of samples from lots of rocks and trees and ice, not just 3 or 4, or 1 in Micheal Mann's case.

I know that this is hard for you to accept because you've been told your entire life that we're destroying the planet, but we're not.

About these climate models...

If we take one that we supposedly trust, pump 19th century data into it and project into the future with 20th century emissions, can it correctly predict the 20th century's temperature?

Wow, I didn't know you were that...D-did you fail chemistry? Or have you not taken it yet?

When you burn hydrocarbons under ideal conditions, with plenty of oxygen, you get carbon dioxide (from the carbon atoms), water (from the hydrogen atoms) and lots of heat.

that's nice. it still is an incorrect answer to the question asked. i know looking back a couple posts is difficult, so here it is again:

what is the major factor in determining the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere?

Actually, over 95% of the continent hasn't. The only observed warming has been on a northern. The rest has been consistently colder.

source it. the papers finding cooler temps that i am aware of cover 1986 and beyond, while those looking slightly longer term have found overall warming and a weather pattern and ocean heat absorbtion based explanation for the recent localized trend.

Wow, you realize that you're using Michael Mann's website there. Propaganda usually isn't the best objective source. It'd be like using Greenpeace's numbers on the Chernobyl accident. Gross over estimation.

yeah, i'm sure all those peer-reviewed journal articles are all just lies. care to actually take on the argument, rather than whining?

Do you really think it's the best idea to use the website of the guy who was discredited? And he was. At least on the hockey stick.

so i take it you didn't even attempt to read the contents of this page. you know, about the nas report - which had this to say:

"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes the additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and documentation of the spatial coherence of recent warming described above (Cook et al. 2004, Moberg et al. 2005, Rutherford et al. 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press), and also the pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators described in previous chapters (e.g., Thompson et al. in press). Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium."

yeah, that sounds totally discredited. or not. perhaps it would be best if you found new sources of information. ones that didn't just blatantly lie to you, perhaps?

Well, we're only in the 370's according to NOAA as of 2005. We won't have the '06 numbers until the year is out though. Don't you just hate waiting to draw a conclusion.

really? (http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/)

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/projects/src/web/trends/co2_trend_gl.png


Really? Why was that? You can't just say that you know something and then tell us. Well, you can but it doesn't make you look smart. Please show me an objective source where this is explained.

it's aerosols, man, aerosols. are you sure you actually know about this topic? cause shit, this stuff has already wound up in wikipedia, and therefore counts as common knowledge in my book.

Yes, from Micheal Mann's one tree.

don't lie

I know that there are other, more credible researchers out there who have found a correlation but there is also a correlation between temp and water, NO, CH4, and other junk. But those are reconstructed records, as in we weren't actually there with a thermometer 650,000 years ago. And you need lots of samples from lots of rocks and trees and ice, not just 3 or 4, or 1 in Micheal Mann's case.

you'd best start reading up on paleoclimate proxies, just so you can have an actual handle on the subject. here (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/068.htm) is as good a place to start as any.

Threat to the planet or threat to humans?

The planet will survive, but it may not be under conditions conducive to mammalian life.

I believe that global warming is occuring; I have yet to see any peer-reviewed research that shows that it isn't, but plenty that shows that it is.

Threat to the planet or threat to humans?

The planet will survive, but it may not be under conditions conducive to mammalian life.

I believe that global warming is occuring; I have yet to see any peer-reviewed research that shows that it isn't, but plenty that shows that it is.
It's pretty much humans we're concerned about, though polar bears aren't doing so hot. Or they are doing hot but not liking it.

About these climate models...

If we take one that we supposedly trust, pump 19th century data into it and project into the future with 20th century emissions, can it correctly predict the 20th century's temperature?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rD1dnP_k8Yc

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rD1dnP_k8Yc
I wonder what the arguments will be like for that one.

I wonder what the arguments will be like for that one.

probably "i could draw squiggly lines like that too, therefore everything is fine"

probably "i could draw squiggly lines like that too, therefore everything is fine"
Pretty good read for people who do not know who David Attenborough is.

Attenborough: Climate change is the major challenge facing the world
by David Attenborough

I was sceptical about climate change. I was cautious about crying wolf. I am always cautious about crying wolf. I think conservationists have to be careful in saying things are catastrophic when, in fact, they are less than catastrophic.

I have seen my job at the BBC as a presenter to produce programmes about natural history, just as the Natural History Museum would be interested in showing a range of birds of paradise - that's the sort of thing I've been doing. And in almost every big series I've made, the most recent one being Planet Earth, I've ended up by talking about the future, and possible dangers. But, with climate change, I was sceptical. That is true.

Also, I'm not a chemist or a climatologist or a meteorologist; it isn't for me to suddenly stand up and say I have decided the climate is changing. That's not my expertise. The television gives you an unfair and unjustified prominence but just because your face is on the telly doesn't mean you're an expert on meteorology.

But I'm no longer sceptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world. I have waited until the proof was conclusive that it was humanity changing the climate. The thing that really convinced me was the graphs connecting the increase of carbon dioxide in the environment and the rise in temperature, with the growth of human population and industrialisation. The coincidence of the curves made it perfectly clear we have left the period of natural climatic oscillation behind and have begun on a steep curve, in terms of temperature rise, beyond anything in terms of increases that we have seen over many thousands of years.

People say, everything will be all right in the end. But it's not the case. We may be facing major disasters on a global scale.

I have seen the ice melting. I have been to parts of Patagonia and heard people say: "That's where the glacier was 10 years ago - and that's where it is today." The most dramatic evidence I have seen was New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Was that climate-change induced, out of the ordinary? Certainly so. Everyone who does any cooking knows that if you want to increase a chemical reaction, you put it on the stove and heat it up. If you increase the temperature of the oceans, above which there are swirling currents of air, you will increase the energy in the air currents. It's not a mystery.

So it's true to say these programmes about climate change are different, in that previously I have made programmes about natural history, and now you could say I have an engaged stance. The first is about the fact that there is climate change and that it is human-induced. I'm well aware that people say it's all a fuss about nothing, and even if it is getting warmer, it's nothing to do with us. So I'm glad that the BBC wanted some clear statement of the evidence as to why these two things are the case.

The second programme says, these are some of the changes that are now almost inevitable, these are the sorts of things that the nations of the world have to do, to forestall the worst. Will they do it? Who knows? And many people feel helpless.

Yet the fact of the matter is, I was brought up as boy during the war and, during the war, we actually regarded it as immoral, wrong, to leave food on your plate, you needed to eat what was on your plate because we didn't have enough. I feel in the same way that it is wrong to waste energy now, and if that sort of sea change in moral attitude were to spread amongst the world's population, it would make a difference.

During the past 50 years, I have been lucky enough to spend my time travelling around the world looking at its wonders and its splendours. I have seen many changes, some good many bad.

But it's only in the past decade that I have come to think about the question of whether or not what I, or anybody else, has been doing, could have contributed to the change in the climate of the planet that is undoubtedly taking place. When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.

I'm 80 now. It's not that I think, like any old man, that change is wrong. I recognise that the world has always changed. I know that. But the point is, it's changing more extremely and swiftly than at any time in the past several million years. And one of the things I don't want to do is to look at my grandchildren and hear them say: "Grandfather, you knew it was happening - and you did nothing."

As told to Michael McCarthy
http://www.energybulletin.net/16365.html

Actuall it's not a lie. It nearly took an act of Congress to get the researcher behind the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a steep rise in global temperature in the 20th century following a millennium of stable temperatures, to release his publicly funded data and computer code. Among other dubious presumptions, the graph is derived from data that bases climate estimates for the entire 15th century on the tree ring measurements of a single tree.

McIntyre and McKitrick have recently had an article accepted by Geophysical Research Letters -- the same journal that published Mann's 1999 article.

"GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L03710, doi:10.1029/2004GL021750, 2005

Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance

Stephen McIntyre

Northwest Exploration Co., Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ross McKitrick

Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The “hockey stick” shaped temperature reconstruction of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) has been widely applied. However it has not been previously noted in print that, prior to their principal components (PCs) analysis on tree ring networks, they carried out an unusual data transformation which strongly affects the resulting PCs. Their method, when tested on persistent red noise, nearly always produces a hockey stick shaped first principal component (PC1) and overstates the first eigenvalue. In the controversial 15th century period, the MBH98 method effectively selects only one species (bristlecone pine) into the critical North American PC1, making it implausible to describe it as the “dominant pattern of variance”. Through Monte Carlo analysis, we show that MBH98 benchmarks for significance of the Reduction of Error (RE) statistic are substantially under-stated and, using a range of cross-validation statistics, we show that the MBH98 15th century reconstruction lacks statistical significance.

Received 14 October 2004; accepted 17 January 2005; published 12 February 2005.

Index Terms: 1620 Global Change: Climate dynamics (0429, 3309); 1694 Global Change: Instruments and techniques; 3344 Atmospheric Processes: Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900); 3337 Atmospheric Processes: Global climate models (1626, 4928); 9820 General or Miscellaneous: Techniques applicable in three or more fields."

So while they didn't say there is no warming, they did show that Mann made mistakes.

As for the NOAA graph:
"The last year of data is still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square symbols represents the same, after correction for the average seasonal cycle." And it didn't hit 380 until 2006.

Asteroids aren't human caused and they just keep coming so we aren't to blame and because they didn't stop hitting us after the 1970's. They're not the best reason for the dip. Man doesn't cause a cooling and then a warming, both by accident. I won't even bother with aerosols because I've wasted enough time on you.

And I'd like to take a stab at the answer you wanted to your quiz now: 'human-caused global warming heats the oceans, which puts more water in the air, which heats the Earth more. Darn those stupid, evil republicans.'
That the answer you're looking for? The one where we get blamed for everything? And by we I mean the USA. Because the rest of the world cares and we're just evil.

I'm not saying we should tryo to pollute and destroy and kill everything. What I am saying is that our species survival is more important than another species survival. If I were given the choice between us and them, I'd choose us and I hope you would too. Wimps don't become top dogs either. We got where we are by being the best; highly intelligent, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary. We will only survive if we continue to do what we've always done.

True science is very skeptical. The burden of proof always falls on those trying to prove something. If even a single flaw is found, it needs to be corrected before moving forward.

Actuall it's not a lie. It nearly took an act of Congress to get the researcher behind the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a steep rise in global temperature in the 20th century following a millennium of stable temperatures, to release his publicly funded data and computer code. Among other dubious presumptions, the graph is derived from data that bases climate estimates for the entire 15th century on the tree ring measurements of a single tree.

McIntyre and McKitrick have recently had an article accepted by Geophysical Research Letters -- the same journal that published Mann's 1999 article.

"GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L03710, doi:10.1029/2004GL021750, 2005

Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance

Stephen McIntyre

Northwest Exploration Co., Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ross McKitrick

Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The “hockey stick” shaped temperature reconstruction of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) has been widely applied. However it has not been previously noted in print that, prior to their principal components (PCs) analysis on tree ring networks, they carried out an unusual data transformation which strongly affects the resulting PCs. Their method, when tested on persistent red noise, nearly always produces a hockey stick shaped first principal component (PC1) and overstates the first eigenvalue. In the controversial 15th century period, the MBH98 method effectively selects only one species (bristlecone pine) into the critical North American PC1, making it implausible to describe it as the “dominant pattern of variance”. Through Monte Carlo analysis, we show that MBH98 benchmarks for significance of the Reduction of Error (RE) statistic are substantially under-stated and, using a range of cross-validation statistics, we show that the MBH98 15th century reconstruction lacks statistical significance.

Received 14 October 2004; accepted 17 January 2005; published 12 February 2005.

Index Terms: 1620 Global Change: Climate dynamics (0429, 3309); 1694 Global Change: Instruments and techniques; 3344 Atmospheric Processes: Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900); 3337 Atmospheric Processes: Global climate models (1626, 4928); 9820 General or Miscellaneous: Techniques applicable in three or more fields."

So while they didn't say there is no warming, they did show that Mann made mistakes.

As for the NOAA graph:
"The last year of data is still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square symbols represents the same, after correction for the average seasonal cycle." And it didn't hit 380 until 2006.

Asteroids aren't human caused and they just keep coming so we aren't to blame and because they didn't stop hitting us after the 1970's. They're not the best reason for the dip. Man doesn't cause a cooling and then a warming, both by accident. I won't even bother with aerosols because I've wasted enough time on you.

And I'd like to take a stab at the answer you wanted to your quiz now: 'human-caused global warming heats the oceans, which puts more water in the air, which heats the Earth more. Darn those stupid, evil republicans.'
That the answer you're looking for? The one where we get blamed for everything? And by we I mean the USA. Because the rest of the world cares and we're just evil.

I'm not saying we should tryo to pollute and destroy and kill everything. What I am saying is that our species survival is more important than another species survival. If I were given the choice between us and them, I'd choose us and I hope you would too. Wimps don't become top dogs either. We got where we are by being the best; highly intelligent, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary. We will only survive if we continue to do what we've always done.

True science is very skeptical. The burden of proof always falls on those trying to prove something. If even a single flaw is found, it needs to be corrected before moving forward.
From RealClimate:

MYTH #0: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.


This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparant absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth's surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called "Detection and Attribution Studies". Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).

MYTH #1: The "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction is based solely on two publications by climate scientist Michael Mann and colleagues (Mann et al, 1998;1999).


This is patently false. Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'").

Some proxy-based reconstructions suggest greater variability than others. This greater variability may be attributable to different emphases in seasonal and spatial emphasis (see Jones and Mann, 2004; Rutherford et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2004). However, even for those reconstructions which suggest a colder "Little Ice Age" and greater variability in general in past centuries, such as that of Esper et al (2002), late 20th century hemispheric warmth is still found to be anomalous in the context of the reconstruction (see Cook et al, 2004).

MYTH #2: Regional proxy evidence of warm or anomalous (wet or dry) conditions in past centuries contradicts the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric mean warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context.

Such claims reflect a lack of awareness of the distinction between regional and large-scale climate change. Similar such claims were recently made in two articles by astronomer Willie Soon and co-authors (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003). These claims were subsequently rebutted by a group of more than a dozen leading climate scientists in an article in the journal "Eos" of the American Geophysical Union (Mann et al, ‘Eos‘, 2003). The rebuttal raised, among other points, the following two key points:


(1) In drawing conclusions regarding past regional temperature changes from proxy records, it is essential to assess proxy data for actual sensitivity to past temperature variability. In some cases (Soon and Baliunas, 2003, Soon et al, 2003) a global 'warm anomaly' has been defined for any period during which various regions appear to indicate climate anomalies that can be classified as being either 'warm', 'wet', or 'dry' relative to '20th century' conditions. Such a criterion could be used to define any period of climate as 'warm' or 'cold', and thus cannot meaningfully characterize past large-scale surface temperature changes.

(2) It is essential to distinguish (e.g. by compositing or otherwise assimilating different proxy information in a consistent manner—e.g., Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998, 1999; Briffa et al., 2001) between regional temperature changes and changes in global or hemispheric mean temperature. Specific periods of cold and warmth differ from region to region over the globe (see Jones and Mann, 2004), as changes in atmospheric circulation over time exhibit a wave-like character, ensuring that certain regions tend to warm (due, for example, to a southerly flow in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes) when other regions cool (due to the corresponding northerly flow that must occur elsewhere). Truly representative estimates of global or hemispheric average temperature must therefore average temperature changes over a sufficiently large number of distinct regions to average out such offsetting regional changes. The specification of a warm period, therefore requires that warm anomalies in different regions should be truly synchronous and not merely required to occur within a very broad interval in time, such as AD 800-1300 (as in Soon et al, 2003; Soon and Baliunas, 2003).

MYTH #3: The "Hockey Stick" studies claim that the 20th century on the whole is the warmest period of the past 1000 years.

This is a mis-characterization of the actual scientific conclusions. Numerous studies suggest that hemispheric mean warmth for the late 20th century (that is, the past few decades) appears to exceed the warmth of any comparable length period over the past thousand years or longer, taking into account the uncertainties in the estimates (see Figure 1 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'"). On the other hand, in the context of the long-term reconstructions, the early 20th century appears to have been a relatively cold period while the mid 20th century was comparable in warmth, by most estimates, to peak Medieval warmth (i.e., the so-called "Medieval Warm Period"). It is not the average 20th century warmth, but the magnitude of warming during the 20th century, and the level of warmth observed during the past few decades, which appear to be anomalous in a long-term context. Studies such as those of Soon and associates (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003) that consider only ‘20th century’ conditions, or interpret past temperature changes using evidence incapable of resolving trends in recent decades , cannot meaningfully address the question of whether late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term and large-scale context.

MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.


This statement embraces at least two distinct falsehoods. The first falsehood holds that the "Hockey Stick" is the result of one analysis or the analysis of one group of researchers (i.e., that of Mann et al, 1998 and Mann et al, 1999). However, as discussed in the response to Myth #1 above, the basic conclusions of Mann et al (1998,1999) are affirmed in multiple independent studies. Thus, even if there were errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, numerous other studies independently support the conclusion of anomalous late 20th century hemispheric-scale warmth.

The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the "hockey stick" shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.

False claims of the existence of errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction can also be traced to spurious allegations made by two individuals, McIntyre and McKitrick (McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). The false claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific (social science) journal "Energy and Environment" and later, in a separate "Communications Arising" comment that was rejected by Nature based on negative appraisals by reviewers and editor [as a side note, we find it peculiar that the authors have argued elsewhere that their submission was rejected due to 'lack of space'. Nature makes their policy on such submissions quite clear: "The Brief Communications editor will decide how to proceed on the basis of whether the central conclusion of the earlier paper is brought into question; of the length of time since the original publication; and of whether a comment or exchange of views is likely to seem of interest to nonspecialist readers. Because Nature receives so many comments, those that do not meet these criteria are referred to the specialist literature." Since Nature chose to send the comment out for review in the first place, the "time since the original publication" was clearly not deemed a problematic factor. One is logically left to conclude that the grounds for rejection were the deficiencies in the authors' arguments explicitly noted by the reviewers]. The rejected criticism has nonetheless been posted on the internet by the authors, and promoted in certain other non-peer-reviewed venues (see this nice discussion by science journalist David Appell of a scurrilous parroting of their claims by Richard Muller in an on-line opinion piece).

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, which hold that the "Hockey-Stick" shape of the MBH98 reconstruction is an artifact of the use of series with infilled data and the convention by which certain networks of proxy data were represented in a Principal Components Analysis ("PCA"), are readily seen to be false , as detailed in a response by Mann and colleagues to their rejected Nature criticism demonstrating that (1) the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction is robust with respect to the elimination of any data that were infilled in the original analysis, (2) the main features of the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely insensitive to whether or not proxy data networks are represented by PCA, (3) the putative ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick, which argues for anomalous 15th century warmth (in contradiction to all other known reconstructions), is an artifact of the censoring by the authors of key proxy data in the original Mann et al (1998) dataset, and finally, (4) Unlike the original Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, the so-called ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick fails statistical verification exercises, rendering it statistically meaningless and unworthy of discussion in the legitimate scientific literature.

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick have now been further discredited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, in a paper to appear in the American Meteorological Society journal, "Journal of Climate" by Rutherford and colleagues (2004) [and by yet another paper by an independent set of authors that is currently "under review" and thus cannot yet be cited--more on this soon!]. Rutherford et al (2004) demonstrate nearly identical results to those of MBH98, using the same proxy dataset as Mann et al (1998) but addressing the issues of infilled/missing data raised by Mcintyre and McKitrick, and using an alternative climate field reconstruction (CFR) methodology that does not represent any proxy data networks by PCA at all.

References:

Cook, E.R., J. Esper, and R.D. D'Arrigo, Extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere land temperature variability over the past 1000 years, Quat. Sci. Rev., 23, 2063-2074, 2004.

Crowley, T.J., and T. Lowery, How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?, Ambio, 29, 51-54, 2000.

Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.

Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.

Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries, Nature, 392, 779-787, 1998.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762,
1999.

Mann, M.E., Ammann, C.M., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Crowley, T.J., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Oppenheimer, M., Osborn, T.J., Overpeck, J.T., Rutherford, S., Trenberth, K.E., Wigley, T.M.L., On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late 20th Century Warmth, Eos, 84, 256-258, 2003.

Rutherford, S., Mann, M.E., Osborn, T.J., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Methodology, Predictor Network, Target Season and Target Domain, Journal of Climate, in press, 2004.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11

The point I was making with that last post was that there is at least one peer-reviewed, reliable, well sourced paper out there. It doesn't suprise me one bit that so many would commit so much time and effort to attack those behind that paper.

And you keep using realclimate like it's an objective source. It's a propaganda website. You're using propaganda in an argument to further your point. Huh, the Nazis did that too. And so did the Stalinist Soviets. And just about every other facist regime throughout history.

Someday, someone will take this alarmism to an extreme and make policies that will round us all up like livestock, ban the use and possesion of technology by the general public, force everyone to live in the fields of organic farms while the leaders live in comfortable mansions, and if another nation doesn't wipe us out in our hour of weakness we'll simply starve. Communal agrarianism will not mean food for all, it will mean we will all suffer equally as we slowly die. Questioning authority will mean a bolt in the chest. It may sound more than a bit over the top but it's happened before. Very intelligent, talented individuals have been a part of some of the greatest atrocities in recorded history. The Germans used eugenics to justify mass murder before anyone knew what a gene was. I fear that the same thing will happen again and again. And I fear that this extreme environmentalism will be used to justify one of those massacres. And I fear what might happen after should such a thing occur.

We fought long and hard to get out of the dirt, I won't go back. My survival, my species survival, is paramount. If lightning strikes a forest, let it burn. If a volcano errupts, let it boil the nearby reef or scorch and bury a field. If ice melts, let it melt. We shouldn't care about changing the planet. Microbes helped change our atmosphere long ago into what it is today. No one cried fowl. Those that adapted survived and those that didn't died. We will never get to Venus; it's closer to the sun, has an atmosphere 90 times thicker, and a completely different atmospheric composition, so don't ever think we'll get that far. The planet changes, things die, sometimes very fast and in great numbers. Sit back, relax, and watch the show.

The point I was making with that last post was that there is at least one peer-reviewed, reliable, well sourced paper out there. It doesn't suprise me one bit that so many would commit so much time and effort to attack those behind that paper.

And you keep using realclimate like it's an objective source. It's a propaganda website. You're using propaganda in an argument to further your point. Huh, the Nazis did that too. And so did the Stalinist Soviets. And just about every other regime throughout history.

fixed:)

I have to disagree with you here. First, the polar ice caps are not melting. Incredulous, yes, arrogant, yes, but here's my facts: Antarctica, which contains 90% of the worlds frozen water, is, in fact, cooling down. Less than 2% of Antarctic ice is "melting"--that leaves 98% still intact, and actually increasing in volume. In the Arctic regions, it is widely speculated that the Greenland ice cap may melt sometime in the next 1000 years or so. Maybe. Meanwhile, Iceland's ice is actually growing. And yes, the Earth is in the middle of a transition, we're actually in what is known as an interglacial period. Technically, we're due in for another ice age sometime soon. Furthermore, oil is not going to run out in the next forty years. We should, again, defintiely look toward other sources of energy, and politicians are a huge part of the problem--which is why they can't be counted on to fix it. What one party does will be reversed by the next. So, change needs to instituted by nonpartisan external organizations that are willing to adapt and change according to criticism and suggestion.

I havent ever heard this before. Could you be so kind as to provide some coroberation. I am genuinely interested.

From RealClimate:

MYTH #0: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.


This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparant absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth's surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called "Detection and Attribution Studies". Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).

MYTH #1: The "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction is based solely on two publications by climate scientist Michael Mann and colleagues (Mann et al, 1998;1999).


This is patently false. Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'").

Some proxy-based reconstructions suggest greater variability than others. This greater variability may be attributable to different emphases in seasonal and spatial emphasis (see Jones and Mann, 2004; Rutherford et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2004). However, even for those reconstructions which suggest a colder "Little Ice Age" and greater variability in general in past centuries, such as that of Esper et al (2002), late 20th century hemispheric warmth is still found to be anomalous in the context of the reconstruction (see Cook et al, 2004).

MYTH #2: Regional proxy evidence of warm or anomalous (wet or dry) conditions in past centuries contradicts the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric mean warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context.

Such claims reflect a lack of awareness of the distinction between regional and large-scale climate change. Similar such claims were recently made in two articles by astronomer Willie Soon and co-authors (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003). These claims were subsequently rebutted by a group of more than a dozen leading climate scientists in an article in the journal "Eos" of the American Geophysical Union (Mann et al, ‘Eos‘, 2003). The rebuttal raised, among other points, the following two key points:


(1) In drawing conclusions regarding past regional temperature changes from proxy records, it is essential to assess proxy data for actual sensitivity to past temperature variability. In some cases (Soon and Baliunas, 2003, Soon et al, 2003) a global 'warm anomaly' has been defined for any period during which various regions appear to indicate climate anomalies that can be classified as being either 'warm', 'wet', or 'dry' relative to '20th century' conditions. Such a criterion could be used to define any period of climate as 'warm' or 'cold', and thus cannot meaningfully characterize past large-scale surface temperature changes.

(2) It is essential to distinguish (e.g. by compositing or otherwise assimilating different proxy information in a consistent manner—e.g., Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998, 1999; Briffa et al., 2001) between regional temperature changes and changes in global or hemispheric mean temperature. Specific periods of cold and warmth differ from region to region over the globe (see Jones and Mann, 2004), as changes in atmospheric circulation over time exhibit a wave-like character, ensuring that certain regions tend to warm (due, for example, to a southerly flow in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes) when other regions cool (due to the corresponding northerly flow that must occur elsewhere). Truly representative estimates of global or hemispheric average temperature must therefore average temperature changes over a sufficiently large number of distinct regions to average out such offsetting regional changes. The specification of a warm period, therefore requires that warm anomalies in different regions should be truly synchronous and not merely required to occur within a very broad interval in time, such as AD 800-1300 (as in Soon et al, 2003; Soon and Baliunas, 2003).

MYTH #3: The "Hockey Stick" studies claim that the 20th century on the whole is the warmest period of the past 1000 years.

This is a mis-characterization of the actual scientific conclusions. Numerous studies suggest that hemispheric mean warmth for the late 20th century (that is, the past few decades) appears to exceed the warmth of any comparable length period over the past thousand years or longer, taking into account the uncertainties in the estimates (see Figure 1 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'"). On the other hand, in the context of the long-term reconstructions, the early 20th century appears to have been a relatively cold period while the mid 20th century was comparable in warmth, by most estimates, to peak Medieval warmth (i.e., the so-called "Medieval Warm Period"). It is not the average 20th century warmth, but the magnitude of warming during the 20th century, and the level of warmth observed during the past few decades, which appear to be anomalous in a long-term context. Studies such as those of Soon and associates (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003) that consider only ‘20th century’ conditions, or interpret past temperature changes using evidence incapable of resolving trends in recent decades , cannot meaningfully address the question of whether late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term and large-scale context.

MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.


This statement embraces at least two distinct falsehoods. The first falsehood holds that the "Hockey Stick" is the result of one analysis or the analysis of one group of researchers (i.e., that of Mann et al, 1998 and Mann et al, 1999). However, as discussed in the response to Myth #1 above, the basic conclusions of Mann et al (1998,1999) are affirmed in multiple independent studies. Thus, even if there were errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, numerous other studies independently support the conclusion of anomalous late 20th century hemispheric-scale warmth.

The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the "hockey stick" shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.

False claims of the existence of errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction can also be traced to spurious allegations made by two individuals, McIntyre and McKitrick (McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). The false claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific (social science) journal "Energy and Environment" and later, in a separate "Communications Arising" comment that was rejected by Nature based on negative appraisals by reviewers and editor [as a side note, we find it peculiar that the authors have argued elsewhere that their submission was rejected due to 'lack of space'. Nature makes their policy on such submissions quite clear: "The Brief Communications editor will decide how to proceed on the basis of whether the central conclusion of the earlier paper is brought into question; of the length of time since the original publication; and of whether a comment or exchange of views is likely to seem of interest to nonspecialist readers. Because Nature receives so many comments, those that do not meet these criteria are referred to the specialist literature." Since Nature chose to send the comment out for review in the first place, the "time since the original publication" was clearly not deemed a problematic factor. One is logically left to conclude that the grounds for rejection were the deficiencies in the authors' arguments explicitly noted by the reviewers]. The rejected criticism has nonetheless been posted on the internet by the authors, and promoted in certain other non-peer-reviewed venues (see this nice discussion by science journalist David Appell of a scurrilous parroting of their claims by Richard Muller in an on-line opinion piece).

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, which hold that the "Hockey-Stick" shape of the MBH98 reconstruction is an artifact of the use of series with infilled data and the convention by which certain networks of proxy data were represented in a Principal Components Analysis ("PCA"), are readily seen to be false , as detailed in a response by Mann and colleagues to their rejected Nature criticism demonstrating that (1) the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction is robust with respect to the elimination of any data that were infilled in the original analysis, (2) the main features of the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely insensitive to whether or not proxy data networks are represented by PCA, (3) the putative ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick, which argues for anomalous 15th century warmth (in contradiction to all other known reconstructions), is an artifact of the censoring by the authors of key proxy data in the original Mann et al (1998) dataset, and finally, (4) Unlike the original Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, the so-called ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick fails statistical verification exercises, rendering it statistically meaningless and unworthy of discussion in the legitimate scientific literature.

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick have now been further discredited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, in a paper to appear in the American Meteorological Society journal, "Journal of Climate" by Rutherford and colleagues (2004) [and by yet another paper by an independent set of authors that is currently "under review" and thus cannot yet be cited--more on this soon!]. Rutherford et al (2004) demonstrate nearly identical results to those of MBH98, using the same proxy dataset as Mann et al (1998) but addressing the issues of infilled/missing data raised by Mcintyre and McKitrick, and using an alternative climate field reconstruction (CFR) methodology that does not represent any proxy data networks by PCA at all.

References:

Cook, E.R., J. Esper, and R.D. D'Arrigo, Extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere land temperature variability over the past 1000 years, Quat. Sci. Rev., 23, 2063-2074, 2004.

Crowley, T.J., and T. Lowery, How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?, Ambio, 29, 51-54, 2000.

Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.

Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.

Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries, Nature, 392, 779-787, 1998.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762,
1999.

Mann, M.E., Ammann, C.M., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Crowley, T.J., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Oppenheimer, M., Osborn, T.J., Overpeck, J.T., Rutherford, S., Trenberth, K.E., Wigley, T.M.L., On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late 20th Century Warmth, Eos, 84, 256-258, 2003.

Rutherford, S., Mann, M.E., Osborn, T.J., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Methodology, Predictor Network, Target Season and Target Domain, Journal of Climate, in press, 2004.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
Still kicking fuckin' ass, it would appear. *bows*
:)

Still kicking fuckin' ass, it would appear. *bows*
:)
Congratulations to the both of you. You've memorized dialogue.

Congratulations to the both of you. You've memorized dialogue.
Guess what congratulations go to you then?
I've learned more and posted more about this than you've likely digested in your life.
Read my post history and get back to me when you're done. But before you do that, read Desperate Measures' post history first.
In the Archives.

Keep the chide in change.

You dismiss everything presented to you that opposes your way of thinking without a second glance but expect me to swallow everything you shove in my face without question? All my life people have told me how to think and act and I'm damned tired of it. You're a facist because you're trying to make everyone think the way you think. Believe what you believe. Act how you act.

And you keep using realclimate like it's an objective source. It's a propaganda website. You're using propaganda in an argument to further your point. Huh, the Nazis did that too. And so did the Stalinist Soviets. And just about every other facist regime throughout history.
Let's pretend your premise about realclimate is correct.

1. That's it isn't "objective" and puts forth a cogent, strong opinion isn't in any sense and indictment of the merits of their position. If their collection and interpretation of the data is even significantly correct, it demands that they have a strong opinion, and popularize it aggressively. It's hard to be impartial about vastly increasing strife and poverty by vastly decreasing the amount of habitable land, people's security, access to food and potable water. These are "bad things" with dire consequences both to the wealth of the world, and the very lives of a great many people. It's the myth of balance. Not all sides are equal. It's absurd, perhaps insane, to expect otherwise.

2. They've citations. If they're lying, there's nothing wrong with challenging their interpretation of the claims of those papers or the very methods and conclusions of the research described in those papers. Understandably, you chose not to do this. I don't blame you, it's hard, and might involve a trip to a university library. Interestingly you invoke a crazy fallacy to discredit the website and the research they present in their argument. You declare it propaganda, as if it were fact and not an ill considered opinion. Your evidence? See number 1, which again given the stakes is neither a fault nor particularly unexpected.

3. You make an irrational Nazi comparison.

To recap: On one hand, we've a cogent argument citing a body of climate research. On the other hand we've got your unsupported opinion which you consider to be unimpeachable fact, and non-sequitur Nazi comparisons. Care to guess which is more compelling?

From RealClimate:

MYTH #0: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.


This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparant absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth's surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called "Detection and Attribution Studies". Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).

MYTH #1: The "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction is based solely on two publications by climate scientist Michael Mann and colleagues (Mann et al, 1998;1999).


This is patently false. Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'").

Some proxy-based reconstructions suggest greater variability than others. This greater variability may be attributable to different emphases in seasonal and spatial emphasis (see Jones and Mann, 2004; Rutherford et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2004). However, even for those reconstructions which suggest a colder "Little Ice Age" and greater variability in general in past centuries, such as that of Esper et al (2002), late 20th century hemispheric warmth is still found to be anomalous in the context of the reconstruction (see Cook et al, 2004).

MYTH #2: Regional proxy evidence of warm or anomalous (wet or dry) conditions in past centuries contradicts the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric mean warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context.

Such claims reflect a lack of awareness of the distinction between regional and large-scale climate change. Similar such claims were recently made in two articles by astronomer Willie Soon and co-authors (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003). These claims were subsequently rebutted by a group of more than a dozen leading climate scientists in an article in the journal "Eos" of the American Geophysical Union (Mann et al, ‘Eos‘, 2003). The rebuttal raised, among other points, the following two key points:


(1) In drawing conclusions regarding past regional temperature changes from proxy records, it is essential to assess proxy data for actual sensitivity to past temperature variability. In some cases (Soon and Baliunas, 2003, Soon et al, 2003) a global 'warm anomaly' has been defined for any period during which various regions appear to indicate climate anomalies that can be classified as being either 'warm', 'wet', or 'dry' relative to '20th century' conditions. Such a criterion could be used to define any period of climate as 'warm' or 'cold', and thus cannot meaningfully characterize past large-scale surface temperature changes.

(2) It is essential to distinguish (e.g. by compositing or otherwise assimilating different proxy information in a consistent manner—e.g., Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998, 1999; Briffa et al., 2001) between regional temperature changes and changes in global or hemispheric mean temperature. Specific periods of cold and warmth differ from region to region over the globe (see Jones and Mann, 2004), as changes in atmospheric circulation over time exhibit a wave-like character, ensuring that certain regions tend to warm (due, for example, to a southerly flow in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes) when other regions cool (due to the corresponding northerly flow that must occur elsewhere). Truly representative estimates of global or hemispheric average temperature must therefore average temperature changes over a sufficiently large number of distinct regions to average out such offsetting regional changes. The specification of a warm period, therefore requires that warm anomalies in different regions should be truly synchronous and not merely required to occur within a very broad interval in time, such as AD 800-1300 (as in Soon et al, 2003; Soon and Baliunas, 2003).

MYTH #3: The "Hockey Stick" studies claim that the 20th century on the whole is the warmest period of the past 1000 years.

This is a mis-characterization of the actual scientific conclusions. Numerous studies suggest that hemispheric mean warmth for the late 20th century (that is, the past few decades) appears to exceed the warmth of any comparable length period over the past thousand years or longer, taking into account the uncertainties in the estimates (see Figure 1 in "Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called 'Hockey Stick'"). On the other hand, in the context of the long-term reconstructions, the early 20th century appears to have been a relatively cold period while the mid 20th century was comparable in warmth, by most estimates, to peak Medieval warmth (i.e., the so-called "Medieval Warm Period"). It is not the average 20th century warmth, but the magnitude of warming during the 20th century, and the level of warmth observed during the past few decades, which appear to be anomalous in a long-term context. Studies such as those of Soon and associates (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003) that consider only ‘20th century’ conditions, or interpret past temperature changes using evidence incapable of resolving trends in recent decades , cannot meaningfully address the question of whether late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term and large-scale context.

MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.


This statement embraces at least two distinct falsehoods. The first falsehood holds that the "Hockey Stick" is the result of one analysis or the analysis of one group of researchers (i.e., that of Mann et al, 1998 and Mann et al, 1999). However, as discussed in the response to Myth #1 above, the basic conclusions of Mann et al (1998,1999) are affirmed in multiple independent studies. Thus, even if there were errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, numerous other studies independently support the conclusion of anomalous late 20th century hemispheric-scale warmth.

The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the "hockey stick" shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.

False claims of the existence of errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction can also be traced to spurious allegations made by two individuals, McIntyre and McKitrick (McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). The false claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific (social science) journal "Energy and Environment" and later, in a separate "Communications Arising" comment that was rejected by Nature based on negative appraisals by reviewers and editor [as a side note, we find it peculiar that the authors have argued elsewhere that their submission was rejected due to 'lack of space'. Nature makes their policy on such submissions quite clear: "The Brief Communications editor will decide how to proceed on the basis of whether the central conclusion of the earlier paper is brought into question; of the length of time since the original publication; and of whether a comment or exchange of views is likely to seem of interest to nonspecialist readers. Because Nature receives so many comments, those that do not meet these criteria are referred to the specialist literature." Since Nature chose to send the comment out for review in the first place, the "time since the original publication" was clearly not deemed a problematic factor. One is logically left to conclude that the grounds for rejection were the deficiencies in the authors' arguments explicitly noted by the reviewers]. The rejected criticism has nonetheless been posted on the internet by the authors, and promoted in certain other non-peer-reviewed venues (see this nice discussion by science journalist David Appell of a scurrilous parroting of their claims by Richard Muller in an on-line opinion piece).

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, which hold that the "Hockey-Stick" shape of the MBH98 reconstruction is an artifact of the use of series with infilled data and the convention by which certain networks of proxy data were represented in a Principal Components Analysis ("PCA"), are readily seen to be false , as detailed in a response by Mann and colleagues to their rejected Nature criticism demonstrating that (1) the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction is robust with respect to the elimination of any data that were infilled in the original analysis, (2) the main features of the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely insensitive to whether or not proxy data networks are represented by PCA, (3) the putative ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick, which argues for anomalous 15th century warmth (in contradiction to all other known reconstructions), is an artifact of the censoring by the authors of key proxy data in the original Mann et al (1998) dataset, and finally, (4) Unlike the original Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, the so-called ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick fails statistical verification exercises, rendering it statistically meaningless and unworthy of discussion in the legitimate scientific literature.

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick have now been further discredited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, in a paper to appear in the American Meteorological Society journal, "Journal of Climate" by Rutherford and colleagues (2004) [and by yet another paper by an independent set of authors that is currently "under review" and thus cannot yet be cited--more on this soon!]. Rutherford et al (2004) demonstrate nearly identical results to those of MBH98, using the same proxy dataset as Mann et al (1998) but addressing the issues of infilled/missing data raised by Mcintyre and McKitrick, and using an alternative climate field reconstruction (CFR) methodology that does not represent any proxy data networks by PCA at all.

References:

Cook, E.R., J. Esper, and R.D. D'Arrigo, Extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere land temperature variability over the past 1000 years, Quat. Sci. Rev., 23, 2063-2074, 2004.

Crowley, T.J., and T. Lowery, How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?, Ambio, 29, 51-54, 2000.

Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.

Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.

Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries, Nature, 392, 779-787, 1998.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762,
1999.

Mann, M.E., Ammann, C.M., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Crowley, T.J., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Oppenheimer, M., Osborn, T.J., Overpeck, J.T., Rutherford, S., Trenberth, K.E., Wigley, T.M.L., On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late 20th Century Warmth, Eos, 84, 256-258, 2003.

Rutherford, S., Mann, M.E., Osborn, T.J., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Methodology, Predictor Network, Target Season and Target Domain, Journal of Climate, in press, 2004.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11

and just to pile on a little more (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/#more-121):

Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy
by Gavin Schmidt and Caspar Amman


Due to popular demand, we have put together a 'dummies guide' which tries to describe what the actual issues are in the latest controversy, in language even our parents might understand. A pdf version is also available. More technical descriptions of the issues can be seen here and here.

This guide is in two parts, the first deals with the background to the technical issues raised by McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05), while the second part discusses the application of this to the original Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) (MBH98) reconstruction. The wider climate science context is discussed here, and the relationship to other recent reconstructions (the 'Hockey Team') can be seen here.

NB. All the data that were used in MBH98 are freely available for download at ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/sdr/temp/nature/MANNETAL98/ (and also as supplementary data at Nature) along with a thorough description of the algorithm.


Part I: Technical issues:

1) What is principal component analysis (PCA)?

This is a mathematical technique that is used (among other things) to summarize the data found in a large number of noisy records so that the essential aspects can more easily seen. The most common patterns in the data are captured in a number of 'principal components' which describe some percentage of the variation in the original records. Usually only a limited number of components ('PC's) have any statistical significance, and these can be used instead of the larger data set to give basically the same description.

2) What do these individual components represent?

Often the first few components represent something recognisable and physical meaningful (at least in climate data applications). If a large part of the data set has a trend, than the mean trend may show up as one of the most important PCs. Similarly, if there is a seasonal cycle in the data, that will generally be represented by a PC. However, remember that PCs are just mathematical constructs. By themselves they say nothing about the physics of the situation. Thus, in many circumstances, physically meaningful timeseries are 'distributed' over a number of PCs, each of which individually does not appear to mean much. Different methodologies or conventions can make a big difference in which pattern comes up tops. If the aim of the PCA analysis is to determine the most important pattern, then it is important to know how robust that pattern is to the methodology. However, if the idea is to more simply summarize the larger data set, the individual ordering of the PCs is less important, and it is more crucial to make sure that as many significant PCs are included as possible.

3) How do you know whether a PC has significant information?

PC significance This determination is usually based on a 'Monte Carlo' simulation (so-called because of the random nature of the calculations). For instance, if you take 1000 sets of random data (that have the same statistical properties as the data set in question), and you perform the PCA analysis 1000 times, there will be 1000 examples of the first PC. Each of these will explain a different amount of the variation (or variance) in the original data. When ranked in order of explained variance, the tenth one down then defines the 99% confidence level: i.e. if your real PC explains more of the variance than 99% of the random PCs, then you can say that this is significant at the 99% level. This can be done for each PC in turn. (This technique was introduced by Preisendorfer et al. (1981), and is called the Preisendorfer N-rule).

The figure to the right gives two examples of this. Here each PC is plotted against the amount of fractional variance it explains. The blue line is the result from the random data, while the blue dots are the PC results for the real data. It is clear that at least the first two are significantly separated from the random noise line. In the other case, there are 5 (maybe 6) red crosses that appear to be distinguishable from the red line random noise. Note also that the first ('most important') PC does not always explain the same amount of the original data.

4) What do different conventions for PC analysis represent?

Some different conventions exist regarding how the original data should be normalized. For instance, the data can be normalized to have an average of zero over the whole record, or over a selected sub-interval. The variance of the data is associated with departures from the whatever mean was selected. So the pattern of data that shows the biggest departure from the mean will dominate the calculated PCs. If there is an a priori reason to be interested in departures from a particular mean, then this is a way to make sure that those patterns move up in the PC ordering. Changing conventions means that the explained variance of each PC can be different, the ordering can be different, and the number of significant PCs can be different.

5) How can you tell whether you have included enough PCs?

This is rather easy to tell. If your answer depends on the number of PCs included, then you haven't included enough. Put another way, if the answer you get is the same as if you had used all the data without doing any PC analysis at all, then you are probably ok. However, the reason why the PC summaries are used in the first place in paleo-reconstructions is that using the full proxy set often runs into the danger of 'overfitting' during the calibration period (the time period when the proxy data are trained to match the instrumental record). This can lead to a decrease in predictive skill outside of that window, which is the actual target of the reconstruction. So in summary, PC selection is a trade off: on one hand, the goal is to capture as much variability of the data as represented by the different PCs as possible (particularly if the explained variance is small), while on the other hand, you don't want to include PCs that are not really contributing any more significant information.

Part II: Application to the MBH98 'Hockey Stick'

1) Where is PCA used in the MBH methodology?

When incorporating many tree ring networks into the multi-proxy framework, it is easier to use a few leading PCs rather than 70 or so individual tree ring chronologies from a particular region. The trees are often very closely located and so it makes sense to summarize the general information they all contain in relation to the large-scale patterns of variability. The relevant signal for the climate reconstruction is the signal that the trees have in common, not each individual series. In MBH98, the North American tree ring series were treated like this. There are a number of other places in the overall methodology where some form of PCA was used, but they are not relevant to this particular controversy.

2) What is the point of contention in MM05?

MM05 contend that the particular PC convention used in MBH98 in dealing with the N. American tree rings selects for the 'hockey stick' shape and that the final reconstruction result is simply an artifact of this convention.

3) What convention was used in MBH98?

MBH98 were particularly interested in whether the tree ring data showed significant differences from the 20th century calibration period, and therefore normalized the data so that the mean over this period was zero. As discussed above, this will emphasize records that have the biggest differences from that period (either positive of negative). Since the underlying data have a 'hockey stick'-like shape, it is therefore not surprising that the most important PC found using this convention resembles the 'hockey stick'. There are actual two significant PCs found using this convention, and both were incorporated into the full reconstruction.

PC1 vs PC4 4) Does using a different convention change the answer?

As discussed above, a different convention (MM05 suggest one that has zero mean over the whole record) will change the ordering, significance and number of important PCs. In this case, the number of significant PCs increases to 5 (maybe 6) from 2 originally. This is the difference between the blue points (MBH98 convention) and the red crosses (MM05 convention) in the first figure. Also PC1 in the MBH98 convention moves down to PC4 in the MM05 convention. This is illustrated in the figure on the right, the red curve is the original PC1 and the blue curve is MM05 PC4 (adjusted to have same variance and mean). But as we stated above, the underlying data has a hockey stick structure, and so in either case the 'hockey stick'-like PC explains a significant part of the variance. Therefore, using the MM05 convention, more PCs need to be included to capture the significant information contained in the tree ring network.

This figure shows the difference in the final result whether you use the original convention and 2 PCs (blue) and the MM05 convention with 5 PCs (red). The MM05-based reconstruction is slightly less skillful when judged over the 19th century validation period but is otherwise very similar. In fact any calibration convention will lead to approximately the same answer as long as the PC decomposition is done properly and one determines how many PCs are needed to retain the primary information in the original data.

different conventions
5) What happens if you just use all the data and skip the whole PCA step?

This is a key point. If the PCs being used were inadequate in characterizing the underlying data, then the answer you get using all of the data will be significantly different. If, on the other hand, enough PCs were used, the answer should be essentially unchanged. This is shown in the figure below. The reconstruction using all the data is in yellow (the green line is the same thing but with the 'St-Anne River' tree ring chronology taken out). The blue line is the original reconstruction, and as you can see the correspondence between them is high. The validation is slightly worse, illustrating the trade-off mentioned above i.e. when using all of the data, over-fitting during the calibration period (due to the increase number of degrees of freedom) leads to a slight loss of predictability in the validation step.

No PCA comparison

6) So how do MM05 conclude that this small detail changes the answer?

MM05 claim that the reconstruction using only the first 2 PCs with their convention is significantly different to MBH98. Since PC 3,4 and 5 (at least) are also significant they are leaving out good data. It is mathematically wrong to retain the same number of PCs if the convention of standardization is changed. In this case, it causes a loss of information that is very easily demonstrated. Firstly, by showing that any such results do not resemble the results from using all data, and by checking the validation of the reconstruction for the 19th century. The MM version of the reconstruction can be matched by simply removing the N. American tree ring data along with the 'St Anne River' Northern treeline series from the reconstruction (shown in yellow below). Compare this curve with the ones shown above.

No N. American tree rings

As you might expect, throwing out data also worsens the validation statistics, as can be seen by eye when comparing the reconstructions over the 19th century validation interval. Compare the green line in the figure below to the instrumental data in red. To their credit, MM05 acknowledge that their alternate 15th century reconstruction has no skill.

validation period

7) Basically then the MM05 criticism is simply about whether selected N. American tree rings should have been included, not that there was a mathematical flaw?

Yes. Their argument since the beginning has essentially not been about methodological issues at all, but about 'source data' issues. Particular concerns with the "bristlecone pine" data were addressed in the followup paper MBH99 but the fact remains that including these data improves the statistical validation over the 19th Century period and they therefore should be included.

Hockey Team *used under GFDL license8) So does this all matter?

No. If you use the MM05 convention and include all the significant PCs, you get the same answer. If you don't use any PCA at all, you get the same answer. If you use a completely different methodology (i.e. Rutherford et al, 2005), you get basically the same answer. Only if you remove significant portions of the data do you get a different (and worse) answer.

9) Was MBH98 the final word on the climate of last millennium?

Not at all. There has been significant progress on many aspects of climate reconstructions since MBH98. Firstly, there are more and better quality proxy data available. There are new methodologies such as described in Rutherford et al (2005) or Moberg et al (2005) that address recognised problems with incomplete data series and the challenge of incorporating lower resolution data into the mix. Progress is likely to continue on all these fronts. As of now, all of the 'Hockey Team' reconstructions (shown left) agree that the late 20th century is anomalous in the context of last millennium, and possibly the last two millennia.

You dismiss everything presented to you that opposes your way of thinking without a second glance but expect me to swallow everything you shove in my face without question? All my life people have told me how to think and act and I'm damned tired of it. You're a facist because you're trying to make everyone think the way you think. Believe what you believe. Act how you act.
That sounds like a personal problem.

Media Hype set out by the liberal elite to scare people into voting Democrat, 'the legitimate green option'.

you know that weather forecasters can't get stuff rigt 3 days hence - what makes you think that they can forecast 20-50-100 years into the future with 100% accuracy?

global warming is apolitical ploy to increase the political capital of those outside the mainstream

To recap: On one hand, we've a cogent argument citing a body of climate research. On the other hand we've got your unsupported opinion which you consider to be unimpeachable fact, and non-sequitur Nazi comparisons. Care to guess which is more compelling?

ooh, ooh! pick me!

it's the nazi comparisons, right?

you know that weather forecasters can't get stuff rigt 3 days hence - what makes you think that they can forecast 20-50-100 years into the future with 100% accuracy?

so you'll be going swimming in lake michigan this december?

not personally but that comment assumes spring or summer never come back? wouldn't that be GLOBAL COOLING???
:fluffle:

This morning, I heard on the news that by the end of this century, Napa Valley will be too warm for 80% of the wine grapes that are currently grown.

Like everything else, Americans exaccagerate.

It IS a problem don't get me wrong, but it's not a problem for the reasons you think.

It IS melting the polar ice-caps, but they'd melt anyway, our Earth is going through a transsion, all things must die and reincarnate, including mother earth..

However, I'm more concerned about the foundation of our society, if the politicians don't get off thier lazy butts and do something, then we're going to be right smack dab in the middle of an energy crisis come fourty years. They need to work on making solar powerd and electric cars now while they still can, rather then wait till we have no oil left to spare and everybody go's insane and kills one another because the oil industry collapses, millions of people lose thier jobs, and millions of others panic cause they can't get to work. I'm realistic, the world isn't going to blowup cause of global warming. But it's going to get very hot, very sticky, millions of people and animals will die, and we're going to have a very miserable time unless we do something about our problems now. Democrats are too busy placing blames and Republicans shut thier ears. Both are neglecting the issue.

I think it is time for better fuels ANYWAY. Oil is ineffective for future needs, and not much is left. The global warming could be adjusted too... it's a little hotter than it was when I was little... I don't like it this hot. Time for a cooler summer (and less sunscreen).

that comment assumes spring or summer never come back?

i fail to see how

This morning, I heard on the news that by the end of this century, Napa Valley will be too warm for 80% of the wine grapes that are currently grown.

but that's ok, because the sea level rise will make parts of it ocean-front property (and displace lots and lots of people and destroy lots and lots of property, but you've got to look on the bright side)

Actuall it's not a lie. It nearly took an act of Congress to get the researcher behind the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a steep rise in global temperature in the 20th century following a millennium of stable temperatures, to release his publicly funded data and computer code. Among other dubious presumptions, the graph is derived from data that bases climate estimates for the entire 15th century on the tree ring measurements of a single tree.

don't lie

As for the NOAA graph:
"The last year of data is still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square symbols represents the same, after correction for the average seasonal cycle." And it didn't hit 380 until 2006.

let's recap this part of the argument thus far:

CO2 has gone from 280ppm to 350ppm
we're at more like 380 at this point
Well, we're only in the 370's according to NOAA as of 2005. We won't have the '06 numbers until the year is out though.
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/projects/src/web/trends/co2_trend_gl.png
it didn't hit 380 until 2006

one of us looks rather silly in this, and it isn't me.

And I'd like to take a stab at the answer you wanted to your quiz now: 'human-caused global warming heats the oceans, which puts more water in the air, which heats the Earth more. Darn those stupid, evil republicans.'
That the answer you're looking for?

closer. the human-caused part is unnecessary, as is the stupid and evil republican part (though both are true)

What I am saying is that our species survival is more important than another species survival. If I were given the choice between us and them, I'd choose us and I hope you would too.

good thing that no such choice must be made then

We will only survive if we continue to do what we've always done.

this is stupid. "what we've always done" is not an option thanks to technological innovation. we are doing different things than we've "always done", and those things are having different effects, many of which are quite bad for us.

True science is very skeptical. The burden of proof always falls on those trying to prove something. If even a single flaw is found, it needs to be corrected before moving forward.

too bad your side has found no real flaws and doesn't appear to be doing any actual research

Media Hype set out by the liberal elite to scare people into voting Democrat, 'the legitimate green option'.
This is based on...? Nothing? Yes. I think, this is based on nothing.

This morning, I heard on the news that by the end of this century, Napa Valley will be too warm for 80% of the wine grapes that are currently grown.
You need to read what was said before when some other guy said roughly the same thing.

I wouldn't say "Global Warming" but rather "Climate Change" as the effects are more varied than just temperature increases. I almost hope it will be catastrophic so that I can watch people's stupid reactions.

I wouldn't say "Global Warming" but rather "Climate Change" as the effects are more varied than just temperature increases. I almost hope it will be catastrophic so that I can watch people's stupid reactions.
I prefer that term, as well.

You need to read what was said before when some other guy said roughly the same thing.
Too many pages. And what did it really cost you to read it twice?

Too many pages. And what did it really cost you to read it twice?
It costs me my patience to have to explain to you the differences between climate and weather.

On one hand, we've a cogent argument citing a body of climate research.

I haven't seen anyone actually cite research, yet.

What we see (and this is true over at RealClimate, too) is people citing other people who either wrote articles that claim to be based on research, or they cite people just like them who are themselves citing things that claim to be based on research.

But it's not really research if it doesn't contain the math. And the math takes a lot of time and effort to track down. Those peer-reviewed journals rarely contain the math. But without the math, how can I examine the research?

But if it's so bloody important, why is the research not front and centre?

I haven't seen anyone actually cite research, yet.

What we see (and this is true over at RealClimate, too) is people citing other people who either wrote articles that claim to be based on research, or they cite people just like them who are themselves citing things that claim to be based on research.

But it's not really research if it doesn't contain the math. And the math takes a lot of time and effort to track down. Those peer-reviewed journals rarely contain the math. But without the math, how can I examine the research?

But if it's so bloody important, why is the research not front and centre?
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/3574/1/MITJPSPGC_Rpt71.pdf

This might help. Google Scholar. I think this may be the second time I referenced something with hard math involved to you. Google Scholar is a useful tool and you would have better luck finding something than I would.

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/3574/1/MITJPSPGC_Rpt71.pdf

This might help. Google Scholar. I think this may be the second time I referenced something with hard math involved to you. Google Scholar is a useful tool and you would have better luck finding something than I would.

I didn't say the math wasn't available. It's just hard to find when you start at places like RealClimate, which some seem to think is a panacea when it comes to climate change arguments.

Though that particular article is an economics paper.

I didn't say the math wasn't available. It's just hard to find when you start at places like RealClimate, which some seem to think is a panacea when it comes to climate change arguments.

Though that particular article is an economics paper.
But the articles are based on the math, with references cited and the page is for the average person. The average person usually doesn't have the patience for lengthy math problems. If you are not saying that the math isn't readily available, I'm not quite sure what your argument is. Also, like I said, you'd have better luck than me finding what you are looking for on Google Scholar.

But the articles are based on the math, with references cited and the page is for the average person. The average person usually doesn't have the patience for lengthy math problems.
Apparently the average person is an idiot who wants to be lead around like a puppy.

If you are not saying that the math isn't readily available, I'm not quite sure what your argument is. Also, like I said, you'd have better luck than me finding what you are looking for on Google Scholar.
It's not readily available. It's not easy to find, by any means.

Sure, it's not a secret, but RealClimate, for example, isn't making any effort to make the actual science accessible to people. They're just appealing to expertise and authority a lot, but giving us no means to find out on our own.

It costs me my patience to have to explain to you the differences between climate and weather.
What a shame. I hope it was a loud fit. Besides, my post was about Napa and the prior one was about the history of English wineries.

Apparently the average person is an idiot who wants to be lead around like a puppy.


It's not readily available. It's not easy to find, by any means.

Sure, it's not a secret, but RealClimate, for example, isn't making any effort to make the actual science accessible to people. They're just appealing to expertise and authority a lot, but giving us no means to find out on our own.
First of all, Woof Woof.

Second of all, I've demonstrated to you twice, how easy it is to find the math. Don't blame me for your laziness.

Just by putting in one of the contributors names from Real Climate into Google Scholar I came up with these articles on the first page:
Dynamics of Recent Climate Change in the Arctic - group of 9 »
RE Moritz, CM Bitz, EJ Steig - Science, 2002 - sciencemag.org
The pattern of recent surface warming observed in the Arctic exhibits both polar
amplification and a strong relation with trends in the Arctic Oscillation ...
Cited by 58 - Web Search - BL Direct

Mid-Holocene Climate Change - group of 2 »
EJ Steig - Science, 1999 - sciencemag.org
Large-magnitude, rapid climate change events--some taking place within just a
few decades, less than the span of a single human lifetime ...
Cited by 50 - Web Search - BL Direct

Holocene Climate Variability in Antarctica Based on 11 Ice-Core Isotopic Records - group of 6 »
… -Thompson, J Petit, EJ Steig, M Stievenard, R … - Quaternary Research, 2000 - bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu
*Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, UMR CEA/CNRS 1572,
Bât. 709, L’Orme des Merisiers, CEA Saclay, 91 190 Gif-sur-Yvette, ...
Cited by 36 - Web Search - BL Direct

Wisconsinan and Holocene Climate History from an Ice Core at Taylor Dome, Western Ross Embayment, … - group of 5 »
EJ Steig, DL Morse, ED Waddington, M Stuiver, PM … - Geografiska Annaler Series A Physical Geography, 2000 - Blackwell Synergy
... WESTERN ROSS EMBAYMENT, ANTARCTICA BY ERIC J. STEIG 1 , DAVID L. MORSE 2 , EDWIN
D. WADDINGTON 3 , MINZE STUIVER 4 , ... Page 2. ERIC J. STEIG ET AL. ...
Cited by 33 - Web Search - BL Direct

Seasonal Precipitation Timing and Ice Core Records - group of 3 »
EJ Steig, PM Grootes, M Stuiver - Science, 1994 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Title: Seasonal Precipitation Timing and Ice Core Records Authors: Steig, Eric J.;
Grootes, Pieter M.; Stuiver, Minze Journal: Science, Volume 266, Issue 5192 ...
Cited by 26 - Web Search - BL Direct

Millennial-scale storminess variability in the northeastern United States during the Holocene epoch - group of 10 »
AJ Noren, PR Bierman, EJ Steig, A Lini, J Southon - Nature, 2002 - depts.washington.edu
* Department of Geology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, USA
† Quaternary Research Center and Department of Earth and Space Sciences, ...
Cited by 26 - View as HTML - Web Search - BL Direct

Measurements of Past Ice Sheet Elevations in Interior West Antarctica - group of 3 »
… Borns Jr, PE Calkin, MD Kurz, JL Fastook, EJ Steig - Science, 1999 - sciencemag.org
A lateral moraine band on Mount Waesche, a volcanic nunatak in Marie Byrd Land,
provides estimates of past ice sheet surface elevations in West Antarctica. ...
Cited by 23 - Web Search - BL Direct

Wisconsinan refugia and the glacial history of eastern Baffin Island, Arctic Canada: coupled … - group of 3 »
EJ Steig, AP Wolfe, GH Miller - Geology, 1998 - geology.geoscienceworld.org
New data constrain the timing and character of glaciation of eastern Baffin
Island, Arctic Canada. Lake sediments radiocarbon dated to between 14 and ...
Cited by 22 - Web Search - BL Direct

Timing is everything in a game of two hemispheres - group of 2 »
JWC White, EJ Steig - Nature, 1998 - epsc.wustl.edu
L eads and lags are at the heart of the palaeoclimate approach to under-
standing how the climate works. If event 1 leads event 2 in a ...
Cited by 18 - View as HTML - Web Search - BL Direct

Changes in climate, ocean and ice-sheet conditions in the Ross embayment, Antarctica, at 6 ka
EJ Steig, CP Hart, JWC White, WL Cunningham, MD … - Annals of Glaciology, 1998 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Title: Changes in climate, ocean and ice-sheet conditions in the Ross embayment,
Antarctica, at 6 ka Authors: Steig, Eric J.; Hart, Charles P.; White, James WC ...
Cited by 13 - Web Search - BL Direct

Honestly, I can't imagine what else you expect.

What a shame. I hope it was a loud fit. Besides, my post was about Napa and the prior one was about the history of English wineries.
Kiss me, you fool.

Second of all, I've demonstrated to you twice, how easy it is to find the math. Don't blame me for your laziness.

Once again, I am not saying that the information is impossible to find. Just that the advocacy web sites make no effort to present it to us.

And that makes me question their motives. If the science is so compelling, why aren't they using the science in their arguments?

Once again, I am not saying that the information is impossible to find. Just that the advocacy web sites make no effort to present it to us.

And that makes me question their motives. If the science is so compelling, why aren't they using the science in their arguments?
Ooo, Ooo! Because facts don't persuade the average person, emotions do. Tie emotions to the topic and you're set. Just ask any engineer who's project didn't get funded because it steps on someone's toes.

Once again, I am not saying that the information is impossible to find. Just that the advocacy web sites make no effort to present it to us.

And that makes me question their motives. If the science is so compelling, why aren't they using the science in their arguments?
I've already shown you that you can put the contributors name into Google and see the actual hard science they have done. The site is done in an easy to understand way. They are basically presenting what the overall science is. If you want to look deeper, it is not hard to find. It is not "hidden". They put their name on the research papers they do.

They also have a list of science links on the sidebar:

Science Links

AIP: Discovery of Glob. Warm.
AMS Env. Science
Climate Basics
ClimatePrediction.net
Columbia Earth Inst.
Element List
ESPERE
Inst. Pierre Simon Laplace
IPCC TAR
NOAA Paleoclimatology
Penn State Inst. Env.
PodClimate
Sci. Am. Perspectives
WMO

Ooo, Ooo! Because facts don't persuade the average person, emotions do. Tie emotions to the topic and you're set. Just ask any engineer who's project didn't get funded because it steps on someone's toes.
The average person will do whatever he's told. If you're actually trying to convince people, then you must be trying to convince rational people.

Which I don't think they're trying to do.

They also have a list of science links on the sidebar:

Science Links

AIP: Discovery of Glob. Warm.
AMS Env. Science
Climate Basics
ClimatePrediction.net
Columbia Earth Inst.
Element List
ESPERE
Inst. Pierre Simon Laplace
IPCC TAR
NOAA Paleoclimatology
Penn State Inst. Env.
PodClimate
Sci. Am. Perspectives
WMO
And that should be the centre of the site. Most of those featured articles contain no real information at all.

The whole design of the site is obfuscatory.

It's both. It is a real danger. In my opinion, it IS a natural thing, but we ARE accelerating it. Learn from history guys:
Early periods of the earth:
Enormous amounts of Volcanoes, Animals > Abundance of CO2 and other chemicals > Extinction of many animals, ice age, etc.

Now,
Enormous amounts of Polluting Vehicles, Industries, etc. > Abundance of CO2 and other chemicals > ...

BUT! Back then, it took millions of years for the effects to take place, we're supposedly in like the 50,000th year or something of mankind, we aren't even close. But if we keep elevating the acceleration of the pollution now, the time will get shorter.

A few years ago I was sceptical that climate change was the result of human activity and not just the result of the Earth’s natural cycles, however I have changed my opinion. It seems to me that there are any number of sources that links our actions to global warming and the arguments against are getting weaker by the day. But it is not important who is right or wrong, it is recognising that change is happening and there is a possibility it is due to us; more specifically us in the western world.


Continuing the argument until there is conclusive proof one way or the other will result in no action or none until it was to late; surely it is better to act than be right.

A few years ago I was sceptical that climate change was the result of human activity and not just the result of the Earth’s natural cycles, however I have changed my opinion. It seems to me that there are any number of sources that links our actions to global warming and the arguments against are getting weaker by the day. But it is not important who is right or wrong, it is recognising that change is happening and there is a possibility it is due to us; more specifically us in the western world.


Continuing the argument until there is conclusive proof one way or the other will result in no action or none until it was to late; surely it is better to act than be right.

But even more of us agree that the Earth is getting warmer, regardless of the cause. If there's any uncertainty surrounding that cause, shouldn't our solution to the problem avoid that uncertainty by treating the root cause of all heat directly?

Sunlight. We need less of it. Just 1% or so.

The average person will do whatever he's told. If you're actually trying to convince people, then you must be trying to convince rational people.

Which I don't think they're trying to do.


And that should be the centre of the site. Most of those featured articles contain no real information at all.

The whole design of the site is obfuscatory.
If you have questions behind the science being represented in the articles, there is a comment section on the bottom of each article where you can ask questions. There are many instances where the writer of the article will answer the question or back up whatever was said.

If you have questions behind the science being represented in the articles, there is a comment section on the bottom of each article where you can ask questions. There are many instances where the writer of the article will answer the question or back up whatever was said.

You mentioned that about three weeks ago.

I haven't had a response, yet.

But even more of us agree that the Earth is getting warmer, regardless of the cause. If there's any uncertainty surrounding that cause, shouldn't our solution to the problem avoid that uncertainty by treating the root cause of all heat directly?

Sunlight. We need less of it. Just 1% or so.
We need Mister Burns then, he's good at blocking out the sun.

Once again, I am not saying that the information is impossible to find. Just that the advocacy web sites make no effort to present it to us.

And that makes me question their motives. If the science is so compelling, why aren't they using the science in their arguments?
They consolidate and digest published papers with citations for the more curious. They do this because scientific papers, particularly those within specialties aren't written for a lay audiance, but rather an audiance of peers. Thus these works are often complex, dense and already assume their audiance is familiar with a lot of knowledge, standard practices and jargon. Some articles and communities will necessarily be more able and artful in pursuit of their aims than others. The fact that they do the digest at all, which is not terribly easy, is an effort to present the infromation revealed, discussed and challenged by the research in a manner that is accessable to a much wider audiance. This, no matter how poorly done, is equivalent to "no effort." That they include citations with their summaries, in light of tools like Google Scholar, ineed does go along way towards making what might otherwise be an arcane topic accessible.

To refute these sites, their claims, and to lend credibility to all future attacks on their character and intentions is simple. Find but one instance where they clearly, and concertedly misinterpret the research to serve their own ends as opposed to the truth.

You mentioned that about three weeks ago.

I haven't had a response, yet.
Was it a current article or an older one? If you've made a comment, I'm sure you can see that others are answered. Try again or try to find the answer yourself.

Sure, it's not a secret, but RealClimate, for example, isn't making any effort to make the actual science accessible to people. They're just appealing to expertise and authority a lot, but giving us no means to find out on our own.

so what are we to make of all those citations? they look exactly like the thing you would provide if you wanted to make a scholarly topic accessible.

i suppose they might just be like the citations in creationist tracts or anne coulter's books. but the one's i've looked at seemed solid enough. and it isn't exactly hard to do this sort of checking - i don't even have to leave my house usually.

so what are we to make of all those citations? they look exactly like the thing you would provide if you wanted to make a scholarly topic accessible.

i suppose they might just be like the citations in creationist tracts or anne coulter's books. but the one's i've looked at seemed solid enough. and it isn't exactly hard to do this sort of checking - i don't even have to leave my house usually.
Oh, cool! You have the internet, too?

Oh, cool! You have the internet, too?

yeah, and it turns out that they keep more than just porn on it these days. amazing.

yeah, and it turns out that they keep more than just porn on it these days. amazing.
Actually it wouldn't be a bad idea to mix peer reviewed articles with some porn...

Actually it wouldn't be a bad idea to mix peer reviewed articles with some porn...

now i've got this mental image of a system using the amazon.com method - "scholars who read this article also liked 'back door sluts 9' and 'titties, titties, titties!'"

now i've got this mental image of a system using the amazon.com method - "scholars who read this article also liked 'back door sluts 9' and 'titties, titties, titties!'"
lol

Anything else?

An entire article devoted to a readers comment:


12 Jul 2006
Medieval warmth and English wine
Filed under: Climate Science Paleoclimate— gavin @ 10:00 am
Never let it be said that we at RealClimate don't work for our readers. Since a commenter mentioned the medieval vineyards in England, I've been engaged on a quixotic quest to discover the truth about the oft-cited, but seldom thought through, claim that the existence of said vineyards a thousand years ago implies that a 'Medieval Warm Period' was obviously warmer than the current climate (and by implication that human-caused global warming is not occuring). This claim comes up pretty frequently, and examples come from many of the usual suspects e.g. Singer (2005), and Baliunas (in 2003). The basic idea is that i) vineyards are a good proxy for temperature, ii) there were vineyards in England in medieval times, iii) everyone knows you don't get English wine these days, iv) therefore England was warmer back then, and v) therefore increasing greenhouse gases have no radiative effect. I'll examine each of these propositions in turn (but I'll admit the logic of the last step escapes me). I'll use two principle sources, the excellent (and cheap) "Winelands of Britain" by geologist Richard C. Selley and the website of the English Wine Producers.

Are vineyards a good temperature proxy? While climate clearly does impact viticulture through the the amount of sunshine, rainfall amounts, the number of frost free days in the spring and fall, etc., there a number of confounding factors that make it less than ideal as a long term proxy. These range from changing agricultural practices, changing grape varieties, changing social factors and the wider trade environment. For instance, much early winemaking in England was conducted in Benedictine monasteries for religious purposes - changing rites and the treatment of the monasteries by the crown (Henry VIII in particular) clearly impacted wine production there. Societal factors range from the devastating (the Black Death) to the trivial (working class preferences for beer over wine). The wider trade environment is also a big factor i.e. how easy was it to get better, cheaper wine from the continent? The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the English King in 1152 apparently allowed better access to the vineyards of Bordeaux, and however good medieval English wine was, it probably wasn't a match for that!

However, for the sake of argument, let's assume that climate is actually the dominant control - so what does the history of English vineyards show?

The earliest documentation that is better than anecdotal is from the Domesday Book (1087) - an early census that the new Norman king commissioned to assess his new English dominions, including the size of farms, population etc. Being relatively 'frenchified', the Normans (who had originally come from Viking stock) were quite keen on wine drinking (rather than mead or ale) and so made special note of existing vineyards and where the many new vines were being planted. Sources differ a little on how many vineyards are included in the book: Selley quotes Unwin (J. Wine Research, 1990 (subscription)) who records 46 vineyards across Southern England (42 unambiguous sites, 4 less direct), but other claims (unsourced) range up to 52. Lamb's 1977 book has a few more from other various sources and anecdotally there are more still, and so clearly this is a minimum number.

Of the Domesday vineyards, all appear to lie below a line from Ely (Cambridgeshire) to Gloucestershire. Since the Book covers all of England up to the river Tees (north of Yorkshire), there is therefore reason to think that there weren't many vineyards north of that line. Lamb reports two vineyards to the north (Lincoln and Leeds, Yorkshire) at some point between 1000 and 1300 AD, and Selley even reports a Scottish vineyard operating in the 12th Century. However, it's probably not sensible to rely too much on these single reports since they don't necessarily come with evidence for successful or sustained wine production. Indeed, there is one lone vineyard reported in Derbyshire (further north than any Domesday vineyard) in the 16th Century when all other reports were restricted to the South-east of England.

Wine making never completely died out in England, there were always a few die-hard viticulturists willing to give it a go, but production clearly declined after the 13th Century, had a brief resurgence in the 17th and 18th Centuries, only to decline to historic lows in the 19th Century when only 8 vineyards are recorded. Contemporary popular sentiment towards English (and Welsh) wine can be well judged by a comment in 'Punch' (a satirical magazine) that the wine would require 4 people to drink it - one victim, two to hold him down, and one other to pour the wine down his throat.

Unremarked by most oenophiles though, English and Welsh wine production started to have a renaissance in the 1950s. By 1977, there were 124 reasonable-sized vineyards in production - more than at any other time over the previous millennium. This resurgence was also unremarked upon by Lamb, who wrote in that same year that the English climate (the average of 1921-1950 to be precise) remained about a degree too cold for wine production. Thus the myth of the non-existant English wine industry was born and thrust headlong into the climate change debate...

Since 1977, a further 200 or so vineyards have opened (currently 400 and counting) and they cover a much more extensive area than the recorded medieval vineyards, extending out to Cornwall, and up to Lancashire and Yorkshire where the (currently) most northerly commercial vineyard sits. So with the sole exception of one 'rather improbably' located 12th Century Scottish vineyard (and strictly speaking that doesn't count, it not being in England 'n' all...), English vineyards have almost certainly exceeded the extent of medieval cultivation. And I hear (from normally reliable sources) they are actually producing a pretty decent selection of white wines.

So what should one conclude from this? Well, one shouldn't be too dogmatic that English temperatures are now obviously above a medieval peak - the impact of confounding factors in wine production precludes such a clear conclusion (and I am pretty agnostic with regards to the rest of the evidence of whether northern Europe was warmer 1000 years than today). However, one can conclude that those who are using the medieval English vineyards as a 'counter-proof' to the idea of present day global warming are just blowing smoke (or possibly drinking too much Californian). If they are a good proxy, then England is warmer now, and if they are not.... well, why talk about them in this context at all?

There is a bigger issue of course. For the sake of argument, let's accept that medieval times were as warm in England as they are today, and even that global temperatures were similar (that's a much bigger leap, but no mind). What would that imply for our attribution of current climate changes to human causes? ....... Nothing. Nowt. Zero. Zip.

Why? Well, warm periods have occured in the past, and if not the medieval period, then probably the last interglacial (120,000 years ago), certainly the Pliocene (3 million years ago), without question the (Eocene 50 million years), and in particular the Paleocen-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 million years ago), and so on. Current theories of climate change do not rely on whether today's temperatures are 'unprecedented'. Instead they examine the physical causes of climate change and match up what we know about their physical effects and time history and see which of the multiple drivers or combination can best explain the observations. For the last few decades, that is quite clearly the rise in greenhouse gases, punctuated by the occasional volcano and mitigated slightly by the concomittant rise in particulate pollution.

Understanding past climate changes are of course also very interesting - they provide test cases for climate models and can have profound implications for the history of human society. However, uncertainties (as recently outlined in the NAS report) increase as you go back in time, and that applies to our knowledge of the climate drivers as well as to temperatures. So much so that even a medieval period a couple of tenths of a degree warmer than today would still be consistent with what we know about solar forcing and climate sensitivity within the commonly accepted uncertainties.

My oenological research project has not then lead me to any profound insights into climate change in the past, but it has given me a little more respect for the dedciation of my winemaking compatriots. So next time I'm in the area, I'll drink to that!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/medieval-warmth-and-english-wine/#more-322

a little reading:

<snip>

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/886494/posts
seems to be large concencus on the internet about this... unfortunatly I do not have any scientific journals to hand so no evidence as such.

Free Republic? You're expecting anyone to take you seriously if you post Free Republic as a source of "evidence"? You are mad. Free Republic is most certainly biased in favour of Bush and his policies, and Bush has chosen to ignore climate change.
If you want to post evidence, post it from a source that is impartial such as, say, a scientific journal. Any other source that is not directly related to science is just a hive of conjecture, opinion, bias and often slander.

We need Mister Burns then, he's good at blocking out the sun.
http://www.horrorshirts.de/images/burns.jpg

That sounds like a personal problem.
Even bigger problem is that it appeared to be targeted at the air and generality, instead of anyone (or any thing) specifically. Like hearing voices, that kind of thing.
*sigh*

This is based on...? Nothing? Yes. I think, this is based on nothing.
Represents his/her psycho/sociopolitical affiliation well ... all fluff and blame everyone else.

Even bigger problem is that it appeared to be targeted at the air and generality, instead of anyone (or any thing) specifically. Like hearing voices, that kind of thing.
*sigh*
Honestly.

Global Climate Change Is Happening Now
Scientists Fear Global Warming Is Irreversible and Its Effects Possibly Disastrous
July 12, 2006 -- - Scientists waited a long time to declare that global warming was real. And they waited even longer to declare that it resulted from human activities.

And they are still waiting to announce what is becoming increasingly obvious: It isn't going to take nearly as long as had been expected for profound changes to take place.

Good scientists are always cautious scientists, and that chiefly explains their reticence. But now, nearly every research institution involved in the study of global climate change -- from the American Academy of Sciences to the atmospheric department at your local university -- has issued reports citing overwhelming evidence that the planet is changing.

But how much will it change? How will that affect us? And how soon?

Those are the tough questions, and some of the answers will remain elusive for years to come. After all, predicting climate, even day to day, is foggy at best. Given the variables, it may be the most difficult science of all.

But many experts confide privately what they aren't yet ready to announce publicly: Change is accelerating at a dramatic rate.

A cascading effect is now in place. Rising temperatures cause greater releases of greenhouse gases, which in turn cause temperatures to rise, resulting in even more gases being released, and so on.

The most disturbing report on that phenomenon was published recently in Science. But like so many reports, it seems to deal with events so far away and so arcane that it's easy to look the other way. Yet the consequences will land on everybody's doorstep.

Here's the bottom line of that report: The permafrost that blankets northern Siberia is thawing.

Wow, you say, Siberia. So far away.

But here's the statement that needs to be printed on every politician's forehead.

That permafrost contains 75 times more carbon than is released by burning fossil fuel around the entire planet for an entire year. That number is worth repeating. More carbon than all our cars and factories will release in 75 years.

The scientists who wrote the report, all of whom are at the University of Florida, called that a "potent, likely unstoppable contributor to global climate change if it continues to thaw." And, by the way, that's not much of an if. It will take decades, and probably centuries, for that process to be reversed.

Siberia's permafrost, which is supposed to remain frozen for most of the year, covers nearly 400,000 square miles and contains about 500 billion metric tons of carbon.

"You start thawing the permafrost, microbes release carbon dioxide, that makes things warmer. More permafrost thaws and the process continues," says Ted Schuur, an assistant professor of ecology at the university and one of three authors of the report.

A report issued by the university noted that "If all the Siberian permafrost thawed, decomposed and released its carbon in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could nearly double the 730 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere presently, an outcome that would have huge warming impact."

Permafrost is not limited to Siberia. Any thawing, whether it be in Alaska or northern Europe, will result in the release of some greenhouse gases, but Siberia is more extreme. The layers of permafrost there are very deep, so the carbon that is trapped has been in place for a very long time.

Samples that Schuur brought back from Siberia to his laboratory in Gainesville contained carbon that dated back tens of thousands of years as organic material became trapped in the soil.

Further examination revealed that the carbon from the Siberia samples was released very rapidly as the soil thawed.

"If these rates are sustained in the long term, as field observations suggest, then most carbon in recently thawed (permafrost) will be released within a century -- a striking contrast to the preservation of carbon for tens of thousands of years when frozen in permafrost," the scientists conclude in their Science paper.

It's easy to find examples of changes that are already taking place.

The Mendenhall Glacier, just a short drive from my home in Juneau, Alaska, is one of the premier tourist attractions in the state. It is a spectacular river of ice that extends up a vast valley carved by the glacier as it gorged its way down through the rocky cliffs that tower above.

When I first saw it as a young Coast Guard officer on duty in Alaska, I was awed. I'm still awed today. But the Mendenhall is rapidly becoming a shadow of its former self. It is melting and receding at a rate of several hundred feet a year.

Just a few years ago, scientists thought the 500-square-mile ice field that feeds the glacier would soon start to get colder, part of an anticipated natural cycle.

But the Mendenhall, like nearly every other glacier in Alaska, is disappearing. Just 200 years ago, the toe of the glacier was where the Juneau airport is today. Now it's several miles -- that's miles -- back into the spruce-covered hills.

Living in Alaska, I find it's sometimes kind of nice to think that the planet is growing warmer. But there's a price to be paid. And the loss of the Mendenhall Glacier pales in the face of horrendous storms, starvation and inundation of coastlines that are sure to come.

Don't think of it in terms of centuries, or even decades. It's happening now.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=2182824

Cool. Alaskan AND Siberian news on it.
I can obviously relate!
:(

Cool. Alaskan AND Siberian news on it.
I can obviously relate!
:(
I'm just waiting for the Siberian Spring Break comments.

I'm just waiting for the Siberian Spring Break comments.
Well, admittedly a small audience there.
I suppose i should contribute - i'll do that here in a few. I'm bouncing threads.

Ok. Since we are continuing to beat the hysteria drum on the global warming issue, I feel it to be only fair for a dissenting opinion to be put forward. Just so you don't overindulge in this self-congratulatory back-slapping. Even Narcissus needed a break, now and then.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Ok. Since we are continuing to beat the hysteria drum on the global warming issue, I feel it to be only fair for a dissenting opinion to be put forward. Just so you don't overindulge in this self-congratulatory back-slapping. Even Narcissus needed a break, now and then.
Narcissus is my favourite work from Dali. Seriously.
I was about to compliment you on your sophistication when you crapped out this link:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
*shakes head*
Myo ... i know you're not really a spring snardlepiffer anymore, but PLEASE, try to keep up.

Narcissus is my favourite work from Dali. Seriously.
I was about to compliment you on your sophistication when you crapped out this link:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
*shakes head*
Myo ... i know you're not really a spring snardlepiffer anymore, but PLEASE, try to keep up.

I just love to play devils advocate. :p

I just love to play devils advocate. :p
I know. :)
Speaking of which, did you see the Corneliu return thread? You know - the "1st page in - 2nd page out" thread?
:p

I know. :)
Speaking of which, did you see the Corneliu return thread? You know - the "1st page in - 2nd page out" thread?
:p

I did not. I shall look. BRB.

Narcissus is my favourite work from Dali. Seriously.
I was about to compliment you on your sophistication when you crapped out this link:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
*shakes head*
Myo ... i know you're not really a spring snardlepiffer anymore, but PLEASE, try to keep up.
I'm glad you replied to this. I'm getting too defensive... maybe I'm getting old?

I'm glad you replied to this. I'm getting too defensive... maybe I'm getting old?
Not in any significantly deprecative sense, no.
It's more like "familiarity breeds contempt". *nods emphatically*

I would've posted a few things last night, but my mustela furota has dvp'd some serious health issues, and i had to hoof it to the store.

so did we essentially chase all the denialists off? damn, maybe we should head out to dc and bust a few heads...

so did we essentially chase all the denialists off? damn, maybe we should head out to dc and bust a few heads...
I'm sad. This is the one thing I argue about that I actually know a thing or two about.

Free Republic? You're expecting anyone to take you seriously if you post Free Republic as a source of "evidence"? You are mad. Free Republic is most certainly biased in favour of Bush and his policies, and Bush has chosen to ignore climate change.
If you want to post evidence, post it from a source that is impartial such as, say, a scientific journal. Any other source that is not directly related to science is just a hive of conjecture, opinion, bias and often slander.

One can hardly claim that scientific journals are necessarily free of bias.

I'm sad. This is the one thing I argue about that I actually know a thing or two about.

But not the science, apparently.

But not the science, apparently.
You're a witty guy.

One can hardly claim that scientific journals are necessarily free of bias.
A bit more free than opinion pieces.

A bit more free than opinion pieces.

An opinion piece is certainly more openly biased, but there's no reason to believe journals are impartial, which was the claim.

Nature, for example, tends not to accept articles which go against its pro-environment bent. That's not to say the articles is does publish aren't sound, but they're also not repesentative of all the research on a given issue.

An opinion piece is certainly more openly biased, but there's no reason to believe journals are impartial, which was the claim.

Nature, for example, tends not to accept articles which go against its pro-environment bent. That's not to say the articles is does publish aren't sound, but they're also not repesentative of all the research on a given issue.
Luckily, Nature is not the only peer reviewed magazine. If it has merit and Nature will not publish it, there are other avenues to follow which will bring to it the stature of being peer reviewed.

Luckily, Nature is not the only peer reviewed magazine. If it has merit and Nature will not publish it, there are other avenues to follow which will bring to it the stature of being peer reviewed.

And again, that's not relevant to my point.

I asserted that an article's appearance in a scientific journal is not a reason to believe it is free of bias. That's all. Not that there's widespread systemic bias in all scientific journals, or that there's a broad conspiracy among journals to silence certain points of view.

You're very good at attacking positions I don't hold.

And again, that's not relevant to my point.

I asserted that an article's appearance in a scientific journal is not a reason to believe it is free of bias. That's all. Not that there's widespread systemic bias in all scientific journals, or that there's a broad conspiracy among journals to silence certain points of view.

You're very good at attacking positions I don't hold.
At least I've been complimented for something.

OK, Just For Fun, let's say global warming is totally real, caused by us etc etc etc, what is the absolute worst case scenario here? Is it a catastrophic threat? Or is it merely hyped up beyond all belief and reason? (read: SARS, bird flu, terrorism, paedophiles). That's a bit more on topic than if it actually exists I think.

And remeber, it's all Just For Fun, so let's not go crazy or anything.

OK, Just For Fun, let's say global warming is totally real, caused by us etc etc etc, what is the absolute worst case scenario here? Is it a catastrophic threat? Or is it merely hyped up beyond all belief and reason? (read: SARS, bird flu, terrorism, paedophiles). That's a bit more on topic than if it actually exists I think.

And remeber, it's all Just For Fun, so let's not go crazy or anything.
Well, this is what Boston is preparing for:

Higher sea levels in 2100 of between 24 inches and 39 inches due to the combined effects of increases in ocean volume, melting land ice, and land subsidence
More coastal flooding from higher sea levels and continuing land subsidence
More inland flooding from rainfalls
Loss of wetlands and estuaries
Greater energy demand, primarily for summertime cooling
Higher concentrations of air pollution
Increased public health problems from unprecedented high temperatures
http://www.net.org/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=28962

That is just one place in the world and that is only what they are warning against, not necessarily what can be expected.

OK, Just For Fun, let's say global warming is totally real, caused by us etc etc etc, what is the absolute worst case scenario here? Is it a catastrophic threat? Or is it merely hyped up beyond all belief and reason? (read: SARS, bird flu, terrorism, paedophiles). That's a bit more on topic than if it actually exists I think.

And remeber, it's all Just For Fun, so let's not go crazy or anything.

I think a flu pandemic is a bigger deal than any of those things.

OK, Just For Fun, let's say global warming is totally real, caused by us etc etc etc, what is the absolute worst case scenario here?

the mass displacement of at least 1/3 of the total population of the planet, new disease vectors, intensified climate extremes and storms, the drying of continental interiors (and the resulting agricultural problems), even faster extinction rates for the current anthropogenic mass-extinction event, etc.

oh, and it'll be fucking hot out.

the mass displacement of at least 1/3 of the total population of the planet, new disease vectors, intensified climate extremes and storms, the drying of continental interiors (and the resulting agricultural problems), even faster extinction rates for the current anthropogenic mass-extinction event, etc.

oh, and it'll be fucking hot out.

I don't know, I think I could survive it. But that's to be expected when you live halfway up a fucking mountain. Anyway, I could use a few more neighbours.

I don't know, I think I could survive it. But that's to be expected when you live halfway up a fucking mountain. Anyway, I could use a few more neighbours.
Just make sure to make room for some new friends.

"Global climate change poses a number of potential risks to mountain habitats, although scientists cannot predict the impacts with confidence. Despite the uncertainties, researchers expect that over time, climate change generally to affect mountain and lowland ecosystems, the frequency and intensity of forest fires, the distribution of water, and the diversity of wildlife.

Studies suggest that a warmer climate in the United States would cause lower-elevation habitats, such as western Douglas fir forests, to expand into the higher alpine zone. Such a shift would encroach on rare alpine meadows and other high-altitude habitats. High-elevation plants and animals have limited space available for new habitat as they move higher on mountains in response to long-term changes in temperature."
http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/ImpactsMountains.html

dikes and waterworks have been reinforced and heightened throughout the netherlands, and we have indeed noticed a systematic rise of the ocean water level. Further, the ice caps do indeed melt

what is the cause? not deforrestation. at night, a forrest, of any size and composition, uses up about the same amount of oxygen, and produces about the same amount of CO2 as it produces oxygen and uses CO2 at day

However, algae in the ocean are major oxygen producersand carbon storage. Oil fields beneath antarctica were once mostly algae

Temperature raise from burning natural resources will go right up to a point. Remember, oil, coal and gas once was CO2 and other carbon gasses in the athmosphere. the resources will be used up before we get the temperature high enough.

Water levels will still rise though, and climates will change, drastically

this is short term prospects

what is the cause? not deforrestation. at night, a forrest, of any size and composition, uses up about the same amount of oxygen, and produces about the same amount of CO2 as it produces oxygen and uses CO2 at day

Huh?

what is the cause? not deforrestation. at night, a forrest, of any size and composition, uses up about the same amount of oxygen, and produces about the same amount of CO2 as it produces oxygen and uses CO2 at day

If that were true, trees would never grow because they'd never experience a net gain of carbon.

Since trees do grow, you must be completely wrong about their ability to consume CO2 over time.