What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Guillermo]

You never make me laugh enough, Boston. You are a fountain of enjoyment. Thanks a lot.

[jmolan]

at which point it becomes important to realize how science works and that since science is not attempting to prove anything but instead remain open minded by looking at data in the light of what is most likely to be true and what is less likely to be true. When presented with the hard data the vast majority (97%) of scientist agree that it most likely represents a confirmation of the theory of rapid global climate change. Thats a huge consensus, typically a consensus of about 50% with the other 50% bickering over there own pet theories is normal, but in this case the consensus is overwhelming.

Overwhelming?.....ah, hold on a sec, what am I missing here?



http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=64734

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...ever-told.html

http://michaelsavage.wnd.com/?pageId=24

Plenty to read here. Pretty amazing really. Glad I have ocean front home still...no worries...:-)

[Boston]

your missing the fact that industry has waged a campaign of disinformation similar to what the tobacco companies did
funny part is that in many cases they hired the same scientist and firms to diseminate that false information
agnotism
look it up
G
well it is kidna funny in a sick sorta way
I am laughing equally as hard over one of those links above
its that tripe about 31.000 scientists signing some kind of petition
we went over that already ( did you catch that Jim ) and the folks who made that claim were sued cause some huge portion of the folks on the list had never even seen it before let alone actually signed it, and my favorite part was of those left only about five were actually climate scientists the rest being what, oil company employees

go search the thread for yourself and find the exact article for yourself
I doubt you will but if you want to rehash things already debunked your on your own

love
B

please feel free to put your heads back in the sand
you seem quite comfortable in that position

I for one would rather face the stark realities
whatever they may be

[Boston]

equally as funny is the fact that supposedly 30,000 folks had signed some kind of class action suet to sue Al Gore. They dropped it based on insufficient evidence, ever wonder why?

cause the mechanism by which fossil atmospheric gasses was discovered to lag temp was easily derived from the value of the permeability of the ice it was trapped within

simple
accurate
and you guys are going to ignore it to the bitter end
face it
multiple data sets show a direct relationship between temp and co2

just one of the many articles debunking the debunkers
thing is you guys make this so easy when you use this kind of bogus research to try and "prove" your spin

want me to go find a list of the dead people who supposedly signed this industry spin form

In keeping with the amount of virtual ink this item deserves, we're going to try and keep this short. The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine held a press conference recently to announce that 31,000 "scientists" have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

According to OISM officials, the purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that "the claim of 'settled science' and an overwhelming 'consensus' in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong."

So what does it take to be included among the 31,000 "experts" on the petition? Well, according to the OISM criteria, any undergraduate science degree will do just fine. Bet you never thought that BS you earned 20 years ago made you a qualified climatologist. Congratulations!

OISM also wants to let you know that 9,021 of the signers hold PhDs. They don't specify what the doctorates are in, but they repeat that figure quite a bit, as if it means something.

Since the group was nice enough to list all 31,000 signers, including the dead people, let's take a look at the qualifications of three randomly-selected "climate experts."

* W. Kline Bolton, M.D., is a professor of medicine and Nephrology Division Chief at the University of Virginia. Nephrology deals with the study of the function and diseases of the kidney.
* Zhonggang Zeng is one of the 9,000 with a PhD. He is a professor of mathematics at Northeastern Illinois University. His most recent publication is entitled "Computing multiple roots of inexact polynomials."
* Hub Hougland is a dentist in Muncie, Indiana. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame last year.

so the people they listed as experts were actually dentists and kidney disease researchers
hardly climate scientists
sound deceptive enough yet

check this out

who is the Oregon institute of science and medicine

turns out it is a farmhouse in remote Oregon, it is not a accredited institute, it does not have any students attending and it refuses to reveal the sources of its funding

nice pick for references mate
proves my point exactly

from source watch

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) describes itself as "a small research institute" that studies "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging." It is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war.

The OISM is located on a farm about 7 miles from the town of Cave Junction, Oregon (population 1,126). The OISM would be equally obscure itself, except for the role it played in 1998 in circulating a deceptive "scientists' petition" on global warming.

if you actually take the time to read this next you will see that this mailing went out to about 500,000 phd's with up to ten million people being eligible to sign

so whats 9000/500,000

its about 1.8 percent

is that 97% starting to sound about right yet

whats 31000/5,500,000

its about a half a percent

so in the end it seems even a deceitful and biased poll could not break the fact that 97% of scientists agree

Case Study: The Oregon Petition

The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed "Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University", may have given some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers.
Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO2 increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally." As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet:
As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.
In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)
None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program. Today, the Marshall Institute is still a big fan of high-tech weapons. In 1999, its website gave prominent placement to an essay by Col. Simon P. Worden titled "Why We Need the Air-Borne Laser," along with an essay titled "Missile Defense for Populations--What Does It Take? Why Are We Not Doing It?" Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the "scaremongers" who raise warnings about global warming.
"The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a "past president" of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he "still has a role in governing the organization."
The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal," it stated in a news release. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises."
Notwithstanding this rebuke, the Oregon Petition managed to garner 15,000 signatures within a month's time. S. Fred Singer called the petition "the latest and largest effort by rank-and-file scientists to express their opposition to schemes that subvert science for the sake of a political agenda."
Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel called it an "extraordinary response" and cited it as his basis for continuing to oppose a global warming treaty. "Nearly all of these 15,000 scientists have technical training suitable for evaluating climate research data," Hagel said. Columns citing the Seitz petition and the Robinson paper as credible sources of scientific expertise on the global warming issue have appeared in publications ranging from Newsday', the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Austin-American Statesman, Denver Post, and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the "National Anxiety Center." Caruba has no scientific credentials whatsoever, but in addition to signing the Oregon Petition he has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the "biggest hoax of the decade," a "genocidal" campaign by environmentalists who believe that "humanity must be destroyed to 'Save the Earth.' . . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGOs, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world."
When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology." Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names.
OISM has refused to release info on the number of mailings it made. From comments in Nature:
"Virtually every scientist in every field got it," says Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and spokesman for the American Physical Society. "That's a big mailing." According to the National Science Foundation, there are more than half a million science or engineering PhDs in the United States, and ten million individuals with first degrees in science or engineering.
Arthur Robinson, president of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the small, privately funded institute that circulated the petition, declines to say how many copies were sent out. "We're not willing to have our opponents attack us with that number, and say that the rest of the recipients are against us," he says, adding that the response was "outstanding" for a direct mail shot. [3]
Is there a scientific basis for Robinson's claim that increased carbon dioxide levels will contribute to increased growth of some plants? Some research has gone into investigating this possibility, but the evidence does not point to the type of reassurance that the OISM is peddling. Fakhri Bazzaz, a plant physiologist at Harvard, has found that carbon dioxide-enriched air accelerates short-term plant growth, but his studies were carried out under controlled greenhouse conditions and are difficult to translate to a larger scale. Plant growth in natural systems may be constrained by a shortage of soil nutrients despite the greater availability of carbon dioxide. Moreover, Bazzaz's experiments involved carbon dioxide concentrations at levels 100% greater than those now existing in our atmosphere, whereas the greenhouse warming we are experiencing right now results from only a 20% increase in world carbon dioxide levels. Clearly, it is irresponsible to predict "benefits" from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when such "benefits" may only appear after we suffer the consequences of a five-fold increase over current anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Finally, Bazzaz found that different plant species vary dramatically in their response to increased carbon dioxide. Plants such as sugar cane and corn were not improved, but weeds were stimulated. There is not much real benefit in warming the planet by several degrees just so we can maybe make it easier for weeds to grow.
Notwithstanding the shortcomings in Robinson's theory, the oil and coal industries have sponsored several organizations to promote the idea that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is "good for earth" because it will encourage greater plant growth. The Greening Earth Society, a front group of the Western Fuels Association, has produced a video, titled "The Greening of the Planet Earth Continues," publishes a newsletter called the World Climate Report, and works closely with a group called the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
As of the Fall of 2007, OISM continued to mail petition cards along with a reprint of "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," now cited as having been published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007) 12, 79-90, with Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon listed as the authors. The journal is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeonswhose director is Jane Orient (see above), a professor at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Also included in the mailing is a copy of a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed article entitled "Global Warming is 300-Year-Old News" authored by Arthur and Noah Robinson and dated January 18, 2000.

[Jimbo1490]

Boston,

You are an amazing fellow! You can assert that you do not do a thing (attack credentials/credibility without addressing merit), and then before the sound can make it to all the corners of the room DO THE VERY THING you just got through saying that you do not do (assert that dissenters are all industry hacks)!

I have to agree with Guillo here, you are endlessly entertaining



Jimbo

[Boston]

never said I wouldn't look at the credentials and conditions under which a study is conducted
( your welcome to try and quote me on that if you can find it cause Ive never said that the credentials or credibility of the researcher conducting a study were irrelevant, on the contrary they are extremely relevant )
for the record I think the credibility of the researcher is of utmost importance when considering data presented

you are accusing me of claiming I dont conduct a thorough view of the data presented
I most certainly do
and I start with the credibility of the institute or individual making the study
is that research biased or is it conducted in a scientific manor

at any stage of my review a data set may be eliminated on its failure to meet any of the criteria of unbiased viable scientific research

its just that you so seldom present anything that gets past the first test


you are wrong again Jim
ever going to stop and wonder why

[fasteddy106]

So lets see how this works. If you don't' agree with Boston you haven't read the posts and assertions, oops, I meant evidence, I really did. If after reading his ummm, whatever, you still don't agree as it flys in the face of numerous other data, you are stupid or an oil industry shill. He is not a radical, we who refuse to swallow the KoolAid are. This coming from a man who wants to ban commercial fishing, production of plastics,and tax the capitalist system to death over an AGW theory based on carbon that is bogus. It is interesting that he calls opposition to AGW theories paranoia, while he sees Exxon-Mobil behind every skeptic. He claims to uphold the purity of the scientific process while accepting distorted data from ground based weather stations and then throws out his permeation theory that even the IPCC doesn't agree with. When you give him evidence, little things like the world slipped into an ice age when it had a quantum level more CO2 than we do now, it's just that we don't understand. Guess I need a refresher on Newspeak, hmmmm, where did I leave that copy of 1984.

There is little point in continuing to a discussion with a person who never fails to take the most extreme position on any social engineering issue. AGW is about social engineering, not climate change. He knows it, we know it.

[Jimbo1490]

Then explain why the Beer-Lambert equation does not describe the absorptive behavior of atmospheric CO2 WRT sunlight. If it does describe it, it's game over for AGW, as you well know.

Now one of your old heroes, Mikey Mann concocts (pulls out of his ass, really) the explanation that it only applies in the troposphere where gases are well mixed and there's plenty of water vapor, and that the stratosphere being cold and dry is wide open! Of course if you accept this explanation (apparently you do, as you posted a link to this 'explanation' before), then you would have to concede two things. First, the radiative 'budget' would necessarily change to reflect the 'Mikey Mann Virgin Stratosphere' (MMVS) idea, and second, that we should be able to observe this alleged stratospheric warming quite easily with satellite and balloon data.

If you read the IPCC AR4 section which lays out the basics, you will see a careful analysis of the heat budget WRT the direct effect of atmospheric CO2. Yet this section MAKES NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of the MMVS idea and there's not even a fraction of a watt per M^2 attributed to the MMVS, only the 385ppm in the 'well-mixed' portion of the atmosphere!

The AR4 admits a relatively trivial 1.7 Watts/M^2 from the direct effect of CO2; everybody, including skeptics agrees on this figure; it was never in question.

But this is arrived at using Beer-Lambert and ignoring the MMVS!

So the IPCC apparently put NO STOCK WHATEVER in the MMVS idea, so why should we?

And 1.7 watts /M^2 certainly does not seem like a lot of heat to worry over......BECUASE IT'S NOT!

All the extra, scary alarm bells scenarios come from a supposed coupling with water vapor, NOT some silly MMVS red herring!

On the second point, try to find some data ANYWHERE which shows the stratosphere WARMING, as predicted by the MMVS. Warmers have been busy touting the observed stratospheric cooling as the ghost of the missing 'hot spot' (which they now say was never very important except that they have only started saying this when they could not find it )

Do you see the problem here?? The stratosphere is not warming, as the MMVS predicts. Warmers are all trying to shoehorn the predicted 'hotspot' idea into observed stratospheric cooling. Admitting the stratosphere is cooling means that MMVS is pure ********, which gets us back to the original question:

Explain why the Beer-Lambert equation does not fully describe the absorptive behavior of atmospheric CO2 WRT sunlight.


When you've admitted that the MMVS idea is a red herring, then we can move on to this silly idea about water vapor being the destabilizing agent of the climate

Jimbo

[Boston]

I love science fiction
how about if I take the one second it will to debunk the previous

if you don't' agree with Boston you haven't read the posts and assertions

obviously inaccurate
its rapid climate change that is the topic of this thread
some for it some against
reducing it to one mans opinion is childish to say the least

you are stupid or an oil industry shill.

admittedly this could cover some large number of deniers but which ones is not really my call
I do try and point out if a source or study was industry funded influenced or simply spin

This coming from a man who wants to ban commercial fishing, production of plastics,and tax the capitalist system to death over an AGW theory based on carbon that is bogus

just for the record
commercial fishing is already done in many historically productive areas
I would recommend we halt fishing in the areas where fish stocks may still have a chance of recovery and reduce fishing to sustainable levels in areas were it is viable to do so. Certainly more areas of sanctuary must be created and certain species who's numbers are in imminent danger of commercial collapse ( like blue fin tuna ) should go on a moratorium list.
none of that is likely to happen with what is most likely being a continuation of the fish to extinction policy we have in place now
in the end its stop now or stop later, forever
take your pick cause either is a grim choice

just for the record
plastics as we know them today will soon as the industry get sued into it be replaced by bioplastics
a settlement is likely in the near future in an attempt a clean up plastic pollution and a ban on petroleum based plastics may be needed in order to illicit meaningful change
I would love to see petroleum based plastics phased out as soon as possible
yes I have used the word "banned" before but it would be far more accurate to suggest replaced with bio plastics
course since were trying to pin horns and a tail on my ass you may try and place me in the dimmest light possible but its certainly not gaining you any ground in regards to the deniers use of industry spin in nearly all of there arguments
at least this one is remotely accurate
as apposed to this next


just for the record
you are deluded
I never said anything about taxes other than in a sarcastic post some time ago and that was in a negative light
if you have some burning need to hear my position on this issue
here it is
I do not believe that a carbon credit system will do anything but bilk more money from an already burdened public
and I have not previously stated this position

There is little point in continuing to a discussion with a person who never fails to take the most extreme position on any social engineering issue. AGW is about social engineering, not climate change. He knows it, we know it.

again you are deluded
at no point did I make statements regarding social engineering and have made efforts to not only keep the climate change thread to the climate change thread but also to keep the thread on track with only the rare break from the topic at hand. Obviously you have an agenda when you attempt to label 150 years of scientific research as anything but that
scientific research

climate change is science pure and simple

I notice no one had the courage to mention that the faith based phony institute that produced that list of ( some dead ) so called scientists ( anyone with a degree of any kind ) was synonymous with that all aggravating factoid 97% of scientists who did find merit in the theory of rapid climate change

once again
ignoring a soundly debunked source of spin
and admitting nothing
just moving on to another failed attempt to quell the science

I must admit
I to am endlessly entertained by the mass paranoia exhibited by the deniers camp
yup I said it
I see signs of paranoia in a people who when presented with overwhelming evidence continually revert to the argument
"its a government plot"
when the science is a solid 150 years in the making and we have accurate predictions based on the theory

[Boston]

Jim we went over the gas laws earlier
go read up on it please

your insistence on some prediction of tropospheric warming is classic as I mentioned just a post or two ago

your review of Bear Lambert is pedestrian at best
and your attack on the IPCC models is shallow in the face of so much raw data concluding that warming and co2 have gone hand in hand

I notice in response to all the data concerning temp you claim the stations were all placed on top of heating ducts
in response to all the data concerning ice melt you cry foul about the satellite data drift and ignore all the other date sets confirming this finding
in responce to all the data concerning glacial retreat you say so what its always been shrinking and advancing although at present what 90+% of all glaciers measured are in rapid retreat and have been for at least the last 30 years or so
sounds like warming to me pall
funny thing is the sun is in a period of less intensity
so
shouldnt we be cooling instead of so obviously warming
face it Jim
things are getting hotter when they should be getting cooler
and the only viable reason is an alteration in the atmospheric chemistry
and guess who is responsible for that
people

[Zed]

Just a point...

Raw data concludes nothing! Data is just that data, using it you build models and draw conclusions and they can be incorrect if the data, god forbid, is misinterpreted.

Then you can always end up constructing a model to explain the data and end up missing the point completely, all the while being supported by the data. I fear that the data is being used more as a crutch than a search light here!

Only "viable" why, because you say it is? Call me a skeptic but we are a long way from proof... but don't worry China and India are not listening to a word of this argument and are ploughing ahead regardless. They should pump enough crap into the air to prove or disprove any theory! Why we can build a case for the west to close down all CO2 emissions and not feel we have the right to seriously pressure the emerging world I don't know. In a decade we can save all we want and it will not make any difference at all if Asia is not on board.

[Boston]

thats why theories are called on to make predictions
which the theory of global climate change has done admirably
to show that the data has been assembled in a viable manor encompassing known science incorperating the majority of data and lending evidence to its credibility by virtue of prediction

Only "viable" why, because you say it is? Call me a skeptic but we are a long way from proof... but don't worry China and India are not listening to a word of this argument and are ploughing ahead regardless. They should pump enough crap into the air to prove or disprove any theory! Why we can build a case for the west to close down all CO2 emissions and not feel we have the right to seriously pressure the emerging world I don't know. In a decade we can save all we want and it will not make any difference at all if Asia is not on board.

once again science seldom provides "proof" it mainly deals with preponderance of evidence a consensus of opinion and the ever important prediction test of any good theory.

that last bit quoted above is the political **** I try and avoid
I prefer to remain on the scientific fence regarding this one
I dont really think anyone is going to be able to illicit change fast enough to make any difference on co2
but that said Ild love to be able to scream "what did I tell you eh *******" at one of you deniers just a second or two before the planet bursts into flames

I ovoid the political agendas of the climate change political sharks
it is they and industry who has contaminated a perfectly good scientific theory with just enough BS to prevent meaningful change

[Zed]

Deniers? Always sounds like the Spanish Inquisition to me, like some how a proven truth is being denied, not a reasoned debate is being had! I love the way the high ground is assumed on this one! So much has been pumped out there on this and much of it has been proven wrong, sayings about **** and walls come to mind, always the language shifts and the argument shifts and still it completely misses the point that it is actually an irrelevant debate while we ignore the bigger issues. You can trust a two scientists to argue about why a ship is sinking all the while doing nothing practical about the fact that it will happen anyway!

If you could cut CO2 emissions by 90% tomorrow do you actually think it will alter the outcome given what you understand about exponential growth and what it means for human life on this planet?

Cut the crap, face the real issue and lets get on with a solution.

[Jimbo1490]

Boston you goofball!

The IPCC uses Beer-Lambert just as I've said they do. As 'pedestrian' as it is, they seem to be OK with it. That's how they get the 1.7 Watts/M^2 radiative budget attributable to atmospheric CO2. They make no mention of your hero's blogosphere fable. That's not where they get their scary warming scenarios at all! They get these from an assumption of a strongly positive feedback with water vapor.

'Michael Mann's Virgin Stratosphere' postulate is just a red herring that he concocted in order to quell dissenters. It has no scientific merit and directly contradicts observed data. Not one single paper has been published in support of it; it really just exists as a page from his blog, realclimate.org. It contradicts admissions by the 'mainstream' warmer camp who admit that the stratosphere is cooling, not warming.

So was Mann's 'Virgin Stratosphere' just a contingency plan, a hedged bet? If there was actual warming there, they could say it was from all the extra CO2, even though model predictions said the 'hot spot' would be located several miles closer to the surface. But if the 'MMVS' is bogus, then Beer-Lambert rules, making the entire AGW alarm scenarios totally implausible.

Even if the alleged water vapor feedback existed (and it does not exist), with this red herring dispatched then we are experiencing all the warming that we will ever get from CO2; doubling, tripling or whatever will have almost no effect on global climate.

Once again (third time, but hey who's counting ), you have proven yourself ignorant of the mechanisms that your own camp is saying are responsible for the specter of catastrophic climate change. I'm the one who schooled you in what the warmers are really saying, because you did not bother to find out on your own.

Let's review Boston's errors in thinking according to AGW orthodoxy:

• CO2 by itself is an important greenhouse gas
  (warmers admit that ALL CO2 is responsible for only 1.7 Watts M^2 of the radiative budget which is 1.7/240= .00708 or .7% which is decidedly NOT important)
  
  
• The climate exhibits a stable equilibrium state, dominated by negative feedbacks
  (This is true, but it's not what warmers are arguing; Hansen and others argue that the climate is an unstable equilibrium)
  
  
• Scary warming scenarios can be cobbled together with only the trace gases like CO2 and CH4
  (Warmer scientists admit that scary scenarios come only from positive feedback coupling between these trace gases and water vapor)

Jimbo

[Boston]

I

f you could cut CO2 emissions by 90% tomorrow do you actually think it will alter the outcome given what you understand about exponential growth and what it means for human life on this planet?

given the life span of 200 or so years of co2 in the atmosphere the answer is no
I dont think there is jack we can do at this point to stop what is obviously a deviation from the norm its already happened and continues to get worse by the day
what I would propose is that we try to limit the damage we do from here on out
Im not much on giving up as you may have guessed
I help out bouncing at some of the clubs I hang out at on weekends and I can assure you
its not the size of the dog in the fight
its the size of the fight in the dog
I say we fight even the inevitable to the bitter end
giving up is not an option

Deniers? Always sounds like the Spanish Inquisition to me, like some how a proven truth is being denied, not a reasoned debate is being had! I love the way the high ground is assumed on this one! So much has been pumped out there on this and much of it has been proven wrong, sayings about **** and walls come to mind, always the language shifts and the argument shifts and still it completely misses the point that it is actually an irrelevant debate while we ignore the bigger issues. You can trust a two scientists to argue about why a ship is sinking all the while doing nothing practical about the fact that it will happen anyway!

thats kinda the funny part
the debate at least among scientists is over
there is no viable alternative argument
there is no coherent alternative theory
and there is no consensus among deniers as to whats exactly is wrong with the present theory
you want to talk about arguing I heard the not NIPCC meeting broke down into chaos with people storming out and others refusing to speak behind others of whom they disagree. None of them actually developing a unity of sorts with any comprehensive scientific work.
there is a small group of scientist who's work was tossed as the highs or the lows of data anomaly and thats about it
there is no viable debate to be had

what there is is a huge industry effort to delay the inevitable, alternative fuels that would force them to retool.

its the industry funded spin that is fueling this fire
not any kind of lack of consensus among scientists

I live in the midst of a whole pile of universities and I see and talk to these researchers and there colleagues almost daily, just last week I stayed as a guest for several days in a home owned by one of phd professors of chemistry as csu. I work ( sorta ) in an scientific community of mostly PHD's and research scientists ( just got a grant for my expenses and am hoping to get on permanently ) My last room mate was a professional student with several PHD's and he lived off grant money, and no he seldom did what he was supposed to do with it and wrote whatever he felt like with no concern or interest in the political positions of the fund holder. I just realized Ild have to go look it up if I even cared to know who exactly gave me the grant.

its not some big ugly conspiracy
climate change is real and its far more likely than not to be caused by fossil co2
far more likely
the easy way out is to look at the consensus
in this case 97% to 3%
pretty dam convincing in that world you spoke of were scientists are typically all on there own fence

no I dont think there is much hope for it
but that doesnt mean you just give up
or at least I wont be
I say fight every screw up that can be identified and fix it
fast
cause we are running out of time
that whole exponential thing you mentioned

and ya
we are bound to loose a lot of people
ever read the Drezden codex
that whole Mayan thing 2012 and all that
looks like they may have nailed it again