GGDub

Now look up Christopher Landsea, the former UN expert on hurricaines. Then look up Steve McIntyre and the work he has done questioning the statistics used in Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick" graph.

I didn't say climate scientists were hoodwinking the public, I was saying the climate science community is doing a bad job of testing all arguments these days. There's a big difference.

GGDub

[QUOTE=gwd]
When they test their models, I guarantee you they tweak parameters to increase the accuracy, hence calibrate. Its semantics either way. Why is it when I offer counter arguments, people resort to insults? It does not reflect well on you.

kjohnnytarr

I've got several arguments. Have you read them? You've yet to prove me wrong.

!!Comatoa$ted

There was something interesting on TV the other day, yeah I know TV, and the scientist who the tobacco companies had hired to disprove smoking was bad for you now works for the energy companies trying to show that global warming does not exist. I wonder what this says about the people behind the science that says that global warming is a myth.

gerv 

From what I see companies like ExxonMobil are now more into a deflect strategy. They will now admit there might be something to this Global Warming thing, then proceed to issue suggestions that support their point of view or economic interest. Even prominent Republicans have ceased to deny the reality of climate change. I'm not sure why we are discussing whether climate change is fact or fiction. We should be well past that...

The next stage is having to listen to BP commercials talking about their "Green" strategy.

gerv 

I have and I'm still wondering what you are talking about.

kjohnnytarr

Can't help the unwilling mate. I, for one, will be happy to take my politics and my science quite separately though. That, and concentrate on issues I can actually prove and help solve.

Roody

You know a lot, so I'm sure you know that scientists never claim to predict the future. They make inferences based on probablity, and use statistical methods to judge the confidence they have in a given prediction. In the case of global warming, the panel has > 90 % confidence in their conclusions, but less confidence in the predictions based on computer modeling.

GGDub

Thank you. Perhaps my point wasn't very clear. It was simply to be very wary of any media outlet that tells you climate scientists have an extremely high confidence level that they can predict how the earth will warm over the next century and how this will effect climate and weather. There are far too many unknowns and their models cannot take these into account. What scientists are saying (or should be) is that "we are x% confident, given the data we have now and the types and capabilities of the models we can use, the earth will warm x to y amount over the next x years". But when this statement gets to the policy makers (right now the IPCC), they change it to "we are x% confident, the earth will warm x to y amount and this is going to cause mass melting of the polar icecaps, very powerful hurricaines, prolonged periods of drought, etc". Its spin and it sucks.

Just last year, (I'm sorry, but I don't have time to track down their names and a link) some Danish scientists discovered a significant new mechanism as to how clouds form (it involved the EM field of the sun I believe). This may or may not have an effect on how the planet will responed to an increased temperature, but it illustrates why a debate on global warming (both its existence and possible effects) must continue indefinetly, anything less is unscientific. In the meantime, it would be a real good idea to reduce GHG emmissions because its an experiment that may have devastating consequences.

donrhummy

Sure but just because it's never happened before doesn't mean we can't solve the problem. As I understand it, in order to truly fix the problem, we'd actually need to create a "deficit" of CO2 relative to the "proper" ratio in the air because the oceans are now too saturated with it and they actually exchange the CO2 with the air in a sort of "equalizing" manner. So if there's less CO2 in the air, then the ocean will start exchanging it back into the air. (At least that was my limited understanding)

Roody

First, scientists always present their findings with an expression of their statistical confidence in the findings. the media do not always reort the findings that way, unfortunately. You must read the original peer reviewed papers if you want to know what the scientist is actually reporting.

Second, it's inaccurate to say that scientists are distorting the story. Rather, the media is playing into the greedy and self-seving attempts by oil companies and politicians to distort the story. There is literally no scientific evidence to refute the theory of global warming. If you know of any, please cite or link it here. (That is, anything more speciic than "some Danish scintists.")

I just heard Al Gore on Fresh Air. Terry Gross (the interviewer) said that in the past 15 years, there have been no articles refuting anthropogenic climate change in peer-reviewed scientific journals. However, more than half of the media reports have presented the "opposing" viewpoint that there is no anthropogenic global warming. Therefore, if the media is distorting the issue, it is distorting it in the direction that there is no global warming. And the reason for this distortion is not any kind of scientfic evidence, but the opinion of energy companies and their political allies.

patc

Watch Canadian news, or subscribe to the BBC news email.

GGDub

Roody, please read my posts more carefully, I said policy makers are spinning it, not the scientists. I fully agree that on both sides there have been gross distortion of facts, and yes up until about a year ago that was grossly distorted on the denying side.

Here's a citation of a paper which argues there is no global warming which appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, note the date, it was in the last five years, well before Gore did his movie.

de Freitas, C.R., 2002: Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous? Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, 50 (2), 297-327.

I know what you are going to point out, that its in the Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, but it is a peer-reviewed journal and he is not funded by energy companies. I imagine it showed up in this journal because no climate science journal wanted to touch it. He argued that one couldn't measure CO2 fluxes from natural sources well enough to be able to say if the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is any higher than in the past 1000 years. He made some really good points about stuff I've already mentioned (measurement error, both direct and indirect) but in the end, I believe he failed to address key facts like our ability to detect anthropogenic CO2 through C14 and O18 isotopes plus failing to take into account that while we're emmitting a lot of CO2, we're also destroying vast tracts of forest which would help to fix it.

Again be careful saying "there is no scientific evidence to refute global warming", there is evidence out there, however, its far outweighed by the evidence for global warming.

The name of the Danish scientist is Henrik Svensmark. They found that cosmic rays from the sun react with gases in the lower atmosphere to form the cloud condensation nuclei. At the same time they had found that a changes in the sun's magnetic field had reduced the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth in this past century, which could be leading to less cloud cover and hence more heat reaching the ground, causing the Earth to warm. They never attempted to refute anthropogenic global warming but simply wanted to add to our understanding of what governs the Earth's climate.

Roody

I'm sorry that I dostorted your views after reading too hastily. thank you for your patience with me.

Katzenjammer

It's probably worthwhile to note three facts:

- so far, most (all?) forecasts have fallen short of the reality. Climate degradation is moving faster than thought possible.

- the latest, highly conservative IPCC report predicts a global average temperature rise by 2100--only 93 years away--in the range 1.4-5.0 Celsius. The last time temperatures were 2C more than today was 10-15M years ago, well before modern humans existed. The last time temperatures were 5C more than today was 35M years ago, and that climate is referred to as having been a "greenhouse". (see https://www.sciencepoles.org/index.ph...g=en#related_9 )

- If the temperature rises by 5C, all three of the major ice sheets--Greenland, West Antarctic, and East Antarctic--will be gone and sea levels will be 60-70m higher, drowning many islands and vastly altering the coastlines of all continents. On all continents, humans tend to cluster on the coasts, which would mean the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, minimum. We would have a catastrophe similar to the one local to the Black Sea 7K years ago that was uncovered by Ryan and Pitman, only this time of worldwide extent.