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Comments 1 to 50 out of 89:

1. johnd at 16:44 PM on 10 November, 2010
   Of all the trades to use to make the desired point, plumbers would have to the worst choice. Plumbers are notorious for exploiting the ignorance and gullibility of those who find the whole plumbing thing "yucky". Then again, maybe they do illustrate the point precisely.
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2. HumanityRules at 17:18 PM on 10 November, 2010
   This seems horribly off the mark. Just deal with the idea/argument. Why concern yourself with labelling the individual making the comment? Either the idea has some validity or not. What you seem to be suggesting is closing down the scope of the debate to those officially sanctioned. Call me suspicious but I'm only really suspicious of people who suggest whom I should and shouldn't be suspicious of. Shadowy "think tanks"???? Isn't it the job of a think tanks to be out in the open, putting forward their ideas and agendas in as public a way as possible. Isn't that what they do? Their ideas might be unpleasant to some of us but shadowy? This sounds like the worst sort of cold war paranoia from a second rate thriller. I thought we were passed this sort of nonsense. My suggestion is read as much as you can, from both sides of the debate, as much science as you can and keep doing this to shape and inform your position. It's not so difficult for people to work out who has good ideas and who are off the scale. Personnally I think there's lots to be learnt from both sides of the debate no matter what your own personal position is. I recommend you don't listen to people who want to simply close down the debate. Where do Judith Curry, the Pielkes, Lindzen etc fit into your shadowy world?
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3. adelady at 17:40 PM on 10 November, 2010
   HR, the Currys, etc fit uncomfortably between the industry driven or ideologically driven organisations and mainstream science. Different things drive different individuals and none of us knows any of these people well enough to accurately assess them. But for the rest of us, bodies that set up organisations with misleading names really are 'shadowy'. Many of them are truly Orwellian in the doublespeak involved when using words like 'ecological' or 'environmental'. And remember, this talk is promoting Oreskes' presentation, so the tone suggesting that there are organisations set up for the express purpose of misleading people is appropriate. It correctly conveys what Oreskes will be talking about - so it's honest. No-one going to hear Oreskes will be surprised by what she says if their decision to attend is based on this promotion.
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4. RSVP at 18:54 PM on 10 November, 2010
   "...we must trust our dentist to decide how to fill our teeth,.." Yes, but it's the patient that makes the choice, and bears the responsibility of the decision. It would be intereting to know when climate scientists realized they know what's good for you, and what you need.
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5. roundton at 18:56 PM on 10 November, 2010
   Yes, that's a good point. I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed to have across-the-board expertise in climate change studies. The field is too complex, the flood of new publications too copious. Everybody has to rely on a range of other experts. And if somebody lets the side down by sneaking through dodgy work in a key field we all suffer.
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6. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:19 PM on 10 November, 2010
   “smoking” and now also phthalates - here actually of the scientific work - denying the harmfulness - is financed in 99% (or maybe even 100%) by the tobacco and phthalates manufacturers - “think tanks”. If the number of climate scientists have only "scientific" reasons to be skeptical, is much greater. Conclusion: The comparison of skeptics such as the dangers of smoking and the climate skeptics is: extremely unfair and inappropriate from the standpoint of scientific methodology.
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7. kdkd at 20:07 PM on 10 November, 2010
   Arkadiusz #6 Would you care to justify that assertion? It seems to me that when the (generally low quality) climate sceptic scientific papers come out, they're generally in journals with poor governance, and/or based on research funded by the fossil fuel companies, or their associates. Would you care to demonstrate how that impression is wrong?
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8. Nick Palmer at 21:53 PM on 10 November, 2010
   RSVP #4 "Yes, but it's the patient that makes the choice, and bears the responsibility of the decision. It would be intereting to know when climate scientists realized they know what's good for you, and what you need." The problem with this solipsistic view is that the consequences do not only affect the individual "patient". If sufficient "patients", deciding what they think is good for them, ignore the dentists they will bear the responsibility not only for what happens to them (which would be fair) but for what happens to everybody else in the world, and the plants and animals and everything else that makes up the eco-systems that support us - which would be less than fair. Some would call the ignorant, but arrogant with it, selfish view monstrously stupid. It is certainly irresponsible.
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9. caerbannog at 22:37 PM on 10 November, 2010
   FYI, here's a video of a lecture that I saw Dr. Oreskes present at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography about three years ago: http://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=13459 The same nefarious cast of characters who tried to undermine the science linking smoking with lung cancer are pulling the same sleazy stunts regarding the science linking fossil-fuel use and global warming.
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10. JMurphy at 22:48 PM on 10 November, 2010
    I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of that tiny band of politically-motivated scientists, especially over their actions to prevent measures tackling smoking, second-hand smoking, etc. How are they able to sleep at night or look themselves in the mirror each morning ? How can they justify their actions to themselves morally ? More importantly, though : how are they allowed to get away with it every time ?
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11. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 23:27 PM on 10 November, 2010
    JMurphy

    More importantly, though : how are they allowed to get away with it every time ?

    I think this is what baffles me most. 'Merchants of Doubt' has done a great job of exposing it all but maybe we need something a bit more concise. The internet should be a great platform for this.
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12. CBDunkerson at 23:38 PM on 10 November, 2010
    People have all kinds of reasons for denying reality. For instance. I remember reading a writeup on John Christy which described him telling a group of Sunday school kids that 'crazy environmentalists are trying to destroy the economy because they do not believe that God provides'. It was horrifying... indoctrinating children with this nonsense as part of religious instruction. How can people do this? I think the terrible truth is that many of them BELIEVE the insanity they spout. Separation of church and state is long gone... and what they don't seem to have ever realized was that it was meant to protect religion from political corruption as much as it was to protect politics from religion. We need only look at the Taliban, Branch Davidians, Jim Jones, and hundreds of other examples to see the havoc than can be brought about when religion is employed as a tool to control people rather than a philosophy to uplift them.
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13. Alexandre at 00:02 AM on 11 November, 2010
    There's this interesting feature of deniers of being "all around" deniers. The guy that says "it's the sun" never desagrees with those who say "it's not warming". Fred Singer denies global warming (unless it exists and is unstoppable), CFC ozone depletion, as well as DDT and tobacco health risks. A fairly famous meteorologist in Brazil denies AGW, which is caused by ODP or the sun or a vague natural cycle related to deglaciation (it varies), and it's not happening at all because it's just the urban heat island effect. He also denies CFCs as the cause of ozone depletion. That's just a big conspiracy of DuPont, because CFC is too heavy to reach the stratosphere. It's no use arguing that CFC has been actually measured in the stratosphere. And if you talk to them, that's how science works. Denying and dodging the available evidence means "debate".
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14. JMurphy at 00:05 AM on 11 November, 2010
    DESMOGBLOG is well worth looking at regularly. As it says there : Unfortunately, a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign is poisoning the climate change debate. Using tricks and stunts that unsavory PR firms invented for the tobacco lobby, energy-industry contrarians are trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits. DeSmogBlog is here to cry foul - to shine the light on techniques and tactics that reflect badly on the PR industry and are, ultimately, bad for the planet. I also find SourceWatch and ExxonSecrets useful for checking up on groups or individuals. Oops, hope the so-called skeptics don't get too paranoid and start discussing 'black-lists', etc...
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15. Bob Guercio at 00:15 AM on 11 November, 2010
    The deniers intent is simply to delay by sowing doubt. During that delay, they continue to make profits. This strategy was used for the first time by the tobacco industry to deny the link between ill health and cigarette smoking. Naome Oreskes, therefore, coined the term "Tobacco Strategy" to describe it.
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16. Ken Lambert at 00:28 AM on 11 November, 2010
    The arguments are simple. The issue is global warming. To have warming you need an excess of heat energy entering the biosphere over that leaving. To raise overall temperatures the heat content of the biosphere must increase – tending toward a higher equilibrium. The main place to store this heat is in the oceans. The ocean heat content in fact should show up the integral WRT of most of the radiative imbalance at TOA. The last 6 years of upper 700m OHC is flat and deeper 3000m is not much either (0.1W/sq.m according to latest Willis on Argo). So finding an increase in OHC is critical to the whole theory of TOA heating imbalances – and the theory of AGW. So far OHC content measurment before 2004 by XBT is fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless. Argo is better – but the 6-7 analyses show OHC in the upper 700m converging on flatness. NO increase in OHC – NO global warming. CO2GHG theory (and all the other estimated forcings) must be neutral for no warming to occur. So in effect what the climate science ‘consensus’ is saying is that when the observation does not match the MODEL – then the MODEL must be right and the observation is not good enough (wrong). This turns the scientific method on its head. The method of observation – model – observation – adjust model – observation – refine model: is turned into – MODEL and go away and find observations which match it. It is clear that a religious belief in alarmist AGW is still blotting out the reality that the overwhelming ‘concensus’ never existed. The concoction of overwhelming ‘concensus’ was an invention of green driven polemical scientists who verballed their media shy colleagues (thousands of IPCC participants) into minimising the great uncertainties of climate science and exaggerating anything which smacked of warming. The Royal Society has recently laid out the bare facts of 'global warming' and properly categorized the great uncertainties and soberly debunked the alarmists.
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17. lord_sidcup at 00:57 AM on 11 November, 2010
    @Ken Lambert "The Royal Society has recently laid out the bare facts of 'global warming' and properly categorized the great uncertainties and soberly debunked the alarmists." That isn't the message I took from the Royal Society report, and I would say you are grievously misrepresenting their conclusions (and you won't be the only one): Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
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18. Nick Palmer at 01:04 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Ken Lambert at #16 "To have warming you need an excess of heat energy entering the biosphere over that leaving." Well we have that - increased IR has been being measured coming down from the sky to Earth and decreased IR has been measured leaving Earth towards space. Even the main sceptic scientists acknowledge that we are warming. If KL can't see it in the oceans why would this be? Perhaps because he is only looking at the top 700 meters for only six years. Nino/Nina/Enso cyclical variations temporarily overwhelm the small but cumulative AGW increases. KL says that XBT measurements before 2004 were "fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless" Seems like he should believe that any ocean measurement is not yet reliable enough to establish reliable trends so he cannot suggest that there is no ocean warming (yet). If the ocean measuring is not reliable enough yet, then he should ignore it as a source of speculation and instead rely on the aforementioned measured radiative imbalance to jump to his own conclusions. Personally, if my radiative equilibrium is upset by someone wrapping me in a duvet on a hot day, I start to sweat. planets are bigger but the same basic laws apply. Don't "sceptics" notice this effect?
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19. CBDunkerson at 01:12 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Nick Palmer #18: "KL says that XBT measurements before 2004 were "fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless" Seems like he should believe that any ocean measurement is not yet reliable enough to establish reliable trends so he cannot suggest that there is no ocean warming (yet)." Clearly all data which contradicts a viewpoint is false... and all data which supports it is unquestionably true. And anyone who disagrees with such logic is acting based on religious convictions rather than rational thought. Scary scary people.
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20. DSL at 01:13 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Ugh, Ken -- I think one of your wheels is stuck. You stake your claim on OHC, period, and then point out that OHC is difficult to measure. Meanwhile, surface temps keep rising, arctic ice is in rapid decline, stratospheric temps are dropping, TOA is dropping, sea level is rising, Antarctic land ice is in decline, global glaciation is in rapid decline . . . and you just called thousands of scientists mindless robots, the same scientists who are trying to bring you the data you cite. You're right about the models, though: Mann and Hansen never tried to refine their models, did they? And there was only one IPCC report, sometime back in the 1990s, I think. Of course, I could be wrong, but, like others, I would never admit it.
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21. Alexandre at 01:13 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Ken Lambert #16 The last 6 years of upper 700m OHC is flat and deeper 3000m is not much either (0.1W/sq.m according to latest Willis on Argo). Would it be fair to summarize your argument as "it hasn't warmed since 2004, so there's no global warming"? The period is just too short to find any climatological trend. About the Royal Society: of course, it's a document worth reading in full, but as a soundbite I could draw this one: "When only natural climate forcings are put into climate models, the models are incapable of reproducing the size of the observed increase in global-average surface temperatures over the past 50 years. However, when the models include estimates of forcings resulting from human activity, they can reproduce the increase."
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22. Tarcisio José D at 01:45 AM on 11 November, 2010
    God post S.L and exelent idea of prof. Oreskes. If we loock to the selfcontrol of planet temperature we don't see anything. Bat I think: Greenhouse effect, the bigger the better if there is enough water in the soil to evaporate. The study of the thermodynamics of the atmosphere shows that a portion of heated air, with an appropriate moisture content (vapor), to ascend into the atmosphere following a moist adiabatic, surpassing the 500-hector-Pascal level, where the greenhouse is divided 50% above and 50% below. There, in argument 25 I post a anima.gif about this.
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23. JMurphy at 02:04 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Ken Lambert wrote : ...religious belief in alarmist AGW...overwhelming ‘concensus’ was an invention of green driven polemical scientists...media shy colleagues (thousands of IPCC participants)..." Can I just say that this is sad, predictable, incomprehensible, bemusing, snide, cheaply insulting, baiting, etc., etc., conspiracy-theory distraction from the (indeed, any) subject in hand. Is it better to leave it there for all to see what so-called skepticism is all about - and how difficult it is to argue against views that are, in the end, based on political belief, rather than science ? Why are such assertions/beliefs allowed on Skeptical Science ? For balance ? (Don't publish/keep this comment if you think it transgresses the rules but I am fed up of reading the same old nonsense over and over again. It's bad enough on other sites but on this site...?)
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24. Daniel Bailey at 02:25 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Re: JMurphy above. Complete agreement. On one hand, it is egregious enough that I would delete it for the reasons stated. However, the other hand is more compelling: we see in one comment the underlying thought process and motivations driving KL. So I say it would be more instructive to others, and serve as a lasting testimonial, if retained. KL and BP have torpedoed what cred they had with their recent comments.
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25. michael sweet at 05:20 AM on 11 November, 2010
    I agree with Daniel Bailey. It is helpful to leave these comments in. I have to deal with these types of comments every day with my students. If we just delete them we do not learn ways to address the concerns that they raise. Just because their comments are politically based does not mean that we can ignore them. We have to address every issue the skeptics raise or they will hammer on the ones we ignore. That said it is tedious to keep up the wack a mole forever.
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26. Daniel Bailey at 06:07 AM on 11 November, 2010
    There's one thing it's easy to lose sight of in our repetetive rebunking of the same zombie arguments (usually from the same commenters over and over again): we are judged by more than just those we respond to. There are far more lurkers than contributors on sites like this. So comments must also be for posterity for the silent majority. I lurked here and at other sites like RC and Open Mind for nearly 2 years before finally chipping in (I remember it vividly: a question on Arctic amplification at RC)...and the realization "Hey, I KNOW this!"...
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27. Michael Searcy at 07:15 AM on 11 November, 2010
    "Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to “global warming,” any scientist’s agreement will do. The answer almost certainly lies in politics." - Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, M.I.T. Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Prominent skeptic, and OISM petition signer, 1992
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28. dhogaza at 07:36 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Ken Lambert spews: "So in effect what the climate science ‘consensus’ is saying is that when the observation does not match the MODEL – then the MODEL must be right and the observation is not good enough (wrong). This turns the scientific method on its head." Well, actually, when the UAH people crowed that satellite measurements showed cooling rather than warming about 10 years ago, in disagreement with model predictions ... It turned out that UAH had serious errors. When those were corrected, it turned out that UAH had ... more serious errors. Now we find that UAH is in good agreement with the models. So, no, it doesn't turn the scientific method on its head. Where there is disagreement in science, there are efforts made to reconcile the disagreement. And when models and observation diverge ... *both* are subject to scrutiny. Because observations, as well as models, are subject to error. Not that Ken Lambert cares ...
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29. Albatross at 07:42 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Michael @27, I'm not sure what the point of your quote is. You and/or Lindzen forget that anthropogenic climate change (ACC) affects the entire biosphere. That is why people talk about "consilience", and consequently why it involves research across many scientific disciplines. Not only that, but ACC and athro activities also affect people's health. Can I also point out the irony of Lindzen making that (misleading) assertion. Have a look at the "qualifications" (and in some cases the quotation marks are warranted) of the signatories of the Oregon petition and/or OISM petition. Dr. Lindzen does protest too much. Actually, he seems to be employing an infamous Karl Rove technique-- (falsely) accusing others of doing what you are actually doing.
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30. Philippe Chantreau at 10:21 AM on 11 November, 2010
    KL throws out a funny again. With UAH, the models were right and the "data" wrong. Willis ran into the same thing. Instances of model right/obs. wrong are numerous across many fields. Models based on physics should always be trusted over measurements made with sensititve equipment subject to many potential errors. It's funny how skeptics are also eager to cast suspicion on obseved data if it does not show what they want.
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31. PaulPS at 11:09 AM on 11 November, 2010
    I have been observing this site for at least a year or so to get informed, and learn a little about Climate Science from both sides. However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough?
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    Response: The main issue with Ken's comment was the "religious belief in alarmist AGW" comment. It was perfectly possible for him to make his scientific arguments without resorting to that ad hominem. If I'd been awake at the time, I would've deleted the comment as it violates our comments policy. By the time I woke up this morning, a whole discussion had sprung from it and in those cases, I just have to cut my losses. Note to moderators - any ad hominem comments that equate the other side to having religious beliefs should be deleted.
32. Phila at 11:39 AM on 11 November, 2010
    PaulPS @31: However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough? As long as you don't go out of your way to be offensive and insulting, and can refrain from accusing thousands of scientists you've never met of being dupes or frauds without offering any evidence whatsoever, I think you're very unlikely to get the "Ken treatment."
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33. PaulPS at 11:47 AM on 11 November, 2010
    Phila at 11:39 AM on 11 November, 2010 Other than the implied assumption I might do that, thanks for the advice.
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34. Daniel Bailey at 12:35 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Re: PaulPS It's been my experience here, first as a longtime lurker, then an occasional questioner to someone now able to answer most questions without shooting myself in the foot (well, mostly), that all posing questions framed honestly are treated with respect and dignity. Which reflects the majority of questioners. I have been known to spend several hours researching the answers to questions put to me. As have others here. But at the same time, we're human. And it does get exasperating to answer the same questions from the same questioners for the umpteenth time. And to rebunk the same debunked zombie memes over and over again. Sometime from the same poster. And sometimes people get personal here. Hence the need for the Comments Policy. It IS possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Most of the time, the sub-thread involving KL would not have gone far, as the Mods do a pretty good job catching the egregious comments. But sometimes, as evidenced by John's in-line comment, some bad ones slips through the cracks. Which is why, in this case, I advocated for it to be left as a teaching moment (rather than deleting a bunch of comments). For most people, being polite and courteous comes naturally. And enhances the learning potential for everyone reading. So we (I) look forward to trying to help answer any questions you may have here. Honestly, and politely. Like the Boy Scout I was raised to be (OK, never made it to Eagle Scout...but I was a Boy Scout). The Yooper
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    Moderator Response: Thank you for encouraging politeness and reminding us all about the Comments Policy. Now let's see if we can get this discussion back on topic.
35. Norman at 15:28 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Even though an expert in a given field will possess a greater amount of knowledge than a non-expert, it will still not prevent human emotion from bias. Climate science is very complex. Any system with numerous variables and a chaotic connection between them can easily allow human bias (the desire to be right, ego) to paint a picture favorable to ones preference (be it Warmist or Denier). It is not a simple hard science like measuring gravitational attraction. Much more wiggle room. Here is an example. Antartic temps. What is the temperature of Antartica? I sent a link with current Antartica temps. The range is around 100 F. If my current belief was that the World was warming and Antartica was warmer, I could prove this by rejecting a few of the lower temps from the group and coming up with a slightly warmer temp. Likewise if I felt the Earth was cooling, I would be inclined to think Antartica was cooler and I could throw out few of the warmer temps. Both calculations will give and average temp of Antartica and neither are false. They will be different. The point is that with the Earth's large daily temp range (about 200 F) you can find a 1 or 2 F trend going up if you want. Is it real? Maybe. No matter how many web sites I visit. RealClimate, Skeptical Science, Science of Doom I still have not seen definate proof for AGW.
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36. Daniel Bailey at 15:34 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Re: Bob Guercio (15) Big Tobacco had a hand in many pies. For example, Winston was a sponsor of the Flintstones at one time (ah, the days of the old B & W TV's...). The Yooper
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37. Norman at 15:36 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Asking the Experts. I still am not convinced the high surface temp of Venus is caused by "runaway" Greenhouse. I am looking for a IR spectrum of CO2 at Venus pressure and concentration (it seems certain some lab has run it). Does CO2 begin to absorb more of the IR spectrum at elevated pressure? Under normal conditions of 100% CO2 it absorbs at two bands that do not cover much of the total spectrum. I am not sure it is not the highly reflective clouds that retain the radiation. It would seem that if not for the highly reflective clouds, IR would be pouring out of Venus at all bands not absorbed by CO2.
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38. Daniel Bailey at 15:52 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Re: Norman (35) The point is...that climate change is measured in terms of anomalies, not temps. That is a very, very basic underlying principle in climate science. Temps are weather. The trend in temperature anomalies over a long enough period of time to be statistically significant is called climate. Here is the change in the global temperature anomalies over 1980-2010 vs the 1951-1980 baseline in degrees C (multiply by 1.8 to convert to F). Please note the graph of zonal mean by latitude at the bottom of the linked page. Mean anything to you? No cherry-picking of stations, no focus on individual years or temperature not contextually similar to other temps due to seasons, locations, etc. No detrending of temps to hide the inclines. Just the good stuff: all of the data for a 30-year chunk of time relative to another 30-year chunk of time. So, your eyes show you that, considering all the data, the world is warming. Polar amplification is taking out the multiyear ice in the Arctic. Put aside your cognitive bias and first prove the globe is not warming. The Yooper
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39. Tom Dayton at 16:06 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Norman, there is an excellent series of posts about Venus on the Science of Doom site Venusian Mysteries.
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40. Daniel Bailey at 16:14 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Re: Norman (37) Um, you haven't been reading anything by Steve Goddard have you? Full discussion of the Venus Syndrome here. The Yooper
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41. Phila at 16:14 PM on 11 November, 2010
    PaulPS: Other than the implied assumption I might do that, thanks for the advice. I'm very sorry I gave you that impression. That wasn't my intention at all. The point of my comment was simply that the "Ken treatment" resulted from an approach that was insulting and — as JC notes above — totally unnecessary. I certainly didn't intend to cast any aspersions on you.
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    Moderator Response: This is not targeted at either Phila or PaulPS, just a general request: No more discussion in this thread of who may or may not have insulted whom, please. The comment that started this all should never have been posted, and nothing more needs to be said about it. Thanks!
42. Norman at 16:34 PM on 11 November, 2010
    #39 Tom Dayton I have already been there and posted some questions. I posted at Venusian mysteries part-two.
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43. Norman at 16:37 PM on 11 November, 2010
    #40 Daniel Bailey I have read Goddard's report (I visit WUWT as often as these sites). I was not sure how his idea worked. If a gas is compressed it will heat up, but then it will give up its heat to it surroundings. It will not stay hot.
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44. Norman at 17:14 PM on 11 November, 2010
    #38 Daniel Bailey "So, your eyes show you that, considering all the data, the world is warming. Polar amplification is taking out the multiyear ice in the Arctic. Put aside your cognitive bias and first prove the globe is not warming." I can't prove the globe is not warming. In fact my opinion is that it warms and cools in cycles not fully understood at this time. I am sure of one thing, climate seems to cycle. More cycles. On your link it shows Siberia as one of the locations warming the fastest. This is the claimed proof of AGW as CO2 warms polar areas devoid of water vapor (the dominant greenhouse gas) and also is at a temp where the IR spectrum peak is closer to the 15 micron wavelength maximizing CO2 GH effect. Here is a link that questions the warming of the Siberian region. Questions the Global anomaly of Siberian Temps.
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45. scaddenp at 18:02 PM on 11 November, 2010
    Norman, you arent going to find proof. This is science after all. There is always the possibility that human imagination will create a better model that explains all of existing observation and more. What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate. What have got for a competing theory? That somehow physics is all wrong and some deep unexplained phenomena is responsible instead? Any other aspects of your life where you would take kind of bet? As for cycles, of course there are cycles, with real physical causes, not some mystery. Now are you comfortable with 1st law thermodynamics? If some "cycle" (outside any that we know and account for) is moving energy enough to account for surface temperature trend, then where is that energy coming from?
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46. Norman at 01:31 AM on 12 November, 2010
    #46 scaddenp, "What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate" Have you looked at the posts on this webpage about Climate Models. Your statement: "What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate." Seems many do not agree with this and do have valid counter points. "As for cycles, of course there are cycles, with real physical causes, not some mystery" Do you have links to sites that have solved the cause of the cycles with some actual proof? I have not found any. The basic one is planetary wobble and orbit combo that effect how much solar radiation regions of Earth receive.
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47. Tarcisio José D at 01:40 AM on 12 November, 2010
    scaddenp @ 45 "What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate. What have got for a competing theory? That somehow physics is all wrong and some deep unexplained phenomena is responsible instead? Any other aspects of your life where you would take kind of bet?" Yes, the physics is wrong for do not consider the evaporation of water from the soil. By failing to analyze whether the soil has enough water to control the temperature of the planet. By leaving all the control of evaporation to the oceans. While the weather is wrong just by analyzing the air temperature at two meters tall, as if the ground was not part of the climate system.
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48. JMurphy at 02:14 AM on 12 November, 2010
    Norman wrote : "Have you looked at the posts on this webpage about Climate Models. Your statement: "What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate." Seems many do not agree with this and do have valid counter points." Do you have more details of these "many", and what scientific evidence they are using for their "valid counter points" ?
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49. JMurphy at 02:50 AM on 12 November, 2010
    Norman wrote : "Here is a link that questions the warming of the Siberian region." A few paragraphs into your link, I read : ...prior to 1970 all warming was natural, according to the IPCC. Really ? So why does AR4 WG1, Chapter 9 (Understanding and Attributing Climate Change) state : "...anthropogenic forcing accounts for almost all of the warming observed between 1946 and 1995 whereas warming between 1896 and 1945 is explained by a combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing and internal variability." You would do well to check the sources you rely so much on.
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50. Norman at 05:04 AM on 12 November, 2010
    #49 JMurphy Your Is your "Really?" in the same tone as the cell phone commercial? The comment "...prior to 1970 all warming was natural, according to the IPCC" was based upon the visual analysis of the Model runs from IPCC. Look at the graph. He did not put a quote around the statement as it did not come from any text. Before 1970 the natural and anthropogenic CO2 produced the same effect. Look at the Global Land temp (middle graph at bottom), Natural warming and Anthropogenic overlap for the temp line. IPCC model runs with natural and anthropogenic forcings. So did you take the time to look at any of his graphs and conclusions? Or did you stop at this statement and conclude he was incorrect and the rest of the site was useless?
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