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Global warming

Why hasn't Exxon funded research into AGW? The results could hardly be regarded as tainted since it would have to be rigourously transparent on the "only Nixon could go to China" principle. They're not short of a buck, after all, these "enormous sums of money" you mention are small change to them. (Ten billion operating profit last quarter. Tasty money by any standards, even in dollars.) They're socially concerned enough about truth in science to fund groups that purport to be about just that, so why not a few million for a modelling project? All code and data publicly available, all procedures transparent, a completely hands-off approach. It would put your mind at rest, wouldn't it?

So why not? The cynic in me says that Exxon knows perfectly well what the outcome would be, so instead they leave the science to others and snipe at it by proxy. My other side says ... actually, I don't have another side. It's cynic all the way down.

Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.
 
Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.

A quote from David Roberts at Gristmill.com, referring to how "deniers" should be handled on Oct. 12, 2006. (He too fell for the Exxon conspiracy lies)
When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.
Let's see? Has he retracted and apologized for this? No. He posted this "correction" the next day.
What I want is some sort of public forum where the liars can be exposed for what they are and cast, once and for all, from polite company. It isn't economic or legal punishment I seek but simple social opprobrium. Shame. It needs to be made clear that knowingly lying about matters of grave social concern is not OK. This is not a game.
And on Oct 26, 2006-
I never "recanted" my comment. I merely acknowledged that the Nuremberg analogy was stupid. (A helpful tip to all you polemicists at home: leave the Nazis out of it!) Lord knows I don't want to see any state-sponsored trials. What I want is transparency -- a little sunlight cast on all the musty deceptions and backroom corporate connections.

Twenty years from now, we will look back and see that the mercenaries who lied about global warming for money, who worked single-mindedly on behalf of industry to delay action, are at least indirectly responsible for untold economic and human suffering. They are committing a moral crime and deserve our collective opprobrium.
I invite Roberts to apologize and set the record straight.

And to clearly state whether he would advocate identical tactics to the misrepresentation, distortions, and condoned errors, of Jones, Mann, Hansen and Gore in fostering AGW Alarmism.

Or otherwise, to clearly indicate a sane and rational way to more forward that integrates the numerous new emerging "anti - AGW" studies, while denying any policies, social or scientific benefits to his previous position of Alarmism.

In a nutshell:
I invite Roberts to become a denier, or at least a skeptic of Alarmism.
 
You might want to send an email to Hansen and tell him you support him, since he has commented he feels pretty alone...

He's certainly not alone in the scientific community, so you've probably presented this out of its context.

The high ground will inevitably be crowded, and the crowd will be scientist-heavy. The lowlands will be heavy on the religious and the thumb-suckers. And the powerless poor, of course. (The meek need patience. "Endeavour to Persevere!" is my advice to them :) .)

My advice to you is to bet your pension against the market, since current prices are influenced by AGW alarmism, which will have proved to be such to everybody (not just those with your foresight) a decade or three up the line. This has to be done in a targeted manner, of course; identify the distortions created by AGW alarmism and take long-term positions that exploit them. Spread your risk and you're bound to come out well.

(Specific advice on how to position yourself that way is, of course, chargeable.)
 
Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.

They could easily cough up twenty million (of the hundred million, even) specifically for an independent study into AGW, including some research. Instead they make a big lump-sum contribution to a prestigious scientific institution (very publicly), while shipping the odd million or two each year to institutions that do no research and simply snipe against the work done by - amongst others - people at Stanford.

You're easily impressed.

Exxon won't fund a study because their strategy is to emphasize uncertainty, and they know what answer any study of AGW will come up with. So they leave the studies to the scientific establishment - Stanford and such - and then present the scientific establishment as a self-interested, untrustworthy, autocratic closed-shop. The proles know no better, and that's the target audience. The world of science is frickin' alien to them.

What isn't alien to proles is their own experience, of course, and there's only so long that rhetoric can blind them to what's actually going onwhere they live. That's why denial is in constant temporal retreat. Events cannot be denied to their witnesses, and explaining-away gets old pretty damn' quick.

The Al Gore thing only has local application, although as a rallying-point it probably serves well. The FDR thing did for a very long time, and hasn't entirely gone away yet. The demonic Al Gore is being cast very much in the image of FDR, the Pawn of Moscow. You should look him up, he was a Very Bad Person.
 
On a different note.

Wensday here was strange weather. About 8" of rain over 12 hours, and within a 30 mile radius, 7 killed when their cars were swept off roads into the flood currents in normally dry creeks. Six to nine inches of water on roads including freeways. Basically, not smart to be out driving in any vehicle. Many low water crossings and roads impassable.

Global warming?

Nope. Just a normal day. One that represents perhaps 0.5% of all days, and which is seen, including a fatality count from 3-12, once or twice a year. In this case, the remnants of the tropical storm Erin affecting us 200 miles inland.

Not unusual at all. Tragic, yes.

Not global warming.

Not a normal day, but a weather 'event'. The prediction is that such events will become more frequent. The proof will be in the record of statistics.
 
Well, think about it. What you don't here is something like this -

(A) "we think that due to a combination of land use changes, brown clouds, soot, agricultural practicies, emissions from cars, coal, oil and natural gas fired powerplants...(yada yada yahda...)the planet may be warming...."

No. You hear

(B1) "CO2 is causing the planet to warm".

The B1 hypothesis is not nearly as rational or defensible as a position as the A. However, it leads to numerous easy to implement taxation and regulation plans, while the first statement does not at all do so.

So I am suggesting that because of the basic weakness of this position, global warmists are led to the "alarmist" position B2, saying essentially...

That is not how the IPCC report phrases it, they say to what degree they feel the evidence and science is correct that CO2 is the driver of climate change currently.
 
They could easily cough up twenty million (of the hundred million, even) specifically for an independent study into AGW, including some research. Instead they make a big lump-sum contribution to a prestigious scientific institution (very publicly), while shipping the odd million or two each year to institutions that do no research and simply snipe against the work done by - amongst others - people at Stanford.

You're easily impressed.

Exxon won't fund a study because their strategy is to emphasize uncertainty, and they know what answer any study of AGW will come up with. So they leave the studies to the scientific establishment - Stanford and such - and then present the scientific establishment as a self-interested, untrustworthy, autocratic closed-shop. The proles know no better, and that's the target audience. The world of science is frickin' alien to them.

What isn't alien to proles is their own experience, of course, and there's only so long that rhetoric can blind them to what's actually going onwhere they live. That's why denial is in constant temporal retreat. Events cannot be denied to their witnesses, and explaining-away gets old pretty damn' quick.

The Al Gore thing only has local application, although as a rallying-point it probably serves well. The FDR thing did for a very long time, and hasn't entirely gone away yet. The demonic Al Gore is being cast very much in the image of FDR, the Pawn of Moscow. You should look him up, he was a Very Bad Person.

Ah yes, that troubling seemingly insignificant word "uncertainty" in science. If only it didn't exist.

In the meantime, your side has yet to offer one specific paper explaining the AGW claim, using the scientific method, that CO2 is the responsible mechanism for driving temperature.

All you've really got is climate models, appeal to Authority and unsubstantiated assumptions, isn't that what it boils down to? Two recent additions, among many, demonstrate the utter uselessness of climate models predicting climate. How many examples are needed to sow a seed of doubt in your unwavering faith of the IPCC dogma?
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/anttemps.htm

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3357
A somewhat humorous statement:
The discrepancy between the models and the data might mean that the models are wrong. Or it might be that two decades is not long enough to test their predictions.


That is not how the IPCC report phrases it, they say to what degree they feel the evidence and science is correct that CO2 is the driver of climate change currently.
Ah, so science is now about feelings...

According to IPCC's own admission, their LOSU (level of scientific understanding) is quite dismal, and the areas where they claim a high LOSU, the evidence does not support.
 
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No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.
 
Ah yes, that troubling seemingly insignificant word "uncertainty" in science. If only it didn't exist.

Uncertainty always exists, that is why AGW is a matter of risk management. As they asked on a recent TV debate, at what level of risk would you not fly on a jet? 1 in 1,000,000? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? I am pretty certain the current state of the science is at least 1 in 10. The IPCC is claiming about 9 in 10.
 
No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.

Von Braun was able to show in a fairly simple manner that we could send a man to the moon by -
  • using the multi stage rocket equations
  • plugging values in that were estimates
  • on a blackboard
  • in ten minutes
that it was possible.

Here with AGW, we seem to be all over the map
  • delta temp with CO2, if any;
  • essential positive and negative feedbacks.
I'm just trying to get to the basics here that might be considered analogues to the moon rocket equations.

With the moon rocket, you did have s simple, elegant proof. With AGW, you don't...
 
No, science is about investigation and evidence. Interpretation of the results of a field as complex as AGW is dependent on collating all that investigation. When they decided they could send a man to the moon, there was no one experiment of piece of science that told them they could do it. That could only be decided at a higher level.


There have been several in this forum stating it is a simple matter of physics; atmospheric CO2 levels go up and temperatures follow in a linear fashion. We are told current day temperatures are “unprecedented”, yet there is no evidence to support this claim; quite the contrary, direct evidence indicates present day temperatures are still much less than previous times, and well within natural variation.

According to IPCC, it has a high level of scientific understanding of CO2, therefore it should be very simple to provide evidence supporting the hypothesis of IPCC's conclusions that CO2 levels alone will determine global temperatures, particularly since CH4 (methane) levels have flattened for some unexplained reason, again contrary to IPCC climate models. Recent cooling of the oceans is referred to as a “speed bump” by AGW proponents.

A paper supporting that notion may for example have the inverse of the title of the following published paper "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics"
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

It would also refute this:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

In the IPCC 1992 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
In the IPCC 1995 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 -0.33K per decade. Adjustments in the models were made until it matched what they believe to be current day temperatures, then the AGW sheep claim the climate models were accurate. Any explanation for this?

It can be easily proven IPCC chooses to ignore relevant research contrary to their agenda driven dogma. Do you challenge this?

In the following IPCC SPM document, a chart on page 4, ‘Radiative Forcing Components’ gives RF values for various climate mechanisms. Do you notice something odd? Maybe a few items missing? Note the LOSU for solar is Low (compared to 2001, 2007 SPM eliminated all references of Very Low), yet IPCC attributes a very low forcing value. Since CO2 is listed as High with the largest forcing value, you should be able to easily locate the relevant physics explaining how IPCC arrives at its 2.4C minimum temperature increase.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_SPM-v2.pdf

It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

This subject matter is focused on CO2 as it is the main villain in AGW. When your side can satisfactorily support that IPCC hypothesis, we can move on to other issues.
 
It should be noted also that the raw data and programs aren't yet released, despite repeated requests. All the requesters got were a mail stating that "they won't release the data because it will be used to critizice the papers".

Tell me about peer review :(

There have been several in this forum stating it is a simple matter of physics; atmospheric CO2 levels go up and temperatures follow in a linear fashion. We are told current day temperatures are “unprecedented”, yet there is no evidence to support this claim; quite the contrary, direct evidence indicates present day temperatures are still much less than previous times, and well within natural variation.

According to IPCC, it has a high level of scientific understanding of CO2, therefore it should be very simple to provide evidence supporting the hypothesis of IPCC's conclusions that CO2 levels alone will determine global temperatures, particularly since CH4 (methane) levels have flattened for some unexplained reason, again contrary to IPCC climate models. Recent cooling of the oceans is referred to as a “speed bump” by AGW proponents.

A paper supporting that notion may for example have the inverse of the title of the following published paper "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics"
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

It would also refute this:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

In the IPCC 1992 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
In the IPCC 1995 report, climate model simulations of the "global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 -0.33K per decade. Adjustments in the models were made until it matched what they believe to be current day temperatures, then the AGW sheep claim the climate models were accurate. Any explanation for this?

It can be easily proven IPCC chooses to ignore relevant research contrary to their agenda driven dogma. Do you challenge this?

In the following IPCC SPM document, a chart on page 4, ‘Radiative Forcing Components’ gives RF values for various climate mechanisms. Do you notice something odd? Maybe a few items missing? Note the LOSU for solar is Low (compared to 2001, 2007 SPM eliminated all references of Very Low), yet IPCC attributes a very low forcing value. Since CO2 is listed as High with the largest forcing value, you should be able to easily locate the relevant physics explaining how IPCC arrives at its 2.4C minimum temperature increase.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_SPM-v2.pdf

It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

This subject matter is focused on CO2 as it is the main villain in AGW. When your side can satisfactorily support that IPCC hypothesis, we can move on to other issues.
 
It would need to be contrary to the above references concerning CO2 in addition to below which attributes a maximum 1.1C increase total to anthropogenic contributions, hardly catastrophic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

For some reason I couldn't edit the original post.

Anyway, this paper is being discussed at the following. Annan is claiming an error in Shwartz's article. We shall see how it plays out.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007...cance-of-ocean-heat-content-changes/#comments
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate.html
 
What an attitude Annan apparently has - from his "review"

I am happy to let RealClimate debunk the septic dross

I hear that this paper from Stephen Schwartz is making a bit of a splash in the delusionospher

given the screwy results that Schwartz obtained,


For some reason I couldn't edit the original post.

Anyway, this paper is being discussed at the following. Annan is claiming an error in Shwartz's article. We shall see how it plays out.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007...cance-of-ocean-heat-content-changes/#comments
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate.html
 
Not in that post. If it's buried in somethinng else, I'm afraid I missed it.

Post 402 in this thread. It's a pretty good article, he describes why he feels being an alarmist is a valid position. And laments that not many others seem to share his views.

I'm not saying it alarmism is not a valid belief, mind you; neither do I argue with my fundamentalist religious co-workers about religion.

But it is improper for the head of NASA climate science to be bend that far in a single direction; we pay him to get things right. So he should quit NASA and just be a full time climate alarmist, obviously.
 

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