How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[David Rodale]

Ocean heat content goes up and down. The longer trend is up. This has already been done to death on here. It is in chapter 5 of the WG1 report.

Why not cherry pick 1981 and say that the warming stopped then?

I sense a reluctance to discuss the matter as you'd have some explaining to do.

What does IPCC say about the level of scientific understanding concerning solar/cosmic influence.

Just for kicks fsol, how does CO2 cause oceans to warm?


Now your side resorts to what it does best; ad hom.

 

[Pipirr]

A Scientific Conference?

Heartland may have wished it so:

Two weeks ago, Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, when told of our conference, said, “You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth.” (Denver Post, February 12, 2008).

RealClimate.org predicted that no real scientists would show up at this conference.

Well ...

We have with us, tonight and tomorrow, more than 200 scientists and other experts on climate change, from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and of course the United States.

But reality begged to differ.

The meeting was largely framed around science, but after the luncheon, when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so.

Only 19....

 

[Round Robin]

Dave,

You made a claim above that I questioned. I am sincerely interested in knowing why GWS are generally dismissive of the IPCC. I hear similar claims frequently, but without attribution.

mhaze kindly sent a link, and I responded with my interpretation that that particular incident had little to no impact on the final report.

Dave or mhaze, do you have anything else to offer to defend the statement that the IPCC's findings were politically manipulated and consisted of cherrypicked data intended to fit an agenda?

 

[varwoche]

A Scientific Conference?

Heartland may have wished it so:

But reality begged to differ.

Only 19....

Looks like he was right.

 

[fsol]

I sense a reluctance to discuss the matter as you'd have some explaining to do.

What does IPCC say about the level of scientific understanding concerning solar/cosmic influence.

Just for kicks fsol, how does CO2 cause oceans to warm?


Now your side resorts to what it does best; ad hom.

There is ad hom in my post where exactly?

I suggest that if you want to know what the IPCC report says about a particular subject, you actually go and read the thing. It is freely available for all.

Your "just for kicks" question makes no sense to me. Sorry.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

A Scientific Conference?

Heartland may have wished it so:




But reality begged to differ.



Only 19....

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080304110949.aspx

Revkin concluded his column by coyly noting that “when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so,” implying that only 19 scientists were at the conference. If Revkin had paid closer attention, or simply asked conference organizers about the speakers and attendees, he would have learned that about 100 scientists participated in the conference, according to a Heartland Institute spokesman. Those included experts on meteorology, climatology, geology, and physics, representing at least 30 universities.

Even so, since 23 people participated in the redaction of the NIPCC, there is some balance.

 

[mhaze]

Dave,

You made a claim above that I questioned. I am sincerely interested in knowing why GWS are generally dismissive of the IPCC. I hear similar claims frequently, but without attribution.

mhaze kindly sent a link, and I responded with my interpretation that that particular incident had little to no impact on the final report.

Dave or mhaze, do you have anything else to offer to defend the statement that the IPCC's findings were politically manipulated and consisted of cherrypicked data intended to fit an agenda?

Of course there is bunches.

But first, you understand that the IPCC documents are not peer reviewed science?

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/peerreview.html

Lots on IPCC here, including the FOI requests that yielded the reviewer comments.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=23

Trenberth by the way was the "lead arthur".

 

[jimbob]

So how does this show that global warming has stopped?

It is a simple scatterplot for steverino.

ETA from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt

 

[varwoche]

How are you getting on with the design of Dr Imago's Box for the Grand Simple Experiment?

The funny thing about the Dr. Imago Box (is there anything not funny about it?) is how easily one can imagine...

Yeah, but it's just a box. We still don't know how CO2 behaves in the atmosphere.

 

[CapelDodger]

The funny thing about the Dr. Imago Box (is there anything not funny about it?) is how easily one can imagine...

I think we can take that as a certainty.

 

[a_unique_person]

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080304110949.aspx
Even so, since 23 people participated in the redaction of the NIPCC, there is some balance.

It's interesting phrasing. How many are biologists and other non relevant scientists, since they are discussing purely the science of whether or not it is warming? "Including" is a lot like "Up to 80% off everything".

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Reason Magazine sent a journalist.....good reading:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125281.html (first article, there are three)

 

[CapelDodger]

Well, I find it easier to imagine a megalodon in the sea. Perhaps they are in the same tank at SeaWorld?

D'oh!

 

[CapelDodger]

It's interesting phrasing. How many are biologists and other non relevant scientists, since they are discussing purely the science of whether or not it is warming? "Including" is a lot like "Up to 80% off everything".

This from Reason Magazine :

"Joseph Bast, president of the Institute, began by announcing that the meeting of 500 participants had attracted more than 200 scientists, economists, and other policy analysts "

So fewer than 200 scientists.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125281.html

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125300.html

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125323.html

Nothing about Lord Munchkin, but it was a busy few days and there's only so much one reported can do.

All the usual stuff from what I've seen so far, except this about David C. Archibald ("a scientist operating in the fields of cancer research, climate science, and oil exploration" so he's clearly multi-talented)

"Archibald ended by boldly predicting that the world will see average temperatures drop by -2.2 degrees centigrade in the coming decade. "

Very bold. We'll see in the next two-to-seven years whether that's going to happen.

The author, Ronald Bailey, makes the point that there's no consensus within the constituency (for want of a better word). I think this is something that people are coming to recognise more. Their only common position is that the status quo must not be interfered with.

 

[a_unique_person]

Reason Magazine sent a journalist.....good reading:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125281.html (first article, there are three)

Michaels pointed out that the surface records show average global temperatures increasing at a steady rate of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade since 1977. He also hastened to put the kibosh on recent assertions that "global warming stopped in 1998." While global average temperatures have been essentially flat since 1998, Michaels argued that natural variations in the climate mask any increases due to greenhouse gases. In particular, cooler waters in the Pacific ("La Nina") and lower solar activity have conspired to drop average global temperatures. When these trends reverse, average global temperatures will rapidly rise to reveal the established long term man-made warming trend of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade. Michaels warned against succumbing to the temptation to cite current flattened global temperatures as evidence against man-made global warming.

So does that end half the sceptic arguments we see here? I hope so.

 

[a_unique_person]

From the same link.

Michaels ended by asking, "How much will it warm?" He suggested that the constant rate of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade is likely.

He accepts it is warming, and it is due to CO2. So why would the rate of warming stay constant. If we are doubling the CO2 content, that is not going to cause a constant rate of warming. If feedback such as albedo is also happening, that also means the rate of warming will not be constant.

 

[CoolSceptic]

Well, climateaudit seems to be bouncing my posts these days, so thought I'd register here for some critical banter

Dave,

You made a claim above that I questioned. I am sincerely interested in knowing why GWS are generally dismissive of the IPCC. I hear similar claims frequently, but without attribution.

mhaze kindly sent a link, and I responded with my interpretation that that particular incident had little to no impact on the final report.

Dave or mhaze, do you have anything else to offer to defend the statement that the IPCC's findings were politically manipulated and consisted of cherrypicked data intended to fit an agenda?

Unfortunately, according to my registration e-mail, I can't post links at the moment (and I'm not looking to breach the rules on my first post!) but the people who spring to mind (aside from Chris Landsea, already mentioned) would be:

Professor Roger Pielke Sr; on his site (climatesci) he has just in the last couple of days posted up his original letter resigning from the IPCC and citing his reasons. This applied to the SAR (1995), but he argues nothing has changed, and has also put up a list of peer reviewed papers critical of the consensus which have been ignored by the IPCC AR4.

Paul Reiter is the next one; he also resigned from the IPCC process, and actually took them to court to have his name removed from the list of experts. I have links but can't post them yet (d'oh!), but his views are not hard to find.

Mhaze has also indicated Steve McIntyre's viewpoint; he was an expert reviewer in the paleoclimate section of AR4, and raised several important issues which were dismissed without justification. If you check the full review comments, several other reviewers (notably Ross McKitrick, William Gray) made comments that were unscientifically dismissed without reason. Some of Dr Gray's remarks were a little... shall we say... provocative, but many were on point and, in a proper scientific assessment, deserved to be addressed more thoroughly than they were.

Although each of these individuals were involved in different parts of the report (modelling; disease; paleoclimate), each reports a consistent problem with the IPCC process, that it presents a one-sided view of the science, brushing inconvenient papers or data under the carpet. It isn't proof, but the consistent problem does suggest there is a significant flaw in the IPCC process, leading to a bias in the reports.

 

[CoolSceptic]

So does that end half the sceptic arguments we see here? I hope so.

Does that mean we also see an end to counting scientists by photo shoot? It just doesn't strike me as a very reliable proxy

It isn't compulsory for all sceptics to agree, and to imply as such is a fallacy. Climate science, being a relatively immature science with data sets rather more limited than we would like, has a plethora of viewpoints (unsurprisingly), some of them contradictory. The scientific process will help to focus these over time. Some of them will fall by the wayside, which may (or may not) include the mainstream view.

 

[CapelDodger]

So does that end half the sceptic arguments we see here? I hope so.

By no means; essential to GW Scepticism is to embrace everything available, however contradictory. Each thing is presented in isolation, and when that's not going well the GW Sceptic can leap off onto another one, perhaps on another thread, perhaps even in a new one.

Michaels for this, Archibald for that, it's all good. None of it is ever abandoned. Watts is still batting for there not being any global warming. Which is starting to look more than a tad batty, to be honest.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Welcome CoolSceptic