Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Reality Check]

That is what I've been asking the people that use the term AGE, or global warming, what are your scientific sources?

AGW = Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming.
Global Warming
So what words are you ignorant about, r-j?

How can you tell it is CO2 caused warming? That critical issue is the thing still being avoided.

That is a lie, r-j, the evidence for AGW has been cited for you several times by several posters. So one more time: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.

 

[Trakar]

Trakar this might help to do napkin level doodles


http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/fuels.aspx

Let's just assume for the moment it's a billion gallons a day world wide.


If we know the AGW component of warming is one Hiroshima per second.

actually, it is 4 Hiroshima class (~10-12Kt) detonations per second
or ~ 320 million btu, or burning gasoline is currently 0.012% of AGW if your conversion approximations are correct.

If I get the chance, I'll look a little more deeply and see if I can find a better reference, or break out my old HP49G and see if I can remember how to use it properly!

 

[Trakar]

That isn't what I asked you about. I asked you specific clear questions about the topic.
There has been no link to the answers, much less discussion of them. You are being either dishonest or evasive. I asked you for your understanding. You, and others, literally post thousands of lines of text, but refuse to do a paragraph explaining the basics. Important basic things, about the theory and physics of the matter at hand.
Avoidance.

Anyone else actually know enough to just type out the answers here? What are the "considerations"? Where did you read about them? What makes this different from global warming? As in, how can we tell it is AGW and not just warming? If you can't explain this, do you have a source that can?

If you link to a source, please quote the part you are linking to. better yet, just explain it. How do you know that? What is the signature that tells us it is the CO2 causing the warming? What is the source of your understanding? These are basic things, relevant to the topic. It's not a word game, that is dishonest of you. I am quite clear when I state something, as well as when I ask questions. It's the people that use a term, but refuse to define it, that are playing word games. If you don't know the answer, just say so.

Like the questions I just asked above. It's not hard to simply answer them, and explain why those claims are being made. Same for all the other "signatures" which are claimed to be clear signs of warming from CO2. Can you list them,, and explain why the theory predicts they will occur? The mechanism of the CO2 warming, how it is possible to tell it is occurring. These are not word games, they are scientific issues.

If you can't explain why, and the predictions made, it's not science. For the last year the responses have been either "there is no theory", or "we already explained it", or "the theory is something you made up", all kinds of evasions, rather than just explaining what you mean.

I say there is a theory, an AGW theory it can be explained, it has predictions, and explains the mechanisms of how it works, and how we can tell if it is happening.

If you disagree, say so. If you know the theory, explain it, or at least link to the source of your knowing. It's not hard.

If you don't know the predictions, it's OK to say you don't know. It's obvious that most don't know why warming is expected to be greatest in the NH boreal winters.

You are interested in playing semantic games to score imagined rhetorical points, not in learning nor serious discussion of the topic of this thread. I am not interested in playing such distracting and irrelevant games.

Start here with the American Institute of Physics sponsored :
"The Discovery of Global Warming"
and then we can discuss how understandings have expanded and grown post-discovery.

 

[Trakar]

BTW, for those who want to peek ahead at major issues since the Discovery of Global Warming, might want to look at Dr. Archer's more recent book, "The Long Thaw:
How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate"
There is a .pdf which provides a chapter-by-chapter overview.

opening pdf paragraph

Global warming could be one of humankind’s longest lasting
legacies. The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to
the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge. Longer than
time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age
of human civilization so far. Each ton of coal that we burn leaves
CO2 gas in the atmosphere. The CO2 coming from a quarter of
that ton will still be affecting the climate one thousand years
from now, at the start of the next millennium. And that is only
the beginning.​

 

[macdoc]

actually, it is 4 Hiroshima class (~10-12Kt) detonations per second
or ~ 320 million btu, or burning gasoline is currently 0.012% of AGW if your conversion approximations are correct.

likely dropped a couple of zeros there but did not think 2 of them .....hmmmm -
I await your refinement
1 billiion gal a day BTU.....fair bit of energy....ah think I go the seconds wrong 86400
insufficient coffee.

•••

Archer is very good. His articles are very accessible and punches the points home with passion and science.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It's actually a pretty handy measure, I have an outside thermometer that measures in Kelvin. I picked this up just so that when guests ask me why my temperature dial says it is 278 degrees? I can inform them that the Kelvin system isn't an arbitrary designation system and so doesn't use "degrees."

I'll give him that. I should have been clued by the 31-33 bit.

 

[Belz...]

So basically, AGW denial is "Mwa ha ha. I'm so much smarter than anyone else and know things you don't. Don't believe me ? Hah ! Sheep."

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So basically, AGW denial is "Mwa ha ha. I'm so much smarter than anyone else and know things you don't. Don't believe me ? Hah ! Sheep."

If that's what you get from skeptics' arguments, you have no reason to reconsider your views. On the other hand, a neutral observer who reads Climate Audit impartially and follows the links at Climate Depot to actual research that disputes the claims of the AGW faithful will find abundant reason to doubt the integrity of major players on the AGW side.
Consider the introduction of tribal partisanship by Macdoc in this conversation. Perhaps people do this reflexively (because it works), but I see in it a reason to suspect weakness in the AGW case.

 

[Corsair 115]

If that's what you get from skeptics' arguments, you have no reason to reconsider your views. On the other hand, a neutral observer who reads Climate Audit impartially and follows the links at Climate Depot to actual research that disputes the claims of the AGW faithful will find abundant reason to doubt the integrity of major players on the AGW side.

So which is it Malcolm:

Is the decades of peer-reviewed published research indicating the reality of AGW by scientists and climatologists around the world simply wrong, in which case, how did those scientists and climatologists get it wrong and how do they still get it wrong today?

Or is a worldwide conspiracy by scientists and climatologists to present false data, in which case for what purpose?

 

[macdoc]

ah the paid by fossil fuel company science sources.....geez Malcolm is that the best you have....no wonder the same companies are pulling their support,

You like to hobnob with the riffraff ClimateAudit

Stephen (Steve) George McIntyre
Credentials

PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics), Oxford University, (1971).
B.Sc., Mathematics, University of Toronto (1969).
Source: [1]

Background

Stephen McIntyre has been a long-time mining industry executive, mostly working on the "stock market side" of mining exploration deals. As of 2003, McIntyre had worked in the mineral business for 30 years and he has been an officer or director of small public mineral exploration companies for over 16 years. [1]

He left the mining company Noranda around 1988 to help found Timmins Nickel where he was still president as of 2007. By the early 1990s, Timmins Nickel had two mines and 120 employees. In 1991, the company acquired a stake in a project run by Dumont Nickel, a company for which McIntyre also served as president. Mcintyre then became president of Northwest Explorations which was taken over by CGX Energy in 1998. CGX Energy describes its "principal business activity" as "petroleum and natural gas exploration." [2], [3], [45], [24], [49], [50]

He then became president of Dumont Nickel, but left Dumont in 2002 to "pursue other interests." In 2003, CGX Energy's annual report listed McIntyre as a "Strategic Advisor," the same year he first published an article with climate change skeptic Ross McKitrick. [3], [4] Other companies McIntyre has been involved in include Vedron Gold Inc., Trelawney Mining and Exploration Inc., and DNI Metals Inc. [5] Northwest Exploration has also been engaged in oil and gas exploratoin. As of 2010, McIntyre says he missed out on a lucrative mining boom due to his climate blogging, and said he would be getting back into the mining sector. [6]

McIntyre has been described as a "persistent amateur who had no credentials in applied science before stepping into the global warming debate in 2003" and has been a prominent critic of temperature records that suggest increasing global temperatures over the past 1000 years. McIntyre is the founder of the blog ClimateAudit where he documents "statistical mistakes" in peer-reviewed scientific literature. [1], [6]

Climate Audit - Marc Morano is beneath contempt.....at least you've outed your foul sources...

Originally a producer for the Rush Limbaugh Show, Morano ascended (descended?) to the position of Communications Director for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Denial), where he helped his boss to abuse the power of the Senate hearings process to attack climate science and promote conspiracy theories. Inhofe and Morano were corrected and debunked endlessly, but facts have proven no obstacle to Morano's crusade against science confirming the role of fossil fuel pollution in driving global warming.

Morano has also worked for extreme right wing operatives Howard Phillips, Paul Weyrich and Brent Bozell. Morano once quipped to a group of Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists that, "Inhofe is as far left as I'll go for an employer."

Lots of conflict of interest, not shred of climate science background other than as a fossil fuel industry shills.

You got any climate science to discuss ?

 

[uke2se]

If that's what you get from skeptics' arguments (rest snipped)

We've been over this, Malcolm. You and the other deniers aren't skeptics. We are.

 

[lomiller]

I say there is a theory,

Stop saying thing that have already been show to be wrong.

an AGW theory it can be explained,

AGW isn't a theory it's a prediction arising form theory (e.g. conservation of energy)

it has predictions

AGW is the prediction. Demanding people make predictions from a prediction is intellectually dishonest to say the least.

and explains the mechanisms of how it works, and how we can tell if it is happening.

The mechanism that causes global warming has been well documented. Greenhouse gases allow visible light to enter the atmosphere but restrict IR from leaving. This causes heat to accumulate in the atmosphere and ocean

and how we can tell if it is happening.

We can tell it it's happening by measuring global temperatures. This has been done and the results agree with the prediction.


Instead of repeating your intellectually dishonest assertions over and over, try responding to the many responses you have already been given.

 

[CapelDodger]

BTW, for those who want to peek ahead at major issues since the Discovery of Global Warming, might want to look at Dr. Archer's more recent book, "The Long Thaw:
How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate"
There is a .pdf which provides a chapter-by-chapter overview.

If our culture survives into deep time, when another glaciation would be due, it'll be in humanity's power to prevent it if they so wish. This current experiment will provide all the data necessary to formulate a workable plan.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So which is it Malcolm: ...
Is the decades of peer-reviewed published research indicating the reality of AGW by scientists and climatologists around the world simply wrong, in which case, how did those scientists and climatologists get it wrong and how do they still get it wrong today?

Or is a worldwide conspiracy by scientists and climatologists to present false data, in which case for what purpose?

I have to guess, here. Large, complicated theories like AGW (hence computer models instead of back-of-the-envelope calculations) are vulnerable to sabotage by critical contributors. That's what Climategate involved: selective use of raw data (Siberian tree rings), adjustment of raw data, and manipulation of the peer review process. Hundreds of honest people working in their niche will trust experts in other niches to act with integrity. Plus, there are careers and carbon credits at stake.
Consider the contradictory insistence that it's "basic physics" and the denigration of Dyson, Lubos Motl, and Ivar Giaever as "not climate scientists". The perversion of the peer review process means that if someone who wants to pump his/her cv has an adverse finding (say atmospheric CO₂ lags temperature, or orbital mechanics explains temperature cycles), s/he will publish in a non-climate-science journal. Then people who want to manufacture a consensus can survey articles in journals that have already selected their authors for orthodoxy. Newsflash: 97% of Catholic priests believe in the divinity of Jesus. Duh.

 

[lomiller]

I have to guess, here. Large, complicated theories like AGW

There is nothing large or complicated about the mechanism behind greenhouse warming.

CO2 allows visible light into the atmosphere
CO2 absorbs IR that would leave the atmosphere
Allowing energy in but restricting IR from leaving causes an increase in temperature

are vulnerable to sabotage by critical contributors.

No high profile science is vulnerable to this. results receive too much scrutiny and are replicated by many people.

That's what Climategate involved:

No it didn't. Do your research.

Short version is that several websites engaged in a version of a denial of service attack. They attempted to stop the the ongoing research at the Hadley Climate Research Unit by encouraging their readers to flood them with so many freedom of information requests they would not have the manpower to do any more research.

These requests were eventually deemed vexatious by the relevant information officer and collection of the information ceased.

The Universities e-mail system was hacked and the information collected to that point was stolen and delivered to the same websites that sponsored the attack.

Redacted and out of context experts from these e-mails was released to the public by these web sites. The edits and experts were aimed at creating the impression of some form of conspiracy.

At least 6 separate investigations concluded this was just out of context spin and that there was no wrongdoing

selective use of raw data (Siberian tree rings), adjustment of raw data, and manipulation of the peer review process.

What is the basis for your allegations? Certainly all the "climategate" investigations rejected all such allegations and the peer review literature has replicated all the results multiple ways.

 

[Belz...]

If that's what you get from skeptics' arguments, you have no reason to reconsider your views.

First of all, that doesn't follow.

And second, make better arguments, then.

 

[Belz...]

On the other hand, a neutral observer who reads Climate Audit impartially and follows the links at Climate Depot to actual research that disputes the claims of the AGW faithful will find abundant reason to doubt the integrity of major players on the AGW side.

"Smart people agree with me" isn't a better argument than "Mwa ha ha. I'm so much smarter than anyone else and know things you don't. Don't believe me ? Hah ! Sheep."

 

[Reality Check]

I have to guess, here. Large, complicated theories like AGW (hence computer models instead of back-of-the-envelope calculations) are vulnerable to sabotage by critical contributors.

It certainly looks like you are guessing, Malcolm Kirkpatrick !

Large, complicated theories like the climate science that leads to AGW (which includes both back-of-the-envelope calculations and computer models) are evaluated by people who are experts in large complicated theories. They are basically impossible to be "sabotaged" because multiple teams of people do the analysis.

Climategate did not involve this mythical "sabotage by critical contributors".

Climategate was the valid and stated selective use of raw data (Siberian tree rings) because there is something wrong with the tree ring data from the last few decades. We know this because they do not agree with the more reliable instrumental temperature records. So climate scientists do what reasonable people would do - ignore the data and substitute it with better data !

What is your evidence that Climategate involved invalid adjustment of raw data, Malcolm Kirkpatrick ?
You may be ignorant of the fact that most scientific papers involve adjustment of raw data.

Climategate was not "manipulation" of the peer review process unless you mean the obvious - recommending that dubious papers be rejected.
What is your evidence that Climategate involved invalid "manipulation" of the peer review process, Malcolm Kirkpatrick ?

Newsflash: 97% of the people who know about climate science think that the evidence favors AGW!

 

[r-j]

I have to guess, here. Large, complicated theories like AGW (hence computer models instead of back-of-the-envelope calculations) are vulnerable to sabotage by critical contributors.

At least you use the term theory when talking about AGW! The theory of global warming, or global warming theory, or AGW, is technically called the "enhanced greenhouse effect". You will not find that on Wikipedia of course. Just like you won't find he theory of global warming, or global warming theory, or AGW, which tells us nothing about the science, but a lot about the authors of Wikipedia.

The enhanced greenhouse effect due to the burning of fossil fuels is what this is about

Of course it is, and it only took a year for somebody to finally say it. Now that wasn't hard, was it?

Call it agw, gwt, togw, or just global warming, it's a theory, and it both explains as well as predicts, which a good theory must. This balky horse nonsense about there not being a theory, or worse, that is is "just a fact" is pseudoscience at best, and perhaps a fraud at worst.

I can't blame the casual student of global warming, as the Wikipedia article for global warming theory somehow doesn't even include the word "enhanced", much less discuss the theory. The greenhouse effect article does give passing mention to the theory (while avoiding the word theory). In fact, the word theory doesn't appear in the article at all.

Strengthening of the greenhouse effect through human activities is known as the enhanced (or anthropogenic) greenhouse effect.[23] This increase in radiative forcing from human activity is attributable mainly to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.[24]

 

[Iamme]

We've been over this, Malcolm. You and the other deniers aren't skeptics. We are.

As far as THAT goes, there probably are skeptics, who are skeptical of what skeptics say.