Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[CapelDodger]

Originally Posted by ArmoredDragon
Now the water is a concern. I'm not quite sure how fresh water spread through the supercontinent millions of years ago, especially given how far inward the water had to travel. But, it seems to have done so anyways.

It didn't. The centres of supercontinents are desert, just as the centre of Australia is today and for the same reason - by the time air gets from the ocean to the continental centre it is very dry, having already dropped its moisture.

Why this matters I don't know, given that the next supercontinent is a very long time away, but there it is.

 

[batvette]

A book written by two journalists, one presumably ghosting the popular style and the other a science journalist, famous (well, in certain circles) for a controversy in the field of anthropology. I can certainly see how anthropology, as a science, is on the soft side, but don't see how the same can be said of the physical sciences - which are as hard as they come.

Just as an observation here, this book provides an all-purpose get-out for anyone who wants to reject scientific findings they don't like. There have been (short-lived) frauds in the physical sciences and this could be one of them. Nothing can be trusted, not even independent replication. The people involved may have been attracted to science by their ideologies, which are not those of this hypothetical person affronted by their results.

Given that, this book is not strong support for anything, is it? Anyone leaning on it could easily be one of those lazy hypotheticals avoiding the tedious business of understanding the science and research of the particular case. In this case, climate science, oceanography, glaciology, fluid dynamics and geology (in the main).

Going back to when the games began, you stated :


Here you are unequivocal : the science is perverted inherently.

So far in support you have offered that scientists might be attracted to a field of study by their ideologies, but have not shown that this has actually happened in climate science - or oceanography, or glaciology or any other related field. Not much of an elaboration there.

You have also offered a book by two journalists on the existence of fraud in science, which has certainly occurred and has often hit the mainstream news when scientists discover and reveal it. Especially when it's in medicine - fraud at the LHC is a lot harder to perpetrate than one man in his lab with no-one but rats to keep an eye on him. You haven't offered any reason to think fraud has happened in climate science.

As an elaborator you're falling pretty short, I have to say.

Now to the "inherently". What is inherently perverting about atmospheric physics or oceanography or palaeoclimatology or meteorology? Was Arrhenius's work perverted? Or Hadley's, he of Hadley Cell fame? Tyndall's? Callendar's? FitzRoy's? I really don't get this at all.

Kindly elaborate, at least on the "inherently" point. What inherently perverts the study of how the climate works? Frankly, I find the idea utterly bizarre.

At risk of beating a point to death, climate reasearch before any concept of Global Warming became known to the public, was an obscure field of little significance to anyone, nobody cared what the temperatures were two hundred or a thousand years ago nor would any organizations or governments have any cause to finance research.
When it becomes Climate Change Research, the people who enter the field have personal motivation to do so because they already feel man is harming the planet. They don't get steered into the major in college on a whim or because they needed to fill a class spot for credits. Said individuals often assume environmentalism with near religious passion and wouldn't think they were doing anything wrong at all by compromising research. They are on a noble cause.
You could argue that so are people who want to seek a cure for cancer, but here's the rub there. There is no disputing cancer exists. Curing one form of cancer leaves many more left to cure. Conversely some time ago there was considerable controversy about Global Warming. I find it highly unlikely that 15 years ago, anyone who did not believe man was harming the planet and warming the earth, would have entered the field of Climate Change Research. Why would anyone make their life's work something they don't believe in? Do atheists enter the seminary to become priests?
So this results in a situation today where everyone doing the research was already a believer before they even began the research. Why else would they be in the field? As opposed to people seeking a cure for cancer, that is an entirely different and objective field.
Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.
Then you have the simple equation of money.
If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.

All of these fall into the most fundamental of human faults- the influence of power, fame, money upon people. The ideologies of people-be it religion or a passion to reverse the damage they believe humans have done- causing them to compromise other principles because the ends justify the means.

And on that you have to understand that I am NOT a denier and the earth may be warming- but I think the larger problem here is all the people promoting the science have this "sit down and shut up, we know what we are doing" attitude but it's obvious from the current trends of global GGE that they don't.

You'll defend the science as perfect but I don't think it is.

You'll insist the policy will work but so far it hasn't.

And in fact there is good rationale to correlate the policy to increased warming IF that's the case.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Edited for moderated thread.

Is there really the luxury of allowing the third world's per capita emissions to reach that of the US before measures that will stabilize GLOBAL GGE are implemented?

Of course there isn't, that's absurd. And in fact it doesn't take a degree in economics to figure that if such an equalization were taking place, corporations and profiteers would exploit it and accelerate the warming by accelerating the industrialization of the rest of the world.

And this is the UN's primary mission. You've given them the reins of global warming policy now too. Don't be surprised it turns out to be a disaster.

 

[CapelDodger]

So why individuals be impoverished via government theft to cut down on CO2 emissions?

I'm thinking you have an antipathy to government per se: would I be right in that?

Why should individuals be impoverished by rising fuel-prices just so rich people can get richer? And, what place does either question have on a Science Forum?

Especially since CO2 is necessary for life and has no apparent connection to weather????

Climate is not weather. Climate defines the bounds within which weather varies, and CO₂ has a strong influence on that because of the greenhouse effect.

CO₂ is indeed vital to life but life got along perfectly well at pre-industrial concentrations so this is a red-herring.

"-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461

Climate is more than the surface-temperatures, which have risen over the last fifteen years but not as significantly as the oceans have warmed. Oceans are the determining element of climate when the Earth's energy budget is stable and neutral (which it isn't at the moment, of course, due to CO₂ emissions) and the recent cluster of La Nina's have pushed a lot of heat in there from the surface. Eventually there will be an El Nino which will bring much of the heat back, at which point you'll become aware that relying on such a short span of time when making judgements is inadvisable.

Surface temperatures vary considerably year-on-year due to the relatively low heat-capacity of the atmosphere. The variations are much greater than the year-to-year climate variation due to AGW, so the latter can easily be masked for a decade or even two (Latif et al covered this some years ago), but it still goes on and it is inexorable. This shows up in the way that each decade since the 80's has been warmer than the decade before.

The signficance of surface temperature and its relatively slow increase in the 2000's is being exaggerated by people who do not have your best interests in mind. I think you should keep that in mind. The Economist just doesn't know better - it's not, as in institution, exactly crammed with scientists. That said, they also have http://www.economist.com/news/leade...e-slowly-scientists-thought-world-still-needs, which is more thoughtful.

 

[macdoc]

and definitely not the oceans.

nor glacial mass loss

 

[macdoc]

Perhaps our scientifically literate deniers have an explanation for this

They seem to forget the atmosphere is a small part of the geosphere and transient.

 

[DC]

At risk of beating a point to death, climate reasearch before any concept of Global Warming became known to the public, was an obscure field of little significance to anyone, nobody cared what the temperatures were two hundred or a thousand years ago nor would any organizations or governments have any cause to finance research.
When it becomes Climate Change Research, the people who enter the field have personal motivation to do so because they already feel man is harming the planet. They don't get steered into the major in college on a whim or because they needed to fill a class spot for credits. Said individuals often assume environmentalism with near religious passion and wouldn't think they were doing anything wrong at all by compromising research. They are on a noble cause.
You could argue that so are people who want to seek a cure for cancer, but here's the rub there. There is no disputing cancer exists. Curing one form of cancer leaves many more left to cure. Conversely some time ago there was considerable controversy about Global Warming. I find it highly unlikely that 15 years ago, anyone who did not believe man was harming the planet and warming the earth, would have entered the field of Climate Change Research. Why would anyone make their life's work something they don't believe in? Do atheists enter the seminary to become priests?
So this results in a situation today where everyone doing the research was already a believer before they even began the research. Why else would they be in the field? As opposed to people seeking a cure for cancer, that is an entirely different and objective field.
Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.
Then you have the simple equation of money.
If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.

All of these fall into the most fundamental of human faults- the influence of power, fame, money upon people. The ideologies of people-be it religion or a passion to reverse the damage they believe humans have done- causing them to compromise other principles because the ends justify the means.

And on that you have to understand that I am NOT a denier and the earth may be warming- but I think the larger problem here is all the people promoting the science have this "sit down and shut up, we know what we are doing" attitude but it's obvious from the current trends of global GGE that they don't.

You'll defend the science as perfect but I don't think it is.

You'll insist the policy will work but so far it hasn't.

And in fact there is good rationale to correlate the policy to increased warming IF that's the case.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Edited for moderated thread.

Is there really the luxury of allowing the third world's per capita emissions to reach that of the US before measures that will stabilize GLOBAL GGE are implemented?

Of course there isn't, that's absurd. And in fact it doesn't take a degree in economics to figure that if such an equalization were taking place, corporations and profiteers would exploit it and accelerate the warming by accelerating the industrialization of the rest of the world.

And this is the UN's primary mission. You've given them the reins of global warming policy now too. Don't be surprised it turns out to be a disaster.

and yet you fail to provide any evidence for your claims.
Did Guy Stewart Callendar enter science becuae he was some hippy treehugger?

also there are poeple disputing HIV/AIDS. are Aids researchers only in the field for a noble cause and fake the data so it looks as if AIDS is a real thing? Also there is much dispute about Cancer. all those wonder healers and other charlatans that claim cancer is cured with this or that food etc etc. much dispute.

And Paleoclimatology was already intersting before we discoreverd AGW, we wanted to know more about glaciation and deglaciation. just one example.

and then there is the huge amoung of evidence that has been provided by scientists from all over the world, showing that AGW is indeed a really real thing and we need to solve the problem.

are you suggesting just because you have some paranoid ideas about a field of science you have not the slightest idea about, we should stopp solving the biggest problem humanity ever faced?

Scientists from around the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, from all kind of political systems from all kinds of different ideological backgrouds, have provided a huge amount of convincing evidence , they managed to convinced the vast majority of scientists in the involved fields. and they managed to convince the majority of the world population.

you on the other hand have provided nothing else than your vague specualtion. you talk about a huge conspiracy invloving 10 000's of scientists from all over the world from many different fields of science.

AGW theory is also supported by basic physics. and it took them several decades to be sure enough about it to go to the public and warn them and start working on solutions.

considering the evidence scientists provided, you will need a bit more than vague specualtion to convince the people.

 

[uke2se]

Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.

Evidence?

Then you have the simple equation of money.

Conspiracy Theory.

If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.

Climate science isn't a particularly well founded field of research as it is. Research in the field will be needed until such a time as there is no more to be learned, AGW or no AGW. Thus does your whole premise fail.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I'll bump these very interesting questions!

Though those questions are aimed to those "challenging" AGW, I don't think any of them is going to reply. Like the joke "-If you see an angry bear, pretend to be dead - Are you sure? Pretend to be dead? I won't be pretending for long!", a challenger that can answer those and other similar questions won't remain a challenger for long.

But questions #1 and #4, and up to a point, #3, are intended to sound out how much sceptical are both sides of the debate.

The endless "debate" is driven almost exclusively by:

• the selection of subsets of data or subsets of elements that govern the natural world. For example, a denialist selects from a group of 100 pairs of temperatures those 10 that show cooling, then he declares a cooling trend. A knowledgeable person selects 10 of those 100 temperatures by valid sampling and determines hints of a warming process. The knowledgeable person declares the process made by the denialist to be utterly wrong -and wrong it is- and considers the debate ended. The denialist says that those 10 pairs selected by the other person are as arbitrary or not like his 10 pairs, so the discussion can go on.
• problems of paternity related to statistics. Everything related to statistics works like a rubber sheet that stretches and shrinks according to the needs of the denialist.
• problems of error margin and natural variability, another rubber blanket that stretches and shrinks to cover from denialists claiming every instrumental measure is tainted, to the knowledgeable who hides within the error margins what he doesn't know, or even his own lack of diligence to question and find out what's behind. Mi question #1 points to that.
• general innumeracy: a person who doesn't make his own calculations, either because he can't or he doesn't see the point in doing so, should remain in a more passive role in every discussion related to global warming.

 

[CapelDodger]

In light of the claim that studying the climate is "inherently corrupting", this seems timely:

The History of Climate Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html

I realise that some people regard looking at anything on SkS is inherently corrupting but there it is. That's what has to be explained as "inherently corrupted". I can hardly wait (but suspect I may have to for some time yet).

 

[Reality Check]

Because it's not conspiracy theory to point out that the human factor involved in Science can make its conclusions imperfect.
...snipped irrelevant political stuff....

No one (expect you, batvette !) is saying this.
The fact is that the conclusions about AGW are "imperfect" and that anyone who knows anything about science expects them to be imperfect (like all conclusions in science ).

What we can state about the climate is that the science shows that it is certain that global temperatures are rising and that it is better than 90% certain that the current warming is caused by human beings.
Climate change deniers have not been able to refute the actual science. Thus they concentrate on non-science topics and it is this that leads to their conspiracy theory fantasies. The conclusion is that someone who denies climate change or cites deniers is tainted with conspiracy theory.

I have not noticed an explicit statement of your stance, batvette, but your description of posters as "sycophants", etc. and concentration on the politics in a science forum suggests that you are a denier. Most posters here are climate science supporters, i.e. they know enough science to support the scientific consensus on AGW.

 

[Reality Check]

So why individuals be impoverished via government theft to cut down on CO2 emissions? Especially since CO2 is necessary for life and has no apparent connection to weather????

Hi Robert Prey - a few instances of climate denier myths in your post so here is some educational links containing the actual economics and science.
Individuals are not "impoverished".
The economic impacts of carbon pricing

Economic assessments of proposed policy to put a price on carbon emissions are in widespread agreement that the net economic impact will be minor. The costs over the next several decades center around $100 per average family, or about 75 cents per person per week, and a GDP reduction of less than 1%. Moreover, the benefits outweigh the costs several times over, as real-world examples illustrate

Can you afford 75 cents per week, Robert Prey?

CO2 is necessary for life - so what ? So is O2. H2O, etc.
CO2 is plant food

The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors

More general effects of GW: Positives and negatives of global warming

The consequences of climate change become increasingly bad after each additional degree of warming, with the consequences of 2°C being quite damaging and the consequences of 4°C being potentially catastrophic.

That CO2 has no apparent connection to weather is totally wrong.
We have known the actual connection of CO2 to climate and weather for almost a century now. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a strong driver of the temperature of the Earth. A climate that is warmer provides more energy for weather events. Thus weather becomes more extreme.
Global warming
And a good article about recent papers on the effect of AGW on weather extremes (heat waves): Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood

I hope you read these so that you can understand more about the global warming issue.

 

[Robert Prey]

I'm thinking you have an antipathy to government per se: would I be right in that?

Why should individuals be impoverished by rising fuel-prices just so rich people can get richer? And, what place does either question have on a Science Forum?

People are impoverished by high fuel prices not because the rich get richer, but so that politicians can continue to get their campaign bribes from eco-extemist organizations, plus the government greed for high taxes at the pump. People who produce gasoline deserve to get rich, not those who want to impeded its production.

 

[Dancing David]

Climate CHANGE research seeks only to prove the climate is changing, and has only been funded because of scare tactics.

See your false dichotomy, there is no field of climate change research. It is climate research and if the climate changes, then it changes. If the climate doesn't change then it doesn't.

My sister researchers the carbon cycle of plant material degradation in Oregon forests and the way that the carbon cycle works to transform wood into soil. In the frost she studies happens to be in decline that does not mean that she is studying the decline of forests. She studies the system as a whole and then one specific aspect. But they do have to measure and estimate the biomass of the transept target area. So if the forest is in decline it will show in the broad feet estimates and the biomass estimates.

That does not means he studies forest decline.

 

[Dancing David]

They could be criticised for down-playing some aspects! For instance sea-level rise. AR4 deliberately ignored Greenland melt-water because there was insufficeint substantiated evidence at the time of writing. Rather than make a guesstimate, they just ignored it then. Everybody has been caught out by the pace of arctic ice-loss]

Well in 1990 they had a lot to research, my point is that the science is rather dull and boring.


But everybody missed the arctic melt.

 

[jimbob]

At risk of beating a point to death, climate reasearch before any concept of Global Warming became known to the public, was an obscure field of little significance to anyone, nobody cared what the temperatures were two hundred or a thousand years ago nor would any organizations or governments have any cause to finance research.
When it becomes Climate Change Research, the people who enter the field have personal motivation to do so because they already feel man is harming the planet. They don't get steered into the major in college on a whim or because they needed to fill a class spot for credits. Said individuals often assume environmentalism with near religious passion and wouldn't think they were doing anything wrong at all by compromising research. They are on a noble cause.
You could argue that so are people who want to seek a cure for cancer, but here's the rub there. There is no disputing cancer exists. Curing one form of cancer leaves many more left to cure. Conversely some time ago there was considerable controversy about Global Warming. I find it highly unlikely that 15 years ago, anyone who did not believe man was harming the planet and warming the earth, would have entered the field of Climate Change Research. Why would anyone make their life's work something they don't believe in? Do atheists enter the seminary to become priests?
So this results in a situation today where everyone doing the research was already a believer before they even began the research. Why else would they be in the field? As opposed to people seeking a cure for cancer, that is an entirely different and objective field.
Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.
Then you have the simple equation of money.
If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.

All of these fall into the most fundamental of human faults- the influence of power, fame, money upon people. The ideologies of people-be it religion or a passion to reverse the damage they believe humans have done- causing them to compromise other principles because the ends justify the means.

And on that you have to understand that I am NOT a denier and the earth may be warming- but I think the larger problem here is all the people promoting the science have this "sit down and shut up, we know what we are doing" attitude but it's obvious from the current trends of global GGE that they don't.

You'll defend the science as perfect but I don't think it is.

You'll insist the policy will work but so far it hasn't.

And in fact there is good rationale to correlate the policy to increased warming IF that's the case.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Edited for moderated thread.

Is there really the luxury of allowing the third world's per capita emissions to reach that of the US before measures that will stabilize GLOBAL GGE are implemented?

Of course there isn't, that's absurd. And in fact it doesn't take a degree in economics to figure that if such an equalization were taking place, corporations and profiteers would exploit it and accelerate the warming by accelerating the industrialization of the rest of the world.

And this is the UN's primary mission. You've given them the reins of global warming policy now too. Don't be surprised it turns out to be a disaster.

Hidden for brevity.

Batvette, anyone with an aptitude for atmospheric physics and climate science will have an aptitude and indeed appropriate first-degree level qualifications that would make them very attractive to a wide range of lucrative employers - historically financial institutions and actuarial work spring to mind, as well as the more obvious high-tech industries.

Climate science became a large field of study when the problem was discovered, but highly employable people don't need a conspiracy to supply jobs. You might say that the work wouldn't be as interesting or satisfying - however this doesn't tie with the the idea that they are fooling themselves or trying to fool everyone else.

The science is decided, there are a few eccentrics on the fringes who say otherwise, but even the large oil companies officially accept the science now. David Bellamy was mentioned upthread - my recollection of the 1990s was that he is a botanist of some repute (he was a regular visitor to formal evenings at my college then) and that he was against windfarms because of the damage to habitat - which seemed to evolved into a downplaying of the threat of global warming.


As to letting everyone reach the US per capita levels of carbon emissions. That is also a silly idea.

China* and especially India would have no chance of selling low-carbon development to their populations if the richer countries are not seen to be doing their bit as well. Being richer - we can afford it more in the first place.

*Rulers of all stripes usually try to keep their populations happy, or at least prevent them from being so unhappy that unrest flares up. You don't add a source of grievances if you can avoid it - unless you are trying to rule completely by fear, which tends to harm revenue.

 

[Reality Check]

Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.

You are quite right, batvette:
Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove that Climate Change exists .

This is also right, batvette:
If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.
Except that the field remains quite prominent and significant because we now know that climate and how it changes is important to the lives of millions of people.
And the point is, batvette?

You seem to be implying that climate scientists have come to a consensus that AGW exists in order to get funding and be famous. That is wrong on a couple of points. If a climate scientist wanted to get funding then they would go to the highest bidder - the oil companies. There are only a few famous climate scientists. The majority are toiling away at the coal face of climate research with "fame" only in their chosen field of expertise.

 

[CapelDodger]

At risk of beating a point to death, climate reasearch before any concept of Global Warming became known to the public, was an obscure field of little significance to anyone, nobody cared what the temperatures were two hundred or a thousand years ago nor would any organizations or governments have any cause to finance research.

Research was funded. It was that research which led to initial concerns that significant climate change could occur as early as the mid-21stCE.

When it becomes Climate Change Research, the people who enter the field have personal motivation to do so because they already feel man is harming the planet.

That's a ridiculous statement. People enter the field for all kinds of motivations - one of which being that climate change is going to be big feature in the world throughout their careers. That should guarantee them work and finance their SUV's and rug-sized TV's. To pigeon-hole everybody who enters a field which overlaps with oceanography, glaciology, geology and planetary physics as some sort of greenie-hippie carrying a chip is frankly ludicrous.

They don't get steered into the major in college on a whim or because they needed to fill a class spot for credits. Said individuals often assume environmentalism with near religious passion and wouldn't think they were doing anything wrong at all by compromising research. They are on a noble cause.

What evidence do you have for these slurs?

You could argue that so are people who want to seek a cure for cancer, but here's the rub there. There is no disputing cancer exists.

There's no disputing the climate exists.

Curing one form of cancer leaves many more left to cure. Conversely some time ago there was considerable controversy about Global Warming. I find it highly unlikely that 15 years ago, anyone who did not believe man was harming the planet and warming the earth, would have entered the field of Climate Change Research. Why would anyone make their life's work something they don't believe in? Do atheists enter the seminary to become priests?

Why would anyone bent on a career in science have doubted fifteen years ago that AGW was going to emerge in the near future? The physics is conclusive. The "controversy" was ideologically driven, not scientific. Unlike your imaginary greenie-hippies with no integrity the likes of Singer, Lindzen, Spencer and Christy have made no bones about their ideological motivations. As Spencer said in Australia (where he was engaged in a political propaganda campaign against carbon-pricing), "As a scientist my job is to limit government". Christy doesn't believe his god would allow AGW, so it's his job to disprove all the proper science.

It surely hasn't missed your notice that AGW has happened. It's here, in the early 21stCE. Earlier than was regarded as "alarmist" fifteen years ago.

So this results in a situation today where everyone doing the research was already a believer before they even began the research. Why else would they be in the field? As opposed to people seeking a cure for cancer, that is an entirely different and objective field.

So your whole argument is that everyone who got involved since Thatcher brought the AGW issue onto the world stage is ideologically motivated and is faking data. Meanwhile you argue that there's no conspiracy and yet all this faked data ends up matching. Weird, huh? Almost as if all the data was being read off the same reality.

Nobody in Climate Change Research got into the field to disprove a need for their own life's work.

Then you have the simple equation of money.
If the consensus on Climate Change reverses, the funding dries up, the field again becomes obscure and significant. Instead of having a voice which speaks and people listen, nobody pays attention to them.

If AGW reverses then we'll all breath a sigh of relief but physics dictates that it won't. Climate research is a job for life, just as IT was when I chose to study that in the 70's. Reality is not being made up. All the national science institutions in the world are not being led astray by a massive but unco-ordinated global fraud perpetrated by junior scientists. Your world is a fantasy nightmare, nothing to do with the actual one.

ll of these fall into the most fundamental of human faults- the influence of power, fame, money upon people.

Yes, let's talk about Watts, McIntyre, Monckton, Curry, Lindzen, Muller, Bellamy and all the rest of the media-whores who constitute one side of the "controversy". On the side of science we have people like Mann who has been so hysterically promoted by the aforementioned media-whores to a state of unsought prominence. And court action. And threats of imprisonment, impeachment, stripping of his scientific licence and who knows what all else by people with as garbled a world-view as yours.

The ideologies of people-be it religion or a passion to reverse the damage they believe humans have done- causing them to compromise other principles because the ends justify the means.

What evidence do you have for these slurs?

And on that you have to understand that I am NOT a denier and the earth may be warming- but I think the larger problem here is all the people promoting the science have this "sit down and shut up, we know what we are doing" attitude but it's obvious from the current trends of global GGE that they don't.

You don't know what a trend is, clearly. Lots of people think they do, but lots of people think all kinds of nonsense. Nonody's being told to shut up (apart from Canadian scientists), and in fact anyone is welcome to produce valid climate science. They can put it on the internet themselves - there are plenty of well-funded blogs that will carry it.

There just isn't any. AGW is real and it is happening.

You'll defend the science as perfect but I don't think it is.

Don't try to predict what a normal mind will do. Of course the science isn't perfect but when it's being done by thousands of people all over the world it's not going to be fraudulent.

You'll insist the policy will work but so far it hasn't.

See above. No normal person thinks there even is a "policy", let alone that it has worked in any way.

And in fact there is good rationale to correlate the policy to increased warming IF that's the case.

The actuality has been the continued use of fossil-fuels in amounts that make significant AGW absolutely certain. There never has been a policy, apart from the policy of commissioning reports at ever increasing intervals. There never could have been. China and India weren't going to surrender the fossil-fueled rout to development for anything they could be offered, and no treaty was going to be ratified by the US Senate. They won't even ratify the Law of the Seas. NATO was only ratified because senators were told it stood for New American Territories Overseas.

There is no policy, never was, and ain't ever gonna be.

Is there really the luxury of allowing the third world's per capita emissions to reach that of the US before measures that will stabilize GLOBAL GGE are implemented?

If the third world's per capita emissions matched the US they woudn't be third world. They'd be first world, like the US now. What the US will be by then is anybody's guess.

Of course there isn't, that's absurd. And in fact it doesn't take a degree in economics to figure that if such an equalization were taking place, corporations and profiteers would exploit it and accelerate the warming by accelerating the industrialization of the rest of the world.

And this is the UN's primary mission. You've given them the reins of global warming policy now too. Don't be surprised it turns out to be a disaster.

The UN doesn't have the reins of anything. It is utterly powerless. The UN's mission, its absolute foundation, is to stop war. That's what it was created to do. Not much progress yet.

It provides the only global institution we've got, which means many matters have been brought under its aegis. Where climate policy is concerned it organises the forum, that is all. The sovereign nations of the world hold the reins of their individual policies vis a vis AGW and energy policy.

Dismiss the UN as some powerful beast with a secret agenda. I know the image is popular in some circles (the sort that think the UN once banned DDT) but it's patent nonsense.

 

[batvette]

You can't irrigate the Midwest of the US to keep growing grain, or in the Ukraine.

Don't be so sure. I've long wondered, if we can build a national highway system, why not a national aqueduct or pipeline system?

Remember a few years ago when North Dakota had its main rivers at 25 feet above flood stage? Virtually the same time Georgia was being baked in an epic drought.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

The subject comes up when it's necessary, it always seems to be forgotten by the first big rainfall.

I don't think a warmer planet means less ability for good agriculture... in fact it's probably the opposite.

Less gloom and doom and more stoic searching for solutions to the inevitable is probably helpful.

 

[greybeard]

Don't be so sure. I've long wondered, if we can build a national highway system, why not a national aqueduct or pipeline system?

Remember a few years ago when North Dakota had its main rivers at 25 feet above flood stage? Virtually the same time Georgia was being baked in an epic drought.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

The subject comes up when it's necessary, it always seems to be forgotten by the first big rainfall.

I don't think a warmer planet means less ability for good agriculture... in fact it's probably the opposite.

Less gloom and doom and more stoic searching for solutions to the inevitable is probably helpful.

So how will they finance the building of this pipeline system? Through taxation I'm guessing. So you are happy for a socialist solution as long as it's your socialist solution. What if you build a pipeline between place A and place B and both are hit by a drought? Or does global warming mean that one location is going to be constantly flooded and the other is constantly in drought?

 

[Dancing David]

Let's see, I posted evidence of a US Senate inquiry into an attempt to marginalize dissent about climate change.

And the US Senate is dominated by politics, not science....