How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[mhaze]

The "nest" is hardly large or deep. I asked simple question. You eventually responded by calling me a liar. Perhaps you thought you were replying to another post, but either way, you have had several opportunities to either admit your mistake or apologise.

For the nth time, right here

Trueskeptic: So there is a CO2 "greenhouse" effect? Care to tell us just how weak it is? Got some figures? I've repeatedly asked you to explain your apparent change of mind about CO2 and you have ignored those requests. Why is that?

Mhaze:
Maybe because it looked like you made all that up? There's been no change in my opinion. You looked one factoid up, go look up some more. I'm sure you can figure it out...

You looked one factoid up, go back and look some more up. You got it wrong and went off categorizing people on unproven presumptions. You goofed. Nothing about you being a liar here.

Maybe because you have some weird "strawman of contrarians" concept and you try to fit bunches of odd sided and shaped groups of opinions into that little box? Which I find not interesting?

Nothing about you being a liar here.

Have you found any of these creatures you call "contrarians" on JREF who claim there is no CO2 greenhouse effect? If so, whom?

Nothing about you being a liar here.

 

[CapelDodger]

Wow.

A bunch of talk about a number that I remember seeing.

Not much of it from you. And 2074 isn't a number, it's a date.

Wow again. HelllllOooOOOoOO??????????? You heard of Google? Check it out yourself.

I responded to your post, and what was in it. I was talking to you, not Google.

By not answering a reasonable question does all this come out.

As far I can see, you brought it up entirely by yourself.

But is anyone actually going to look into finite fossil fuels? Apparently that's not part of the equation.

What equation? Is it the one behind the "calculation"? Nothing is apparent in this case except what you said about it. Which made no great sense.

Certainly it is part of the equation of not learning, in the presence of these rather amazing tools we have.

Such as memory. You know, remembering where you got something, stuff like that.

Wow.

I guess the world has a big wow-factor for you. I'm far more jaded.

 

[CapelDodger]

I was just being needlessly cynical.

There is always a need for cynicism. My life-/business-plan has been founded on that principle. So far, so good.

I'm sure the next 373 posts in this thread will be much more civil than the last 373.

I take pride in my civility.

Please forgive my momentary lapse.

For my part, forgiven; I find it harder to forgive my own.

 

[neltana]

There is always a need for cynicism. My life-/business-plan has been founded on that principle. So far, so good.


I take pride in my civility.

Somehow, cynicism and civility seem at odds to me...at least using their classic definitions. But I'm sure you've got a model that works for you.

I've based my life-/business plan on disorganization and procrastination. At least, I imagine I will when I get around to making one.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Trueskeptic: So there is a CO2 "greenhouse" effect? Care to tell us just how weak it is? Got some figures? I've repeatedly asked you to explain your apparent change of mind about CO2 and you have ignored those requests. Why is that?

Mhaze:
Maybe because it looked like you made all that up? There's been no change in my opinion. You looked one factoid up, go look up some more. I'm sure you can figure it out...

I directly quoted you and you suggested that I had made it all up, IOW you accused me of being dishonest.

Yet again, the following is completely irrelevant! Stop repeating it.

You looked one factoid up, go back and look some more up. You got it wrong and went off categorizing people on unproven presumptions. You goofed. Nothing about you being a liar here.

Maybe because you have some weird "strawman of contrarians" concept and you try to fit bunches of odd sided and shaped groups of opinions into that little box? Which I find not interesting?

Nothing about you being a liar here.

Have you found any of these creatures you call "contrarians" on JREF who claim there is no CO2 greenhouse effect? If so, whom?

Nothing about you being a liar here.

 

[Tokenconservative]

But what do the ice cores from last week tell us?

And the CO2 count?

And what about that .000002 centimeter "rise" in ocean depth I read about....?


These are the important things, we need to argue more about them.











To avoid the real issue.

Tokie

 

[mhaze]

I directly quoted you and you suggested that I had made it all up, IOW you accused me of being dishonest.

Yet again, the following is completely irrelevant! Stop repeating it.

No, this all revolves around your misunderstanding of my opinions. And it was your misunderstanding.

How you got to that misunderstanding is debatable, but my saying you made it up is not equivalent to saying you were lying. "Made it up" means your mind filled in the gaps (gaps only due to insufficent or sloppy research on your part) with structure that fit your pre existing bias and belief set that humans get pigeonholed quite nicely into "contrarian" frameworks.

Now you insist I stop repeating the section in question because it is completely irrelevant? Well, fine. Isn't it me that's been saying let's move on?

 

[volatile]

But what do the ice cores from last week tell us?

And the CO2 count?

And what about that .000002 centimeter "rise" in ocean depth I read about....?


These are the important things, we need to argue more about them.

To avoid the real issue.

Tokie

Do you think actually studying the climate to find out, in detail, how it has, is and will behave is "avoid[ing] the real issue"?

It seems you'd rather listen to ideologues than scientists, rhetoric than facts, stupidity than sagacity. Why?

In fact, I asked you this before. If we shouldn't listen to climate scientists on the topic of climate science, who should we listen to?

 

[CapelDodger]

Do you think actually studying the climate to find out, in detail, how it has, is and will behave is "avoid[ing] the real issue"?

It seems you'd rather listen to ideologues than scientists, rhetoric than facts, stupidity than sagacity. Why?

In fact, I asked you this before. If we shouldn't listen to climate scientists on the topic of climate science, who should we listen to?

The aspiring GW Sceptic must distnce themselves from mainstream climate science, but they can still turn to a select few - Lindzen, for instance - to give them what they want. Science is of no real help to the GW Sceptic. Rhetoric, conspiracies, appeals to incredulity, Al Gore - those are all good. Science has to be handled very carefully (and GW Sceptics never seem to handle it it carefully enough).

 

[CapelDodger]

Yet again, the following is completely irrelevant! Stop repeating it.

Yeah, right, let us know how that works out for you .

You should have seen mhaze's performance when he was trying to deny that Pat Michaels lied to Congress in 1998. Page after page of evasion and waffle.

Go there at your own risk. You have been warned .

A GW Sceptic can believe that the greenhouse effect is unproven, and that it's been proven to be a weak effect, at the same time. They can believe that warming hasn't happened and that it's been caused by various other things at the same time. A GW Sceptic does not need a coherent body of science and observations, nor do they need to make falsifiable predictions. Anything that happens can be explained post facto, even while questioning that it happened at all. It's an infinitely malleable (aka vapourous) position. The only fixed point is that AGW isn't a real problem.

 

[Hindmost]

It does seem that there is not going to be an end to this debate even if the polar caps melt.

The short term consequences of warming are going to be difficult to distinguish as to whether they are AGW or just GW. Each side will short term.

Global climate models are going to miss as many predictions as they hit most likely. Such things will provide ample fodder for natural GWists. AGWists will refine their models and have to explain their error or unforseeable omissions. Experience indicates that such adjustments get lost in the translation.

If the Gulf stream stopped circulating and really changed the weather in Europe...would that convince even the most skeptical?

If the Northern polar ice cap melts completely in the next 10 years which side would claim victory?

If we had 10 years of cooler temperatures that included glacier growth and polar ice cap growth, would that turn you away from AGW?

If volcanic activity became overly prevalent, could climate models calculate the effect? If it caused significant cooling...well that could just be a mess for the scientists to argue about.

In investigating the snowball earth issues of the past. Volcanic CO2 is generally credited as pulling the earth out of the frozen slumber. Snowball earth is still controversial, but the if CO2 can actually melt a planet full of snow, then it could cause global warming. This tipped the scale for me.

Either way, we are going to find out--but we should all have a tipping point.

glenn

 

[CapelDodger]

It does seem that there is not going to be an end to this debate even if the polar caps melt.

I'm not so sure about that. It already seems to be dying. I won't write off every hold-out, but they die off in time.

If the Northern polar ice cap melts completely in the next 10 years which side would claim victory?

What would the recalcitrant GW Sceptic's excuse be? I don't know, but I'm sure there'll be one. I don't see them surviving for twenty years except as a quaint anachronism.

If we had 10 years of cooler temperatures that included glacier growth and polar ice cap growth, would that turn you away from AGW?

Absolutely. It would demonstrate that there's something seriously wrong with the theory behind AGW. Absent major vulcanism or asteroid strike, of course, in which case all bets are off.

If volcanic activity became overly prevalent, could climate models calculate the effect?

They modelled the Pinatubo eruption before the event. Which is to say, the models weren't "trained" to it.

If it caused significant cooling...well that could just be a mess for the scientists to argue about.

It would certainly be a let-off.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Yeah, right, let us know how that works out for you .

You should have seen mhaze's performance when he was trying to deny that Pat Michaels lied to Congress in 1998. Page after page of evasion and waffle.

Go there at your own risk. You have been warned .

The whole point of this is not mhaze changing his mind, or my possible mistake in thinking he had when he hadn't; it is about the way he responded. After all, I quoted him directly. Any reasonable person would have simply explained my mistake (if such it was). That is not what happened.

 

[TrueSceptic]

I'm not so sure about that. It already seems to be dying. I won't write off every hold-out, but they die off in time.

What would the recalcitrant GW Sceptic's excuse be? I don't know, but I'm sure there'll be one. I don't see them surviving for twenty years except as a quaint anachronism.

Come on, CD: this is so easy. It's the entirely natural and unstoppable 1,500-year climate cycle.

Absolutely. It would demonstrate that there's something seriously wrong with the theory behind AGW. Absent major vulcanism or asteroid strike, of course, in which case all bets are off.

They modelled the Pinatubo eruption before the event. Which is to say, the models weren't "trained" to it.

The theory is easily falsified, but no amount of evidence supporting it will ever be enough for some.

 

[CapelDodger]

The whole point of this is not mhaze changing his mind, or my possible mistake in thinking he had when he hadn't; it is about the way he responded. After all, I quoted him directly. Any reasonable person would have simply explained my mistake (if such it was). That is not what happened.

On the evidence (masses of it), mhaze doesn't have an organised mind, nor can he recognise one. On the other hand, he can't shut up. Hence all the flapping and flailing. But you knew that .

 

[CapelDodger]

Come on, CD: this is so easy. It's the entirely natural and unstoppable 1,500-year climate cycle.

mhaze loves that. He introduced us to it, as I recall. Believing in cycles as first causes is just soooooo GW Sceptic. "It just happens, OK?"

Singer came up with this quite late, after much GW Sceptic energy had been expended on proving the Medieval Warm Period around 1000CE, which is really out of sync with the 1500 year thing. So it becomes 1500 +/- 500 years to make it fit.

Does a cycle of anything between one and two thousand years really qualify as a cycle? Especially when it's to desperately unquantified. You could surely drag that out of any set of similar data.

mhaze also loves the 60-80 year cycle which explains why we're approaching a peak if we haven't already passed it.

The theory is easily falsified, but no amount of evidence supporting it will ever be enough for some.

It can't be comfortable being a GW Sceptic. All it would take is for the world to start cooling, but for decades it has steadfastly done the opposite. They can't settle down and relax, they have to keep drumming up new explanations for what keeps happening. Life's a lot easier for us.

 

[Hindmost]

Such perpetual motion...

Mhaze...is there anything that would change your mind where you would believe that humans are contributing to global warming???

glenn

 

[TrueSceptic]

mhaze loves that. He introduced us to it, as I recall. Believing in cycles as first causes is just soooooo GW Sceptic. "It just happens, OK?"

I was already quite familiar with it because it was (of course) flagged up by every GWS when the book was launched.

Singer came up with this quite late, after much GW Sceptic energy had been expended on proving the Medieval Warm Period around 1000CE, which is really out of sync with the 1500 year thing. So it becomes 1500 +/- 500 years to make it fit.

Does a cycle of anything between one and two thousand years really qualify as a cycle? Especially when it's to desperately unquantified. You could surely drag that out of any set of similar data.

Singer seems to have latched on Dansgaard-Oeschger events and misapplied them.

mhaze also loves the 60-80 year cycle which explains why we're approaching a peak if we haven't already passed it.

This is one of the many GWS deceits: all climate change conforms to natural cycles and is nothing to with us because climate change, much of it cyclical, happened before we were here, or before we industrialised.

It can't be comfortable being a GW Sceptic. All it would take is for the world to start cooling, but for decades it has steadfastly done the opposite. They can't settle down and relax, they have to keep drumming up new explanations for what keeps happening. Life's a lot easier for us.

Perhaps we should amend that rather good GWS parody summation to read
Only natural causes are required to explain global warming which does not exist and is unstoppable.?

 

[TrueSceptic]

Such perpetual motion...

Mhaze...is there anything that would change your mind where you would believe that humans are contributing to global warming???

glenn

Mhaze does accept that the CO2 greenhouse effect exists. I'd like to know why he thinks it isn't significant.

 

[Dr. Imago]

This is one of the many GWS deceits: all climate change conforms to natural cycles and is nothing to with us because climate change, much of it cyclical, happened before we were here, or before we industrialised.

No, this is one of the many ways you "warmers" like to misrepresent the discussion and attempt to define the other side of the argument (if there is such a thing) that doesn't conform to your beliefs.

There are three distinct possibilities: (1) we are in a normal-variant cycle right now; (2) the world is warming, but man has nothing to do with it; or, (3) manmade activity is currently causing the global climate to change.

I am willing to entertain any of those three possibilities, and my mind is far from made up on any of them. What I vehemently object to is those of you who believe that the science is settled, overwhelming, and beyond reproach. That it is clear that man has created global warming, that it is occurring, and that we need to do something about it or we're going to suffer irrevocable consequences.

No one has proven this yet. And, much of the so-called science used to substantiate the alarmist claims, quite frankly, sucks.

-Dr. Imago