UN Scientists: Climate Change Evidence is Unequivocal

You don't get to dictate terms to me. I'm not interested in debating whether or not a person who serves as an adivor for a gas company is biased when it comes to global warming. That's just a really really stupid discussion. Feel free to have it with someone else. I'm sure you'll feel comfortable.

You have no regard for the truth. You allow yourself to be mislead. You obviously don't have respect for science. Who cares what you think if your thoughts are in no way restrained by logic or evidence.

Roger:

You cite NASA and the UN as sources. Both take money for their spin. With the new administration spewing out hard earned taxpayers dollars, you will see lots of entities lining up as true believers. Every nose-picker will be an expert in search of a grant. Money is power and power corrupts. Heck, give me a couple million bucks, and I'll write whatever you want. Roger, whats your price? How much would it take for you to adopt an opposing point of view-especially since what you believe has no real impact whatsoever.

You Wrote: "Roger, whats your price? How much would it take for you to adopt an opposing point of view-especially since what you believe has no real impact whatsoever."

Well, when I was a young child, my mother, who grew up very poor and didn't have the opportunities that she was able to provide for me used to say "Roger, get an education, they can take away your job, your house, your money, but they can't take away your degree". When I was a little kid I used to build buildings out of blocks three times my height, right to the ceiling. My mother would come down and take a picture with me standing next to it and show everyone. I like playing with blocks when I was little, mostly because I liked making my mother proud.

When I turned about 10 I realized I loved astronomy, so my mother, always eager to encourage intellectual activities bought me books about the planets and a telescope. Unfotunately I was bored with the telescope rather quickly but the books I devoured. I learned everything I could about astronomy, but it wasn't enough, because astronomy just explained what things were where, I wanted to understand how they worked. That was the moment I became a physicist.

Since then I have tried to know everything I possibly can about everything. My two passions are history and physics. Took all the classes and got my BS, then my MS, and soon my Ph.D. I'm not big on the ceremonies, in fact I hate them, but I do them for my mother. It means a lot to her to see me get an education. I've never doubted what I wanted to do because nothing ever equals that joy I feel when that click goes off in my head when I understand something. It's like a drug I can't get enough of. I'm pretty sure the feeling is a residual of the joy I felt when my mother got excited when I accomplished something intelligent when I was a little kid.

So to answer your question, I guess if you wanted me to sell out and betray everything I am and everything my mother raised me to be, you'd either have to go back in time and stop my mother from encouraging me when I was young and impressionable, or kidnap her and use her life as blackmail.

I hope that clears up what my price is.

You wrote "So to answer your question, I guess if you wanted me to sell out and betray everything I am and everything my mother raised me to be, you'd either have to go back in time and stop my mother from encouraging me when I was young and impressionable, or kidnap her and use her life as blackmail".

Roger, good to know you're an honest man. (Your mother reminds me of Irena Sendler).

Their are millions of good people that put their faith in groups like the UN/IPCC. One good test is "Do they lead by Example". Does their actions match their retoric (and do their actions and retoric match their oranizational philosphy or charter).

It is inspiring to meet people and organizations that lead by example, but I would never cite the UN or the UN/IPCC, becasue they don't lead by example. Many people have grown weary of big talkers. For example, the Noble prize winning Al Gore is a big talker. He can whip a crowd into frenzy about global warming, while at the same time, guzzling enough energy to run a children's hospital. (By the way, Al's new 100' houseboat is as big as some hospitals).

Sharing the Noble prize with "Energy Al" is the IPCC.

The IPCC isn't a stupid organization. They know better than to fly all over our imperiled plant for meetings. They know better than to stay at huge and opulent hotels. Hotels that feature great restaurants, night clubs, spas, gorgeous swimming pools, air conditioned comfort, and tours on dirty diesel buses. The IPCC knows better. But as much as they know about energy waste, food waste, water waste--they just cannot bring themselves to "lead by example". Look at the IPCC travel and meeting schedule for 2009. In the middle of an economic meltdown, they will be living pretty high on the hog.

I have to be honest, I would love to stay at the Miracle Hotel in Turkey. Wow, what a resort! But if the IPCC really believed their organizational charter, they would be meeting on the internet, sipping grass tea and wearing hemp clothing to lessen their impact on GW/Climate Change. I bet if you researched the following travel schedule, you will find the IPCC staying at the best hotels, and not the local Eco communal.

So Roger, when an honest man like you cites groups like the IPCC, it tends to diminish your point of view and maybe inpune your good intentions. You may have good intentions in citing the IPCC, but a lot of people associated with them would compromise their souls for one fruity drink at the Miracle hotel.

Al Gore and the IPCC shared the 2007 Noble prize. I bet with all their self aggrandizement, they never dropped a short note of consolation to Irena Sendler, who they aced out of the Noble. Irena lead by example, but most Eco warriors wouldn't give her the steam off their piss. I'm sure she will not survive long enough to win the Noble. You know, I bet the Noble people fly first class and sip drinks by sparkling swimming pools, but that's another story.

Roger, I do admire you for your ideals, but we should all distance ourselves from the big talkers.

2009 Review periods for IPCC Reports

No Senatorferrell. The point, which you obviously missed, is there is a lot of people in science like me. Motivated by a very pure love of understanding how the world works. To suggest that we all are in on it (which we would have to be since at least 25% of us are this way) is obviously crazy. To suggest after our decades of training and work that we can't tell good data from bad is just insulting.

You are simply blind to the fact that you're the one being duped. You're being played like a fiddle. The men who pull your strings get rich and you gladly fall for their nonsense out of misplaced trust and loyalty. I'm sorry Senatorferrell, but you are a fool.

I'll just add a little comment of my own.

You have made clear that your listing of the number and locations of events is intended to imply that the participants are attending these events as some kind of perk in their ongoing gravy train. My experience of similar events (in different fields) is that most workers would on the whole prefer to stay home and get on with their work and their lives*. They go because they think they have something worth saying, they need to hear what is new in their field and possibly discuss the work with the originator or with other colleagues, and/or to exchange unpublished information. In difficult times, there may be other reasons - but for all but a very few, exploitation won't enter into it.
*As an example, one year, the major conference in the field was held in Hawaii. That was the year every one of the workers at my establishment decided that "they would put their effort into preparing their work as journal papers, as opposed to the normally quicker option of presenting at a conference". We were not alone in this - it turned out to be the thinnest conference ever - in spite of increased attendance from the Far East. On the other hand, the most significant contributions did still appear - albeit some had to be read by session chair-people, as the authors would not attend. Day-attendance at minor local conferences increased that year.

You say that all of this could be done on the internet. I've tried, believe me. My company consists entirely of home-workers, and we use every which internet tool. But we still find that we need to meet up regularly** so that important nuances are not missed.
**We don't spend company money lightly, as the company is entirely owned and funded by its staff

Of course, the numer of conferences on global warming is partly a consequence of the breadth of the field and the consequent amount of work; the range of location a result of the origins of the conference organisers and attendees (guess what the "I" in IPCC stands for). Large conferences need large venues - that is the reason they are centred on the largest hotels. In practice, the overwhelming majority of participants will be staying in cheaper venues.

Dear Physicist:

I may be wrong, but it sounds like you work in the private sector, where I work. I'm usually exhausted by the time I get back from a meeting. I too own my own company. So I work 18 hrs a day on the road. I stay in low cost accommodations, eat reasonably, almost never drink. No golf or fun for me. I heard a good term for where I live and work, it's called "Private World" (PW).

The IPCC lives in Government World (GW). There lots of taxpayer's money in GW. In GW good managers have to exceed their budgets---its USE OR LOSE IT. GW is a lot different than PW.

I know a lot of people that work in "Government World". They absolutely love conferences. Great rooms, eat and drink like kings, miss meetings, oversleep, skip meetings for golf and other fun activities. I get a kick out of the stories they tell (Oh if those public budgets could talk). In GW its hard to get fired or laid off.

That's why the government can end up with a 70 year supply of a stock item.

That's why there is $1.7 million earmarked for "pig odor" research in the new spending/pork bill.

That's why they threw a party at the White House last Wednesday. They rented the band "Earth, Wind and Fire" and served steak at $100.00 per pound (that's one hundred dollars per pound). It had to be flown in from Japan. I think that was the same day 60,000 union members lost their jobs.

I wouldn't defend the UN or the UN/IPCC. They live in Government World.

Regards

Private World and Government World (From the Mark Levin Show). I wish I could take credit.

I'm not saying government-funded work doesn't have limitations, but so does industry. I did for a short time work in the public sector - but have spent most of my life working for relatively large companies before starting my own small enterprise with a few like-minded colleagues.

My colleagues in government funded work were nearly all scientists, and in general their most important motivators were feeling good about what they did and finding it interesting, in that order. Generally, they did not spend over-long hours at work, but whenever they had a fundamental problem to solve you could tell they would be thinking about it irrespective. There was just one of these whose technical veracity I would not have relied on implicitly. In fact, possibly the biggest benefit (to society) of public science is that the worst that will happen to people who buck the department line is that they are overlooked for promotion; moreover, if they are proved right they are often in a position to sell their services elsewhere.

I wish that I could say the same for my industrial colleagues, particularly those involved in management. Far too many were driven purely by excitement and greed. OK, not many of those were scientists, but the corruption did rub off to an extent. We had gamblers who used company money to fuel their addiction, and managers who diverted millions of company resources from proper uses to provide themselves wit a personal benefit that was at most 10% of the cost to the company. That is why in the end my colleagues and I went our own way. BTW, I've seen "use-it-or-lose-it in the private sector as well. The only time I made a mistake in my budget submissions (this was before spread-sheets), it was assumed this was part of a some sort of plot (which would be blooming stupid, as the one strength we did have was sharp-eyed accountants, and there's no way they would risk anything as obvious as a mistake in addition).

That is not to defend government in general - I am certain that as elsewhere there are areas that attract the corrupt and the self-seeking, and much of the systemic feedback that would eventually kill a degenerate company is missing. But if you want a situation where reservations and disagreement are tolerated (so that the truth will out), for me it's those parts of academia where 'tenure' is commonplace, followed by government science.

Since you mentioned tenure it reminded me of an article in Time Magazine I recently read.

Here is a link to that story - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862444,00.html?iid=perma_share

I agree that tenure is not desirable in all occupations - and also not before you have proved yourself. I don't even see the point of tenure in a pure teaching environment. But it has a crucial role to play in research. However, I think it should not be available until people proved themselves, and it should be a process where everyone who has an understanding should also have an input. The ballot should be secret, and the threshold high (certainly above 70% positive, perhaps even 90%). I'm sure there would still be problems (there's no way that known awkward ****** like myself would ever get it, although perhaps that's not a problem), but it's probably a less-bad system than any I've seen so far.

I have a real problem with Tenure. When I was in elementary school the teachers wanted to teach and some one them really did a great job. Although none of the science teachers could answer most of my questions. When I got into high school, there was a marked difference in the attitude of most of the teachers I had. And again, all of the science teachers could not answer most of my questions and asking them things I wanted to know that was not in the text books they had no answers,

some of them said that is not part of the curriculum so we won't be covering that. I was forced to figure out what I wanted to know on my own. And still do today.

I never did attend college and kick myself every day. But I'm 52-1/2 and had neither the tie nor the funding and at my age I think I missed the boat. So I am studying Thermodynamics on my own, but only what I really need to know. There is far more than I really need to know in all aspects. I'm concentrating mostly on fluid dynamics, heat transfer with and with out pumps for radiant heating. The last heating system I designed and built was for a 5200 sq-ft house we built. I ran a single 1-1/4" copper loop around the perimeter of the basement. Then hung 10 zone valves with a manual override, built a control cabinet to control these valves. In the end, the circulator pump did not have to run during the spring and fall when the main ball valve was open. Heat transferred from the boiler around the loop, through all the zones as long as the manual valve was open. It was a great system.

Now working on an in floor radiant heat system for another house we are designing and also Solar hot water system where again I will try to do this w/o the use of a pump, although there will be a couple of them when they are actually needed.

The bottom line is, I had to figure out all of this on my own. Had I had teachers in high school that really wanted to teach and answered my questions, maybe I would have went on to college and became a real engineer, we will never know. So Tenure is just a very bad idea for teachers. They need to be called into this profession from within and prove themselves daily. All of my daughters had similar problems except for the ones fresh out of college. But they ran into issues with the teachers that had Tenure and told them they needed to chill in their excitement of teaching. Only 1 of 4 daughters is now in college for civil engineering with plans on going to RPI.

Tenure must be dropped as a perk for teachers.

SUN AND EARTH HAVE BEEN IN A THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM FOR MILENIUMS.

NO DOUBT THAT GLOBAL WARNING WILL STOP WHEN WE STOP BURNING FUELS TO EXAUST HOT CO2, WHICH CAUSES TEMPERATURE INCREASE.

FROM: MY CARS AN A BILLION MORE, MY STOVE AN A BILLION MORE, MY BOLER AN A BILLION MORE, your airplain an a million more, >100,000 thermoelectric supplies, plus milionas of industry ovens, driers and boilers. themperaure increase is caused by real heat from hot gases, not by sun light.

Al-Gore and some well known corrupted scientist are paid by the petroleum gays and industry, attempting to distort -this human-made real cause- by saing that sun is guilty of global warming, and nature is guilty too.

If sun radiation can get in to atmosphere it can also get out as well -as ever do and reflects- so I am no stupid to beleave that green house effect on C02 and CH4 (methane) gases that some corrupted gays spread it globally to protect petrogays.

wont guide you head into an eath hole as the autralian bird "avestruz"

So what's your point?

I tend to agree with the first three statements but I think you are on the wrong track on Al Gore.

Also your concept of equilibrium between the sun and earth is simplistic. Everything in the universe "rings". The time periods of the various energy input cycles and energy balances of the planet earth have some modes that run into periods of thousands of years. I'll leave it up to serious climatologists to argue about what the time domain looks like in the current period. But suffice to say that excess CO2 and methane are putting in a dangerous bias that we don't need.

But not to worry --- we'll all mostly be dead before it hurts us personally. But if you plan on leaving an inheritance to your kids and grandchildren best to reconsider the inclusion of real estate investments in beachfront property.

Ed Weldon

"beachfront property"
And don't forget to choose a beach with a significant height above sea level in case much more of the Antarctic ice melts.

Yet another article where

a) the authors pretend to be who they are not; and that
b) bases "this global warming is nothing new" on ignoring the size of the numbers.
To paraphrase: "There were 50 years of almost continuous global warming from 1800 to 1850, so a 50 year warming trend is nothing new". The rate from 1800 to 1850 was 0.05 degrees per century. Further, you could only call that a "continuous trend" by selecting your averaging time very carefully. And this is used to say that a warming rate of around 2-degrees per century for the last 30 years is within the realm of what has been experienced in recent times.

Of course they rubbish the modelling - with much the same level of correlation between verbal statement and supporting evidence. Either someone is very gullible, or they haven't examined the detail.

I am just an engineering students. The issue of global warming came to me when i was studying at high school. And since then i had been told that the main cause of global warming is CO2.

I believe it blindly until i went to college where i finish my A-level. One of the Professor suggested to me that if the global warming is to occur, vapour content in the air should play a greater role if compared to CO2. The reason is that content of water vapour in atmosphere is much greater than CO2 and water vapour has higher heat capacity as well. That is the time when i starts questioning about the truth of the cause of global warming.

I am not saying that CO2 is not the cause, but we need to work to tackle the global warming issue by finding out the main cause. Is it just merely a natural change or manmade problem? Or it is both?

It is a fact thAT the global warming IS happening faster than we can predict it. Maybe we cannot stop the global warming from happening, but at least we can slow it down and buy more time so that we have more time to adapt to the new environment, not only for us, but for the nature as well.

Please correct me if i am wrong. I am just a student who is willing to think and learn.

It's not the total that matters. Its the displacement from equilibrium. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (on average) hasn't varied significantly over the past 100 years.

The main cause has been determined to be CO2. I strongly suggest you learn to think more critically. Every major scientific organization has an official statement saying so. Please don't fall for this garbage. These fools you see here are locked into their positions after 20 or 30 years. Their pride will never allow them to admit the obvious. Don't let that happen to you. Read NASA's take. Read the UNs take. Read the American Physical Societies take. Don't allow youself to be fooled by this other you'll just feel embarrassed later.

"The main cause has been determined to be CO2."

How? What is the evidence? How do you account for periods of cooling while CO2 increases? I strongly suggest you learn to think more critically.

Where's my evidence. I see.

Well....here's a three part blog I wrote on this subject.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/172/Global-Warming-Part-1-of-3
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/179/Global-Warming-Part-2-of-3
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/183/Global-Warming-Part-3-of-3
http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/278423 (here's a post I placed that you responded to many times)

As for critical thinking, I don't think you're qualified to judge.

I went back to the beginning of this thread and read Roger's opening comments. Then just to be sure I understood the title I looked up "unequivocal" in my old dog-eared paperback Webster's. The definition was "straightforward; clear". OK, that's the subject to be challenged.

Is our climate changing? The only answer is yes. But to stop there is no fun. The implied question is how and especially how fast is it changing. The consensus seems to be overwhelming that it is getting warmer. The real question why and how fast.? There are still some here who say it isn't and may be getting cooler. The proponents of cooling climate have not made a very good case for their position, at least in this discussion. (Thanks in part to Roger's passion, for better or worse.)

We did get directed into the carbon dioxide question. Again, the science indicates it does have an effect. The arguments are really about the mathematical functional relationship between carbon dioxide levels and a whole slew of important dependent variables with temperature measurements clustering around the top of the list. Well our scientists debate these relationships not only with pure logic but with all the passion their souls can muster. For it is truly important work.

Now put yourself in the position of one of us lay-folks who has to make a decision based on what we know today about carbon dioxide. Whether you are a national leader, a CEO of a large manufacturing company faced with carbon trading, an insurance actuary trying to predict the probability of weather caused losses, or a farmer trying to decide whether to plant a new grove of almond trees it's an important issue. In all these cases the decisions need to be made on the best of what is known today. That realistically means today's science.

Especially in the case of the national leader there may be other carbon dioxide related issues in the decision. We're beginning to see some science based indications that carbon dioxide is having a detrimental effect on the biology of our oceans by virtue of its possible effect on the ph of ocean water. Then there is the positive side of CO2 having to do with plant growth. There's a whole lot that science doesn't know about the environmental or indeed positive social effects of changes in the area of botany at large scales that effect civilizations.

Ed Weldon

I appreciate this contribution, and I know that it is not primarily aimed at the climatic specifics. However, given that at one point you consider potential benefits, I feel that the very important parameter should at least be mentioned: i.e. whether the ecosystems can adapt to the changes over the time-scales in which the changes are expected to occur - and the answer to that appears to be an emphatic "no".

So, regardless of whether a warmer Earth with more CO2 would be in absolute terms be "better", we will be in serious trouble if the rate of warming is not significantly reduced before the temperature increases much further.

Looking at todays economy do we really want man to meddle in the earths climate?

Aren't we already? If so, the questions are what, how and how much.

Meddling no we are not making an active attempt to change it. Other then the Chicken Littles that say we are the cause of it all. With the data they have used to persuade the public I am sure I don't want them in charge

How very strange. Both your use of English and your intent.

Meddling can be accidental, and that is what this Chicken Licken believes man is currently doing.

Then, there has been no posting here that provides any rational support for the view that we Chicken Littles are mistaken in our view (that human-generation of CO2 is the major cause in the increases inglobal warming we are seeing). Yet you feel justified in simply dismissing the concern as illusory. If you have a rationale for implying that there is no CO2 problem, please declare it.

Since Dr. Pink has failed to cite measurements in support of his convictions, but he trusts NASA, I quote below from the NASA site. Unfortunately, I cannot print the data, but see for yourself at http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

Now, please explain how it is that the NASA scientists are skeptical in the face of unequivocal evidence.

"Unlike the surface-based temperatures, global temperature measurements of the Earth's lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. The slight trend that is in the data actually appears to be downward. The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño. So the programs which model global warming in a computer say the temperature of the Earth's lower atmosphere should be going up markedly, but actual measurements of the temperature of the lower atmosphere reveal no such pronounced activity."

I'm not a Dr. Again, I responded to your dumb link with a link that talked about the author today. Your link is a news story from 1997. The link I provided was the wiki page on the author where he admits that man is causing global warming.

Since you refuse to even acknowledge this, you are either being deceitful, or you are just some dumb you can't understand what I'm talking about. Either way you're a waste of time.

I've reread my post here and think I crossed the line, I'm sorry. You are not a waste of time. I shouldn't allow my frustration to allow me to resort to just plain insults.

I simply feel you have been mislead. Again, sorry for crossing the line there.

This is at least the third time in this thread that you have referenced that same 1997 story as if it was in the present. Yes, many NASA scientists saw limitations to the work at that time, and forthrightly expressed their concern about the work needed to be done to overcome those limitations. Clearly many of the modelling and measurement issues of that time have since been addressed, and I written about them elsewhere. I also noted that the combination of subsequent measurements and changes in global temperatures would have provide further support for the CO2 theory even without those improvements. However, rather than respond with specifics to your support your reservations, you have simply reposted the link to the outdated listing of measurement and modelling issues.

So, much as I hate to agree with Roger Pink's negative views, your actions force me to conclude that you are not being entirely honest here.

Did you go to the site? It is current. It presents data after 2000, with the temperature falling, which the UN site does not. Do set an example of honesty.

I'm doing my best. In this case I suspect you are referring to the second site, not the 1997 one. Unfortunately, when accessed from my systems it crashes within about a tenth of a second, so I couldn't see it for long enough to evaluate it. I was intending to return when I could see it, but that has not yet been possible.

However, at least I've been able to see the title of the link, and it appears to be about stratospheric temperature. So I can give some general guidance:
First, everything being equal, I believe that a small temperature change in the stratosphere would result in a somewhat smaller change in the temperature of the troposphere; this is a result of radiative and conductive interchange. But everything is not equal, and the thermal effects below the stratosphere are such that the relevant question is not really "how does the stratosphere affect the temperature of the troposphere", but "what are the temperature influences on the stratosphere".
Some of these influences are sunspot-related, and so are not directly dependent on what is happening nearer the ground. But one directly relevant effect that we can look at is the heating effects on the stratosphere by the ground/lower atmosphere combination. This heating is provided by a combination of conduction and radiation - and the radiative component can change significantly.
So we need to look at the radiation into the stratosphere from below. To understand that, we need to look at the radiative balance between incoming and outgoing radiation. The troposphere and the ground currently are warming up. That means that more heat is coming in than is going out. But the incoming radiation is relatively constant - so the only way the lower regions can be heating up is if the outgoing radiation has reduced.
Reduced upward radiation from the lower regions will naturally tend to cause the stratosphere to cool.

Now, that is nothing like the whole story, and I'm no expert on the overall effect. All it is intended is to show that you cannot just expect that a warming ground+troposphere will imply a warming of the stratosphere. So why do NASA want to know the temperature in the stratosphere? Partly because there is (eventually) some small effect on the temperature of the troposphere, so they would wish to include this in the models. However, the more important factor is almost certainly to allow radiative measurements of tropospheric temperatures to be corrected for the effect of the stratospheric contribution.

P.S. I think I have now covered every one of your points. If I've missed any others, please let me know. If you can counter any of my technical arguments, I'd like to hear.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

The reference is to lower atmosphere, not the stratosphere. But, no matter. There comes a point where agreeing to disagree is OK. "Unequivocal" is a judgement call.

Strange - because (you can check the url) the other link was clearly to an article on stratospheric temperatures. In addition, I already covered the content of this in other replies to you (it comes under reservations from 1997 that had been cleared by subsequent work), so if that was the posting you were referring to I feel underwhelmed by your previous comment.

I've no problems with "agreeing to disagree" - provided that those issues that can be have been properly discussed. But it really upsets me that you don't feel it is worth explaining (even for even a single case) why you consider the points I have (perhaps overly cryptically) dismissed still support your position

I have finally found links on the web that are more specific.

John Christy's reservations about the poor correlation between satellite measures and direct temperature measurements resulted in two modifications to the work - sampling of direct temperature measurements at different sites (to determine whether the direct measurements were distorted by localisation), and refinements of the modelling of the temperature extraction from the satellite data. The checks on localisation indicated that this had not been a significant problem (and I have failed to find reference on the web). On the other hand, the refinements to the modelling (the main one being due to Mears and Wentz) made a significant difference; and Christy himself accepts their correctness. Once incorporated, we can see tight correlation between the direct measurements and the radiation-based satellite work. Here is a link to graphs of (almost) the current state of play - one that also includes additional descriptional detail, as well as references to source data.

Given the number of times the same article by Christy has been tagged as a primary reason to doubt the validity of the warming, is worth repeating and highlighting that this means that the issues that John Christy raised in 1997 have now been resolved to his satisfaction and that (SFIK), no-one involved is doubting the validity of the resultant corrections. I would add the comment that, even without these additional corrections, satellite data since 2000 would show a clear warming trend.

N.B. both the links in the 1997 article are the same as the ones I could not open, and the path given is http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/essd/essd_strat_temp.htm. It may be that these also lead to data on tropospheric temperature - if so, I'd appreciate a direct link - or safer (?) someone abstracting that and posting it as a reply.

I have posted earlier also (and again).

Let us forget the science (sorry Roger).

Hopefully all of us has stayed at one place for quite a long time ? At least I am here in this location for about 30 years since I completed my graduation and joined service.

believe me, the temperature change can be felt. The summer temperatures are rising (this year yesterday max was 39 deg C already - this is supposed to be early spring) and Summer this year is predicted to touch an unprecedented 50 or so.

last year was the hottest year in the recorded data, and the year before too. In 2006 we had a respite (a lot of summer rains) - but deficient monsoon (the rainy season here). Upto about 2000 or so it was more or less stable.

No winter this year (never needed even a jacket, all my wooles are now feast of moths, didn't come out for 3 years)

What Roger says or NASA says I am least bothered about. I know what I see.

BTW - I was doing some research if you can call that - for my industry i wanted some deep fridger. As you know now OD gases are banned (CFCs, Freons) etc. So i was looking for alternates. I tried on CR4 too (there was athread but it went nowhere).

Now the trend is to go for HCFCs instead of CFCs. While doing that work on net I found to my utter amazement that (mind both CFCs and HCFCs are extremely stable)

- The GWP of these replacement gases are more than double of the Freon

freon (if I remember, not going to search again, so data is approx) had a GWP of 1600 or so ie 1 kg of Freon is equivalent to 1600 Kgs of CO₂ in Green house effect.

The replacement HCFCs ranged between 3200 to 5400 GWPs

Hence to save Ozone, we are increasing temperature.

Did any one look at GWP of SF6 - one of the most stable gases ? (atmospheric life of only 3200 years) - its GWP is only 32900 or so.

None of these are naturally occuring, not going to be processed by the plants, will remain in atmospgere for at least centuries. And Engineers (and States and Industries) will not stop them, since as on now there are no alternatives.

Electricity ghas to be produced, transporeted at high voltages, SF6 Breakers are the only way. they do leak (while filling and in operation, I know, since I am a part of the industry) and nobody bothers- non toxic, no side-effect on humans or other living things.

So the global warming is much more beyond the CO_2.

PS: The research is my own interpretation from the data (and knowledge about thel leakage) - hopefully some others involved in power industries will corroborate that once in a while SF6 are re-filled in breakers (like we re-fill in the fridges or ACs) - Where the escaped gases go ?

And about the warming and other things in Mars (or Moon ) I am not convinces, since as far as I know, they are slowly losing the atmosphere too. An as it loses it, the water will evaporate (vapour pressure) and escape with the escaping atmosphere. Also the reduced atmosphere will have more bombardment by the High Energy rays- more evaporation and escape (My theory hence may be - Phys to think over )

There's been quite a bit of publicity in the UK about the warming potential of these refrigerants. The good (?) news is that, powerful as they are, the quantities are still so small that CO2 remains of more concern. But there is no reason they are needed; my understanding is that the refrigeration companies were trying to avoid retooling, and the ozone savers were trying to avoid ammonia (because apparently 'confusion would weaken their ability to argue elsewhere'). Later when the refrigeration manufacturers eventually needed to retool for other reasons their new tooling is for these warmers, so we/they have it all to do again.

Regarding your local climate: although there is very possibly some interaction with overall global warming, I suspect the bulk of your warming is caused by variation in air circulation patterns. I understand that these can follow quite long cycles, or can change suddenly and apparently spontaneously - so it is possible that you will get cooler again (maybe even next year). You would be "only gremlin" (should that be "only antimony" - apologies either way) if you lost interest in the topic when that happens. But that would be a shame, because it's going to become genuinely noticeable over the next fifty years or so (and I may even be here to see it if the doctor's obsession with my blood pressure lengthens my life expectancy by the "average fifteen years" that he claims - a daunting prospect)

Regarding the planets losing atmosphere: yes there's a measure of that happening continuously for the smaller planets (including Earth), but it's also being replenished by the earth outgassing. Doubtless we also lose great spurts whenever there's an asteroid collision. However, (in common with biology and shorter-term climatology) it's about as far from my usual field of work as it's possible to get, and (unlike climatology) I don't have any hope of influencing things, so I've no plan going to go into it any more deeply.

P.S I'm a vain attempt to avoid upsetting serious physicists, I call myself Fyz (as in 'bubbling over and making a mess of my spelling and my arguments') or Physicist? (the question-mark being essential). Fyz also runs nicely with my work-name "the boz", the irony being that unlike the original pair I can neither draw nor write.

sb

And about the warming and other things in Mars

I originally saw this and thought it was strange, especially when I came on an article which claimed Jupiter, Saturn, Triton and Pluto were also warming.

Roger pink pointed me to an article in Nature which attributed the Mars warming to albedo changes. On reading it, it seemed to indicate that the albedo change was started by warming of the planet initially.

Looking further, I discarded both Jupiter and Saturn, they emit more than they receive anyway.

If whatever affected Pluto and Triton also affected Earth, the rise should be far higher than is observed because of our closer proximity to the Sun.

However, why no mention of Titan and Ganymede? Apparently they are not heating up.

The only way I could make sense of this was to conclude that the effects noticed in the rest of the solar system almost certainly had no relationship to Earth.

BTW, I also live in a hot climate, but in the wet tropics. We have been having more rain than normal over the past few years.

In addition, the dry tropics show signs of becoming wetter. The inland deserts have had several years of good seasons in a row - quite unprecedented.

As I understand it, the wet tropics are expected to expand away from the equator.

The cold temperate will become temperate, temperate become warm temperate etc.

On this model, the desert will get squeezed but some of the border regions will also become desert. The main objection to this is that even though the total arable land could increase, the occupants of the land which will be adversely affected (some very productive land currently) are not keen on losing out. They are happy to spend every penny everyone else has to try and avoid this.

Sorry, I should stop being so cynical.

But Mars is not currently warming - except at the poles. Other regions have cooled, and it seems most likely that so has the average. That need not be caused by changes in insolation either.

I wish I could believe that warming would result in an increase in global agricultural output. Even without the warnings of agriculturalists etc. my suspicion would be that, even were plant-growth to increase overall it would be in species that are not favoured by the dominant animals on the planet. That's just on the basis that the most successful animals at any time are those who are capable of eating what is most readily available.

Fyz,

Is this article of any help? It seems to show the recent trend in global temperatures that you are attempting to explain.

Interesting read here:

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/

Here is another from Wikipedia. In fact you can get a whole pile more, both pro and con by googling "NASA temperature measurements".

?

Too many unsupportable statements and distortions for my taste. There is even one that can be spotted without external references - the factor of two would be 2*1.43, so we already have some of the supposed logarithmic effect in the sums.

Looking at the assertions used to support the conclusions, so far as I know the logarithmic assertion is unsupported at the CO2 levels postulated for the next 100 years. Also, the earth has considerable thermal mass, so changes that have been present for a relatively short time (few years) will be under-represented in the temperature changes. The other problem I noticed before running out of concentration is the oft-repeated statement that solar activity raises temperatures - some of it does, but most doesn't, and I know of no data that would support the view that we have in the last fifty years seen a peak in total insolation (more the reverse, if anything)

Thank you, Bruce. Nice reference, and it shows how things are hanging together.

I find including the provisional predictions for the short term (two years) charmingly naive. That's really sticking your neck out, as there are so many local (local also meaning local in time) difficulties to confound this, so (as admitted by the authors) many of them will be inexact.

Even so, wherever the discrepancy is to be found, it will give the brand of sceptics who claim they have found a specific problem with the models an opportunity to say "I told you so". If I see these, as an amateur I will restrict my attention to those who publish their correct predictions of the differences in advance.

More on the subject from the Japanese : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/

This reference was already discussed. I may be wrong, but so far as I can ascertain no member of the original publishing group has actually published any of their own work that is closely related to climatology. Moreover, once you read any of the detail, you will see that the 'evidence' they present ignores issues such as size of effects. An example is described in my post #77.

I'm getting out of this discussion. Thanks for an invigorating debate. Some users have complained about my posts and I've been warned by CR4 to tone it down. I think they are probably right. We're just spinning our wheels here. I guess, in the end, I've again failed to prove that confrontation on this issue is the correct approach, though I still believe it is the only way.

PS. Physicist? has done everything all of my critics here have complained that I don't do and more. He has patiently addressed each and every concern you have raised. If you're going to complain and attack me (which is fine), it seems inconsistant not to praise him for "debating" the right way.

I would agree, and thanks, Physicist, for your contributions.

I remain unconvinced that CO2 is a cause, rather than either an effect or separate cyclical issue.

I am particularly unimpressed with the centralized government solutions for the hype. In fact, I suspect that it may all resolve itself if the (unrelated off-topic injection here:) potentially 'peaking oil output' results in a world market that allows for gradual cost-benefits that couple with further advances in efficiency that put developed countries into alternative energy sources for electricity.

Continuing studies will only be credible if they can explain all the solar issues, related temperature changes correlated with earth's changes, and the relationships of the multitude of dependent and independent variables.

I am hopeful, however, that the future public backlash against "global warming" political movements does not restrain us from using the current "green" momentum to push for other reasonable pursuits. Things like greater energy efficiency, life-cycle costs for development and construction issues, and especially reductions in toxins released into the environment. That's where our concentration should be anyway, rather than "carbon cap & trade" schemes and artificial production manipulation by socialist taxation and regulation.

And in this Corner of the Ring!

Wow, this certainly has been an interesting read!

Another set of "unequivocal" data, this time from Brittain.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/15/hadley-climate-center-hadat2-data-shows-global-cooling-in-the-last-year/

Worthy of note the following from the third paragraph of the web page link you posted (with my annotated underline of a selected sentence):

Hadley Climate Center HadAT2
"HadAT consists of temperature anomaly timeseries on 9 standard reporting pressure levels (850hPa to 30hPa). The data is also available as equivalent measures to the broad MSU satellite weighting functions. The gridded product is derived from 676 individual radiosonde stations with long-term records. Because of the criteria of data longevity the resulting dataset is limited to land areas and primarily Northern Hemisphere locations. Radiosondes are single launch instruments and there have been many changes in instruments and observing practices with time. ........."

Ed Weldon

All within the expected range of short-term variation.

Curiously, for the case of last year some cooling was expected (based on the effects of changing ocean currents). Plus the trough in insolation lasted longer than expected, which would also lead to cooling

Regarding the sea level rise expected by 2100, 91 years from now:

The UN's IPCC says 0.2-0.6 m.

Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says 0.5-1.4 m.

W.T. Pfeffer of The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Univ. of Colorado, says 0.8-2 m.

Al Gore, Nobel Prize laureate, says 20 feet, ten times the upper bound of the IPCC estimate.

The evidence, we are told, in unequivocal, clear, unambiguous, so we might conclude that three out of the four are ignorant, stupid, or paid by special interests (maybe all three?). Which one of the four is right?

According to an Article in The Week Magazine Global Warming has been arrested, or "flatlined" since 2001. Evidence comes from University of Wisconsin Study. The Study does conclude that Global Warming may be on hold, but not for long.

For what it's worth I've long taken Gore`s movie estimate of 20 feet, as excessive, even though I agree with the findings in general.

So then, I will be very interested if it is determined what forces have stalled Global Warming.

P.S. As a personal note I believe esbuck and I have effectively "buried the hatchet". In my future political life I have promised to lie. In fact I am extremely grateful for our go around for now when I make my upcoming April Fools Day speech, when I will publicly promise to lie I shall be considered a "Breath of Fresh Air", plus since I have promised to lie, then some may consider it a dangerous ruse, and then accuse me of telling the truth.

The Pacific Decadal system and its recent influence on the N. Atlantic one.

It all depends on what you choose to measure and include. What follows is rather unstructured, but illustrates the problems:

Some studies completely ignore polar temperatures because of the difficulty of accurate space measurements (ice is just too reflective) and the low-density of monitoring in those areas. Others take adjacent readings and extrapolate - all rather contentious.

The earth will appear cooler if we measure (from space) the radiation at the centre of the absorption band of CO₂. That's because it is better insulated. We will also see genuinely lower air temperatures if the ocean currents bring more cool water to the surface.

If you want a rigorous measure of global warming it would have to be the rate of change of net thermal energy stored by the earth. As the only significant input and output is radiation, radiation balance would be the most reliable measure. Unfortunately, it has been even more fraught than measuring ground temperatures (even in the presence of CO2 and water vapour).

Another absolute measure would be to sum the heat stored in atmosphere, ground, and oceans. Still SFIK not yet doable - but at least observations support the view that polar melt and deep ocean warming have proceeded more rapidly during years when surface warming was reduced.

A few sites of interest:

http://www.climatecooling.org/globalcoolingdocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf

Here one of the world leaders in sea level change states categorically that the changes claimed by the IPCC are arrived at falsely and that there has been no net sea level rise.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski points out that the assumed pre industrial CO2 level has been arrived at by ignoring the majority of the chemical analyses done at that time. Only the ones giving low CO2 levels have been taken into account. measured levels from that time average closer to 335ppm rather than the 292ppm generally quoted.

He further points out the arbitrary "correction" applied to the Siple ice core curves to make them fit the Moana Loa figures.

There are also some telling points about the reliability of ice core data as usually quoted.

Some additional items to consider:

1. Atmospheric temp rise is not compatible with surface temp rise. If CO2 was the villain, atmospheric temp would rise ahead of surface temp. This is not so.

2. As mentioned earlier, temperatures have been higher before human interference, without any problems. the claim that the present rate of rise is unprecedented is actually an assumption. There is plenty of evidence of rapid global temp changes in the past.

I've lost the reference but, if atmospheric water vapor is included as a greenhouse gas, anthropogenic contribution to the natural input of greenhouse gases is about 0.28%, of which CO2 is about half.

In other words, if we were 100% successful in preventing anthropogenic gas emission, we would make a poofteenth change in the environment.

I could go on, but the more I look into the subject, the less secure the AGW hypothesis becomes.

Having said this, we should still be looking to use our resources more efficiently, but not become paranoid about it and the "damage being done to the environment".

We should not be crippling ourselves to prevent a non existent problem.

I will predict that within 20 years we will be worrying about anthropogenic induced global cooling and how to avoid the imminent ice age.

Hello Sceptic:

Your answer is a good one. I have yet to see any explanation for why we are discovering more tropical dinosaur skeletons, tropical turtle remains, and evidence of tropical plants buried under the Arctic permafrost?

My real question is will the Arctic sea ice exceed 1979 levels this winter (2009/10)! My friends in Alaska think so.

In the short/medium term, sea level rise depends on what you measure. If it is distance from the centre of the Earth (as measured directly by satellites and indirectly by rotation) you will not get the same result as from tidal measurements with respect to land, because in the medium term the shape of the globe is changing. Uncorrected short-term measurements on any of these can give give little direct evidence of long-term trends. So you have to apply correction factors if you are to see what you should expect longer term. If Professor Axel is the international expert in these fields as he advertises, he must know all this. However, even if the correction factors used were inappropriate, we do know that there have been major changes in ice distributions both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. (Sometimes I feel like removing your first "c" - on the basis that you appear to me to accept certain arguments for too readily)

As regards CO2 contributing a relatively small proportion of the greenhouse effect, there is almost certainly truth in this. However, the total warming is "only" about 41-^OC, and CO2 certainly contributes several degrees. The difference between the proportion of greenhouse effect and of total warming is down to water providing cooling that isn't included in some of the calculations used to support this argument.
Be that as it may, the issue is changes in warming. Even though they are small with respect to the total, rapid changes of a few degrees are beyond the capability of agriculture to adapt - probably not a disaster for the Earth, but a disaster for many human societies.

Your final point about worrying about cooling is necessarily inconsistent with warming; if warming sets up specific changes in ocean currents we could indeed see warming precipitating an ice age. (I seem to remember Fred Hoyle beefing on about this as a possibility; as he only claimed it as a possibility, it's one of the few areas where I don't think he is wrong).

From the Office of the Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf

Sums up the evidence regarding global warming. See, especially, page 58.

The EPA traditionally would rather be damned for doing nothing than for incurring cost that in the event proved to be purely precautionary. The level of proof they require for taking action is completely asymmetric to the level of evidence they accept in contradiction.

The New Orleans levees were a typical example of the approach.

It is however correct practice to re-asses the incoming evidence - but stating disputed hypotheses about order of archaeological climate change as undisputed fact is going a long way too far (just one example - I haven't time to disentangle the whole report).

In the event of there being a significant risk of anything whatsoever, there are few circumstances under which I would think it wise to wait for them to consider action to be necessary.

Passed on without comment:

Climate Con Job
by Paul Driessen
Issue 135 - July 8, 2009

Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations with computer simulations, and hired PR flacks to promote its new "wonder drug." News stories, congressional hearings and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow. And rightly so.

But the standards change when "climate catastrophe" is involved.

The White House has made global warming the centerpiece of its revenue-raising and energy policies. A House of Representatives 942-page bill would tax, regulate and penalize all US hydrocarbon energy use, to "save the planet from climate disaster." The Senate promises an August vote.

But average global temperatures peaked in 1998 and since have fallen slightly, even as carbon dioxide levels continue to climb. Thousands of scientists say CO2 has little effect on planetary temperatures, and there is no climate crisis. Few developed countries are ready to commit economic suicide, by agreeing to reduce their CO2 emissions by a fraction of what the House bill demands for the United States.

Americans are beginning to realize the legislation would cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars for a hypothetical 0.1 degree F reduction in global temperatures. Most put global warming dead last in a Pew Research list of 20 concerns.

The government's answer to these inconvenient truths is simple.

Issue another report by government scientists carefully selected to exclude any who don't subscribe to climate Armageddon. Ignore contrary data and analyses. Crank out more bogus computer-generated worst-case scenarios. Hire an activist media firm that specializes in environmental scare campaigns. And spend tens of millions hyping every imaginable climate disaster:

Rising sea levels, floods in lower Manhattan, California beaches permanently submerged. Ferocious hurricanes, floods and droughts. Food shortages, epidemic diseases, a quadrupling of heat-wave deaths in Chicago. Aged sewer systems convulsing from massive storm runoff. Wildflowers disappearing from Rocky Mountain slopes and polar bears from the Arctic. Leisure time gone, as people struggle to survive.

"Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" is the "most up-to-date, authoritative, comprehensive" analysis ever done on how human-caused warming affects the United States, deadpans Obama "science" advisor John Holdren.

Actually, it's the most flagrant attempted con-job and propaganda campaign in US history.

If it helps Congress enact cap-and-tax legislation, it will give activists, courts and bureaucrats control over virtually every aspect of our lives. It will enable them to confiscate hard-earned dollars, convert them to payoffs for activists and companies that get on the climate-crisis bandwagon, consign uncooperative companies and scientists to the ash heap of history, and conceal the exorbitant costs of restrictive energy policies – on families, industries, jobs and transportation – until long after the bill becomes law.

The bogus "report" conflates and confuses human activities and emissions with the powerful natural forces that have caused major and minor climate changes and weather anomalies since the dawn of time – from the Carboniferous Period to the Age of Dinosaurs, from the Big Ice Ages and interglacial periods to the Little Ice Age, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, Dust Bowl and countless others. It relies on conjecture, conformist thinking and conspicuous elimination of contrary, skeptical, realist scientists and studies that do not support climate cataclysm conjecture and ideology.

The authors "largely ignored" critical comments to earlier drafts and made the final version "even more alarmist" than infamous UN "summaries" of global warming "crises," says Joseph D'Aleo, first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Weather Analysis and Forecasting Committee. The report is simply "wrong on many of its claims" and marks "an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA," D'Aleo concludes.

University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke, Jr. says the report "misrepresents" his own work, makes claims that are not supported by citations provided, relies heavily on analyses that were never peer reviewed, ignores peer-reviewed studies that reach opposite conclusions from those proclaimed by the report, and cites analyses that do not support conclusions rendered.

"I didn't notice a single recognized hurricane expert in the list of authors," says NOAA Hurricane Research Division scientist Stanley Goldenberg. The report relies heavily on surface temperature data from monitoring stations located next to parking lots and air conditioning exhaust ports – falsely skewing temperature records upward – other experts noted. It is lead-heavy on assumptions, assertions and speculation – hydrogen-light on evidence.

But the most egregious miscarriage of science in this agit-prop exercise is its near-total dependence on worst-case scenarios conjured up by computer models. That's where it gets its litany of "Day After Tomorrow" Hollywood disasters.

These climate models have never been validated by actual observations, notes Professor Robert Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at Australia's James Cook University. Indeed, Australia's own climate modeling agency (CSIRO) stresses that climate change scenarios are based on computer models that "involve simplifications of [real world] processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted … for the accuracy of forecasts inferred" from its reports.

"Modeling results are interesting – but worthless for setting public policy," says Carter. But that is exactly how they're being used.

Sure, it's conceivable that Antarctica could melt, and cause sea levels to rise 20 feet, as Al Gore and the government con-artists suggest. Greenhouse gases would merely have to increase average annual Antarctic temperatures from their current –50 degrees F to +40 degrees for a century or two, to melt 200,000 cubic miles of South Pole icecaps. A mere 90-degree swing.

That may be as likely as having the planet overrun by raptors and T-rexes cloned from DNA in fossilized mosquitoes. But it's conceivable. And in the realm of global warming politics, that's all that matters. As MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen observes, "global warming has developed so much momentum that it has a life of its own, quite removed from science."

As one climate activist group put it: "The task … is not to persuade by rational argument." It is "to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement. The 'facts' need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken." The strategy is to treat "climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is the route to mass behavior change."

This is the kind of science, transparency, honesty and accountability we have come to expect over "human-caused climate chaos."

If the congressional, administration and activist conspirators behind this massive con job were in the private sector – peddling bogus drugs, rather than bogus science – they'd quickly become convicts. Instead of jail time, though, they'll probably get bonus checks.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death.

The article was well named (Climate Con Job), because that is precisely what it appears to be.

Immediately on reading, I was able to recollect that unadjusted average global surface air temperatures from the sites that reported in both 1998 and 2005 were higher in 2005 than in 1998. This applied whether they site data were simply averaged or were weighted to take account of the fact that some areas have a higher density of measuring locations than others (the unweighted average is not plotted on the site). 2007 temperatures were again equal to those of 1997.
If you take the less volatile year-centred five-year average, no period since the 1999-2003 has been cooler than any of the periods that included 1998.

Other than that single mis-statement, the article has no verifiable facts - only misrepresentations of the scenarios generated by climate models (it's real easy to debunk a misrepresentation that was chosen for the purpose), coupled with a complete rejection of any sort of modelling that is "simplified". Even the quote used to support this is selective, both in that it is a single individual's way of expressing his uncertainty, and that (SFIK) it distorts even the view of that modelling team, i.e.: no one of the models is any use for policy making - but the aggregate data from them, while imperfect, will have to serve for want of anything better.

With nothing to put in its place, it appears that the author's recommendation is to replace the uncertainty of available models with complete ignorance.

If CO2 anthropogenic greenhouse gases are contributing significantly, the mechanism of their contribution should warm the atmosphere before the surface.

Satellite and balloon measurements show no systematic change in atmospheric temp, just surface temps, and those are somewhat inconsistent, frequently needing adjustment.

There is even doubt as to whether there is a rise in atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times, as measured CO2 levels from then are not significantly different from now. (Unless you are very selective with the pre-industrial results you take).

http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

This man is an authority on the subjects he is talking about and his criticisms need to be factually answered, not by name calling.

Incidentally, when the Catholic Church suppressed Galileo, they were doing so at the urging of the scientific experts of the day, who were universally agreed that the universe was earth centered and only a crack pot would propose it to be heliocentric.

I could multiply examples of where the scientific establishment has been wrong and only a few dissenters were right. The parallel concerning the treatment meted out to AGW deniers is an interesting parallel. (But not necessarily relevant!)

Look at the evidence, not the number of experts propounding the view.

If correct, time-lag from ground temperature to high-atmospheric temperature would be a very powerful piece of evidence against changes in CO2 concentration being the cause of long-term global warming. (Other processes such as change in average atmospheric density would only account for a relatively small change in temperature differential)

However, my recollection is that the situation here is not as clear-cut as the sceptics would have you believe. One problem is that different measurement techniques give slightly different readings, and the more accurate recent techniques (that will be useful going forward) provide slightly lower reading than those that are longer established. Trends rely on consistent methods of measurement, so the data needs adjustment to produce a meaningful output, and my recollection is that much of the scepticism is associated with rejecion of such adjustment. Unforunately I won't have time in the near future either to confirm my recollections or to look into the validity of any adjustments.

Global cooling is here! Only crackpots deny global cooling!

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/52301402.html

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Please help save the hummingbird

She's a black-chinned, I believe, not the world's most colorful model. But she has a distinctive habit of hovering down to look us right in the face, one at a time, as we sit out in the back yard to watch the sunset. "Checking in," we call it. Perhaps she, too, wants to make sure we're still the same strange creatures who always maintain the feeder full of sugar water. (Never use honey.)

Last year she raised a couple of pipsqueaks in the cherry tree, in a nest perilously low given the area's cat population. So far as we know the nestlings prospered and didn't become cat snacks; we wonder if they survived the winter trip south.

Which brings me to my point. This year, the hummingbird was late.

I've never actually marked the calendar when she shows up, but I'd swear it used to be late May. This year, we didn't see her until early July. Since it's the warm weather that brings them back north of the border, it doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine the coolest, dampest June I can remember in my 19 years in Las Vegas may have slowed her return.

What if her visits were to grow briefer and briefer, until she never returned at all? Couldn't that qualify the black-chinned hummingbird for listing as a threatened or endangered species in Nevada?

Yes, I know when the Endangered Species Act was first proposed there was a lot of talk about losing unique genetic codes. "What if the genetic code of some species that just went extinct had contained the secret to curing cancer?" ... That sort of thing.

If that was still the accepted approach, we could console ourselves that at least our energetic little friend and her offspring could still live out their days in balmy Mexico, or Honduras, or wherever they winter.

But in fact, that's not the way the Endangered Species Act is interpreted today. Many a lawsuit has required the federal Environmental Protection Agency to act to protect and preserve viable populations of a given animal in its traditional and historic range. It's no longer enough to say "Don't worry, there are plenty of these things down in Texas."

So what I wonder is: Aren't there enough public-spirited individuals and corporations here in the Southwest to fund a lawsuit, demanding that the EPA take action to protect the Nevada black-chinned hummingbird from the devastating effects of global cooling?

Yes, yes, I can hear you saying, "But Vin, global cooling is by no means universally accepted." Well, of course there are global cooling deniers, just as there are those who deny the Nazis killed millions of Jews and Slavs, who deny that the Temple of Solomon was ever in Jerusalem, etc.

But just last week, The Associated Press reported "Cool weather has broken a previous low temperature for July 21 in Nashville that was set when Rutherford B. Hayes was president. ..."

"It was delightfully appropriate that, as large parts of Argentina were swept by severe blizzards last week, on a scale never experienced before, the city of Nashville, Tennessee, should have enjoyed the coolest July 21 in its history, breaking a record established in 1877," commented the folks at Right Side News, on the other side of the pond. "Appropriate, because Nashville is the home of Al Gore, the man who for 20 years has been predicting that we should all by now be in the grip of runaway global warming.

"His predictions have proved so wildly wrong ... that the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction in history," our British friends report.

"The two official sources of satellite data on global temperatures, for instance, lately announced that June temperatures had again fallen, to their (lowest) average level for the month over the 30 years since satellite data began. By contrast, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, run by Mr. Gore's closest ally and scientific adviser, James Hansen -- one of the two official sources of global temperature data from surface weather stations -- announced that in that single month the world had warmed by a staggering 0.63 degrees C, more than its net warming for the entire 20th century.

"In the past few years, Dr. Hansen's temperature record has become ever more eccentric, often wildly at odds with the other three officially recognised data sources, all of which showed a dramatic drop in temperatures in 2007 leading to markedly cooler summers and two of the coldest and snowiest winters the world has known for decades. All this has equally made nonsense of the predictions of the computer models that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relies on, which are programmed to assume that temperatures should soar in line with rising levels of greenhouse gases. ...

"This has not prevented the propaganda machine's media groupies continuing to peddle a daily stream of stories about how in all directions global warming is already affecting the world for the worse. ... The tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu, we are yet again told, is pleading for international aid, as it sinks below the rising ocean -- even though an expert study in 2001 showed that sea levels around Tuvalu have in fact been falling for 50 years. ...

"None of this is proving of much assistance to the politicians still desperately hoping to reach agreement on a new climate treaty in Copenhagen in December. With the still-developing countries, led by China, India, Russia and Brazil, all saying that they will only co-operate if rich governments such as the U.S. and the EU compensate them to the tune of trillions of dollars a year, the chances of any meaningful successor to the Kyoto Protocol look like zero. ..."

No, make no mistake, global cooling is here, as announced by professor Don J. Easterbrook, Department of Geology, Western Washington University, in his paper "Global Cooling is Here -- Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades," available at www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783.

Rather, the question is whether there is anything the EPA can order the American people to do about it. And here is where we really owe an enormous debt of thanks to the Democratic politicians in Washington, and to their opposite numbers on the international scene, the dashiki-clad kleptocrats of the United Nations.

For, if we were to listen to the mere scientists, all we'd hear is a depressing litany of negativity, of assurances that global temperatures have been moving up and down in an inexorable rhythm of ice ages and warming periods, in cycles of 15,000 or 30,000 years, for as long as the geographic evidence can be read, all driven by solar activity and the resulting behavior of the oceans. In short, that nothing can be done.

But why would you believe mere scientists, when the politicians of Washington City and 46th Street in New York assure us there is something that individual Americans can do to fight global cooling?

Despite our small numbers when compared to the energy-using population of the world, despite the fact that mankind as a whole contributes only 5 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- and the fact that carbon dioxide isn't the leading greenhouse gas, anyway -- the politicians assure us that we can bring back the hummingbirds, that we can warm the globe by the requisite several degrees per century.

It may require some slight individual sacrifice. But after all, isn't this all about thinking globally, acting locally?

If all that's required to save the hummingbirds is for each American energy company to switch back to coal-fired power plants -- the kind that generate as much carbon dioxide as possible -- and for each American family to "size up" and buy the largest and "global-warmingest" SUV available, is that really too much to ask? Are you really going to refuse to do your part? To save the hummingbird?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "The Ballad of Carl Drega" and "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/ and http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/.

I suppose we must now accuse German universities for being unable to train competent scientists. Are they really irrational "deniers"?

From: Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com <Morano@ClimateDepot.com>
Subject: BREAKING: 60 German Scientists Dissent Over Global Warming Claims! Call Climate Fears 'Pseudo 'Religion'; Urge Chancellor to 'reconsider' views
To: Morano@ClimateDepot.com
Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2009, 1:01 PM

'Consensus' Takes Another Hit! More than 60 German Scientists Dissent Over Global Warming Claims! Call Climate Fears 'Pseudo 'Religion'; Urge Chancellor to 'reconsider' views
'Growing body of evidence shows anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role'
Tuesday, August 04, 2009 - By Marc Morano - Climate Depot

More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an Open Letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists.

The scientists declared that global warming has become a "pseudo religion" and they noted that rising CO2 has "had no measurable effect" on temperatures. The German scientists, also wrote that the "UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility."

This latest development comes on the heels of a series of inconvenient developments for the promoters of man-made global warming fears, including new peer-reviewed studies, real world data, a growing chorus of scientists dissenting (including more UN IPCC scientists), open revolts in scientific societies and the Earth's failure to warm. In addition, public opinion continues to turn against climate fear promotion. (See "Related Links" at bottom of this article for more inconvenient scientific developments.)

The July 26, 2009 German scientist letter urged Chancellor Merkel to "strongly reconsider" her position on global warming and requested a "convening of an impartial panel" that is "free of ideology" to counter the UN IPCC and review the latest climate science developments.

The scientists, from many disciplines, including physicists, meteorology, chemistry, and geology, explain that "humans have had no measurable effect on global warming through CO2 emissions. Instead the temperature fluctuations have been within normal ranges and are due to natural cycles."

"More importantly, there's a growing body of evidence showing anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role," the scientists wrote. "Indeed CO2's capability to absorb radiation is already exhausted by today's atmospheric concentrations. If CO2 did indeed have an effect and all fossil fuels were burned, then additional warming over the long term would in fact remain limited to only a few tenths of a degree," they added.

"The IPCC had to have been aware of this fact, but completely ignored it during its studies of 160 years of temperature measurements and 150 years of determined CO2 levels. As a result the IPCC has lost its scientific credibility," the scientists wrote.

"Indeed the atmosphere has not warmed since 1998 - more than 10 years, and the global temperature has even dropped significantly since 2003. Not one of the many extremely expensive climate models predicted this. According to the IPCC, it was supposed to have gotten steadily warmer, but just the opposite has occurred," the scientists wrote.

"The belief of climate change, and that it is manmade, has become a pseudo-religion," the scientists wrote. "The German media has sadly taken a leading position in refusing to publicize views that are critical of anthropogenic global warming," they added.

"Do you not believe, Madam Chancellor, that science entails more than just confirming a hypothesis, but also involves testing to see if the opposite better explains reality? We strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this subject and to convene an impartial panel for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one that is free of ideology, and where controversial arguments can be openly debated. We the undersigned would very much like to offer support in this regard.

Full Text of Translated Letter By 61 German Scientists: (emphasis added)

Open Letter - Climate Change
Bundeskanzleramt
Frau Bundeskanzerlin Dr. Angela Merkel
Willy-Brandt-Strabe 1
10557 Berlin
#
Vizerprasident
Dipl. Ing. Michael Limburg
14476 Grob Glienicke
Richard-Wagner-Str. 5a
E-mail: limburg@grafik-system.de
Grob Glienicke 26.07.09
To the attention of the Honorable Madam Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
When one studies history, one learns that the development of societies is often determined by a zeitgeist, which at times had detrimental or even horrific results for humanity. History tells us time and again that political leaders often have made poor decisions because they followed the advice of advisors who were incompetent or ideologues and failed to recognize it in time. Moreover evolution also shows that natural development took a wide variety of paths with most of them leading to dead ends. No era is immune from repeating the mistakes of the past.
Politicians often launch their careers using a topic that allows them to stand out. Earlier as Minister of the Environment you legitimately did this as well by assigning a high priority to climate change. But in doing so you committed an error that has since led to much damage, something that should have never happened, especially given the fact you are a physicist. You confirmed that climate change is caused by human activity and have made it a primary objective to implement expensive strategies to reduce the so-called greenhouse gas CO2. You have done so without first having a real discussion to check whether early temperature measurements and a host of other climate related facts even justify it.
A real comprehensive study, whose value would have been absolutely essential, would have shown, even before the IPCC was founded, that humans have had no measurable effect on global warming through CO2 emissions. Instead the temperature fluctuations have been within normal ranges and are due to natural cycles. Indeed the atmosphere has not warmed since 1998 - more than 10 years, and the global temperature has even dropped significantly since 2003.
Not one of the many extremely expensive climate models predicted this. According to the IPCC, it was supposed to have gotten steadily warmer, but just the opposite has occurred.
More importantly, there's a growing body of evidence showing anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role. Indeed CO2's capability to absorb radiation is already exhausted by today's atmospheric concentrations. If CO2 did indeed have an effect and all fossil fuels were burned, then additional warming over the long term would in fact remain limited to only a few tenths of a degree.
The IPCC had to have been aware of this fact, but completely ignored it during its studies of 160 years of temperature measurements and 150 years of determined CO2 levels. As a result the IPCC has lost its scientific credibility. The main points on this subject are included in the accompanying addendum.
In the meantime, the belief of climate change, and that it is manmade, has become a pseudo-religion. Its proponents, without thought, pillory independent and fact-based analysts and experts, many of whom are the best and brightest of the international scientific community. Fortunately in the internet it is possible to find numerous scientific works that show in detail there is no anthropogenic CO2 caused climate change. If it was not for the internet, climate realists would hardly be able to make their voices heard. Rarely do their critical views get published.
The German media has sadly taken a leading position in refusing to publicize views that are critical of anthropogenic global warming. For example, at the second International Climate Realist Conference on Climate in New York last March, approximately 800 leading scientists attended, some of whom are among the world's best climatologists or specialists in related fields. While the US media and only the Wiener Zeitung (Vienna daily) covered the event, here in Germany the press, public television and radio shut it out. It is indeed unfortunate how our media have developed - under earlier dictatorships the media were told what was not worth reporting. But today they know it without getting instructions.
Do you not believe, Madam Chancellor, that science entails more than just confirming a hypothesis, but also involves testing to see if the opposite better explains reality? We strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this subject and to convene an impartial panel for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one that is free of ideology, and where controversial arguments can be openly debated. We the undersigned would very much like to offer support in this regard.
Respectfully yours,
Prof. Dr.rer.nat. Friedrich-Karl Ewert EIKE
Diplom-Geologe
Universität. - GH - Paderborn, Abt. Höxter (ret.)
#
Dr. Holger Thuß
EIKE President
European Institute for Climate and Energy
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/
Signed by


Marc Morano
Executive Editor/Chief Correspondent
Climate Depot
1875 Eye Street, NW
Fifth Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-536-5052
Morano@ClimateDepot.com
www.ClimateDepot.com

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
1875 Eye Street, NW
Fifth Floor, CFACT
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-536-5052
Morano@ClimateDepot.com
www.ClimateDepot.com

Roger Pink doesn't like me at all, so I ought to have enough standing to say to those of you who dispute the evidence I don't care who you are, or what you do, the facts are simply if you burn everything up, it gets hotter.

Anybody familiar with the idea that any changes in climate perceived to be related to any "global warming" are directly related to solar flare activity and not greenhouse gases ? Many astronomers agree that our solar system is approaching an extremely rare event, our solar system aligning with our galactic center, the center of the milky way.

Our recent history has shown that there are high levels of solar flare activity, and cosmic rays of all kinds penetrating our sun's heliosphere (our protective barrier-magnetic shield), which correlates to the aforementioned theory, that galactic alignment itself is interfering with our sun's protective heliosphere. Such protection shields us from all sorts of waves, gamma, UV, you name it, and we are currently being bombarded with more energy than ever before (or in recent recorded history for the perfectionists).

Anybody familiar with any of this ?

It seems to me there are many things people do not talk about regarding global warming (remember also in the 70's I believe it was global "cooling"). There is so much talk of how "mankind" is the problem, average citizens of the world, with their cars, yadda yadda, but no mention of the impact on the environment of the military industrial complex, the wars, the fact that almost all of the natural "sinks" (look it up if you do not know what a sink is) in the world are all but gone, nuclear testing above, below ground, and probably a cornucopia of other sources never talked about. Hell, I bet a good way to refer to our planet is "irradiated earth" the way we have so many waves of all kinds being bounced around all over the place.

Seems like when "experts" get together, the blame is widespread yet no finger pointing is aimed their way. And these "experts" feel that taxation (CAP AND TRADE) is the way to combat such problems ? So the citizens of the world bail out everybody else, while the citizens suffer through unimaginable new proposed tax structures condemning them and their future lineage to lives of uncertainty and probable depths of poverty. Way to go fellas. Just remember, the world you are trying to create you must live in also, and the more you destroy, the less there will be for all of us INCLUDING YOU.

Maybe "unequivocal" was the wrong word for this thread. "Equivocal" would seem to be more apropos.

Climate is warming because it is a natural cycle of about 1,000 years.

Man's influence on this is negligible.

If man's influence was significant, the medieval warm period would be much cooler than now. In fact it was warmer. How do we know?

1. Wheat was grown in Greenland

2. Grapes grew wild on the Canadian East coast (as recorded by the Vikings)

3. There were 33 commercial vineyards in Britain at the time of the Norman conquest (1066?).

4. Records from the time show the French complaining about competition from English wines

5. The area under irrigation in the Takla Makan desert was greater than is possible now because of increased run off from the Tibetan glaciers. The Chinese have stretched irrigation of this area to the maximum achievable now.

The list could be multiplied from recorded history.

Present claims of anthropogenic warming have to ignore the facts of recorded history.

History records various warm periods:

Minoan, about 1,000 years later

Roman, about 1,000 years later

Medieval, about 1,000 years late

Present warm period.

This sequence would favor the current warm period being simply a natural cycle, but has man's activities contributed to this warm cycle?

If man has contributed significantly to this warm cycle, then the present cycle would be warmer than the medieval warm cycle. In fact the medieval was significantly warmer - wheat grown in Greenland, wild grapes in Eastern Canada and Newfoundland, British wines a serious competitor to French wines, etc. This indicates man's contribution to this warm cycle has been negligible.

As a corollary it makes it likely that the evidence quoted to support anthropogenic warming is probably due to misinterpretation of the evidence.