The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

[c1ue]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

As I said, the denialists can only rely on the deception of pseudoscience to fool the uninformed into believing the junk they spew. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but apparently you can fool the denialists all the time.

So you're saying the data is false?

Or merely that the publishing journal is biased against AGW?

Because one is not equivalent to the other.

For that matter I could say anything published in Scientific American or the Stern Review is equally biased based on clear editorial agendas.

[c1ue]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

10 more 'peer reviewed' papers, plus an article from someone whom will no doubt be called a 'denialist':

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doo...imate-hysteria

Resisting climate hysteria

by Richard S. Lindzen
July 26, 2009

A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface. Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man (Lindzen, 2007, Douglass et al, 2007). This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising (though inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community).

It turns out that there is a much more fundamental and unambiguous check of the role of feedbacks in enhancing greenhouse warming that also shows that all models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. Here, it must be noted that the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2). The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative -- strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity.

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man. This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years. Modelers defend this situation by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming, and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution (Smith et al, 2007). Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past fourteen years is acknowledged. It should be noted that, more recently, German modelers have moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).

Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980's, global cooling in the 1970's, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.

References:

Barkstrom, B.R., 1984: The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 65, 1170–1185.

Douglass,D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearsona and S. F. Singer, 2007: A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions, Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651

Keenlyside, N.S., M. Lateef, et al, 2008: Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Nature, 453, 84-88.

Lindzen, R.S. and Y.-S. Choi, 2009: On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, accepted Geophys. Res. Ltrs.

Lindzen, R.S., 2007: Taking greenhouse warming seriously. Energy & Environment, 18, 937-950.

Ramanathan, V., M.V. Ramana, et al, 2007: Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption, Nature, 448, 575-578.

Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E. Taylor, T. M. L. Wigley, J. R. Lanzante, S. Solomon, M. Free, P. J. Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R. Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood, and F. J. Wentz, 2008: Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere, Intl. J. of Climatology, 28, 1703-1722.

Smith, D.M., S. Cusack, A.W. Colman, C.K. Folland, G.R. Harris, J.M. Murphy, 2007: Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model, Science, 317, 796-799.

Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov, 2007: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288

Wong, T., B. A. Wielicki, et al., 2006: Reexamination of the observed decadal variability of the earth radiation budget using altitude-corrected ERBE/ERBS nonscanner WFOV Data, J. Climate, 19, 4028–4040.

[Glenn Black]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Capitalism, communism, fascism, environmentalism?

What's the common factor?

Human greed.

Isn't that one of the 7 Deadly Sins?

Greed caused liar loans, and Wall St. collapse.

It will be the death of us all.

Once upon a time, a playboy was tired of waking up every morning with a terrible hangover. He decided to conduct an experiment to confirm the cause, as his Doctor told him it was his drinking. First night, he drank only gin and water. Second night, he drank only whiskey & water. Third night, he drank only vodka & water. Since he had a massive hangover each morning, he concluded the only common factor was the cause, so decided to stop drinking water.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

10 more 'peer reviewed' papers, plus an article from someone whom will no doubt be called a 'denialist':

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doo...imate-hysteria

Excellent post. Thank-you.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

10 more 'peer reviewed' papers, plus an article from someone whom will no doubt be called a 'denialist':

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doo...imate-hysteria

Thanks C1UE for posting an outstanding article (above). With snow once again this July 2009 in Edmonton, Alberta and near record cold being recorded throughout portions of North America, I reflect upon the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) psuedo-science and read from the article above:

"That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community." ( Richard S. Lindzen, July 26, 2009 )

When I look at Hansen's march of temperatures upward and can barely see the year 1991, the year without a summer, the year of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, I know the temperature data to compile that graph has been cooked.

[we_are_toast]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

10 more 'peer reviewed' papers, plus an article from someone whom will no doubt be called a 'denialist':

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doo...imate-hysteria

:p
I randomly chose a couple of the 10 peer reviewed papers that you claim is a paper that supports the denialists position of no man made global warming.

One of course is the "Energy & Environment" publication which is kind of the Fox news/heritage foundation of the fake science journals and was discredited in a previous post.

The other is a real peer reviewed science journal article which has been laughably misrepresented to try and make it sound like the authors reject man made global warming. It's a paper about whether natural variation in the climate is enough to temporarily offset the man made global warming, that the authors fully acknowledge.

...and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing...

Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture06921.html

:p
Now if you want to argue the degree of anthropogenic warming, or whether natural variation will temporarily add to or subtract from the warming, then you're in the game. If you want to stay a flat earther and deny the overwhelming data and consensus, then all you'll have is the Fox news science journals and the misrepresentation of real science.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

I think I don't agree with the so-called, "projected anthropogenic forcing of the climate", or to translate from your Greenspanese: your projected man-made global emission rate of CO2 into the atmosphere which you figure, according to your models must warm the atmosphere over a given period of time by a model-derived (concocked) amount of temperature.

The entire issue here is how much does CO2 warm the atmosphere, and I would guess very very little at the current rate of increase of CO2 onto the current base of 400 or 450 parts per million. No-one knows, and your models don't know either.

The key reason why no-one knows what the effect of CO2 is on climate is that no-one knows exactly why the Earth is coming out of an Ice Age, and no-one knows how to measure the Earth's natural warming due to the fact that the Earth has been coming out of an Ice Age for 10,000 years....So don't tell me that your models know how to subtract natural warming of the Earth from man-made warming due to CO2.

As for your comments about FOX, I would agree with you. Sorry that I quoted FOX because I do not like that whole bunch at FOX any more than you like them, as far as trustworthiness (sp?). But thumbing thru climate data from NOAA about actual observed temperature this year in North America, we are having a cold year, in many if not most locations. The year has been so cold as to drive-up natural gas futures prices on the commodity market, in anticipation of a cold winter ahead. So the comments taken from FOX about this being the coldest summer after the coldest spring in the last 37 years in the north-east USA appear to be correct.

And as for the issue of selecting or concockting (sp?) temperature data to use in your model or Hansen's model, no science worthy of the name ever pre-selects or alters data to fit a model. Sadly, this is where we are now thanks to the grants and money involved in obtaining pre-selected model results to fit the man-made global warming hysteria.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

But thumbing thru climate data from NOAA about actual observed temperature this year in North America, we are having a cold year, in many if not most locations. The year has been so cold as to drive-up natural gas futures prices on the commodity market, in anticipation of a cold winter ahead. So the comments taken from FOX about this being the coldest summer after the coldest spring in the last 37 years in the north-east USA appear to be correct.

And none of you gave so much as a single thought as to how much heat needs to be soaked up by the amount of ice that needed to melt to cool down the temperature of an enormous volume of atmosphere over an entire continent; not just for a day or two, but for months on end.

Here in the UK we are having the same thing. But the text books on aviation weather show that, if you stand with your back to the wind the low is on your left. The atmosphere rotates around the low and the warm air carries right around the low to end up melting even more ice, NORTH of your location...... where the air is cold.

Give me strength....

[c1ue]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Now if you want to argue the degree of anthropogenic warming, or whether natural variation will temporarily add to or subtract from the warming, then you're in the game. If you want to stay a flat earther and deny the overwhelming data and consensus, then all you'll have is the Fox news science journals and the misrepresentation of real science.

Yes, and again you make it clear what your point of view truly is.

The full excerpt:

The climate of the North Atlantic region exhibits fluctuations on decadal timescales that have large societal consequences. Prominent examples include hurricane activity in the Atlantic¹, and surface-temperature and rainfall variations over North America², Europe³ and northern Africa⁴. Although these multidecadal variations are potentially predictable if the current state of the ocean is known^{5, 6, 7}, the lack of subsurface ocean observations⁸ that constrain this state has been a limiting factor for realizing the full skill potential of such predictions⁹. Here we apply a simple approach—that uses only sea surface temperature (SST) observations—to partly overcome this difficulty and perform retrospective decadal predictions with a climate model. Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state¹⁰, particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.

Note this paper doesn't attack or support AGW - it merely states that even assuming existing AGW temperature increase projections, the actual observable net temperature effect will be zero for the next decade.

If this happens then the models are WRONG, because the models assume temperature increases over time as CO2 ppm increases.

Which is what Lindzen pointed out in the article to begin with.

There are other possibilities as well:

a) temperature may go down dramatically
b) AGW may be exaggerated.

Apparently in your point of view, predictions that global temperatures will go down or stay even for the next 10 years still means AGW is dramatic and requires eco-Nazi tactics.

To hammers, all problems are nails.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Two reports just to add to my last point about the cold air further down the globe tells us about the warmer conditions further North.

| Northern Sea Route Through Arctic Becomes a Reality |
| from the admiral-peary-i-presume dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Wednesday July 29, @08:10 (Transportation) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/29/0052242 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "Andrew Revkin writes in the NY Times that since 1553, when Sir Hugh Willoughby led an expedition north in search of a sea passage over Russia to the Far East, mariners have dreamed of a [1]Northern Sea Route through Russia's Arctic ocean that could cut thousands of miles compared with alternate routes. A voyage between Hamburg and Yokohama is only 6,600 nm. via the Northern Sea Route b�
[2]less than 60% of the 11,400 nm. Suez route. Now in part because of [3]warming and the retreat and thinning of Arctic sea ice in summer, this northern sea route is becoming a reality with the 12,700-ton 'Beluga Fraternity,' designed for a mix of ice and open seas, [4]poised to make what appears to be the first such trip. The German ship picked up equipment in Ulsan, South Korea, on July 23 and arrived in Vladivostok on the 25th with a final destination at the docks in Novyy Port, a Siberian outpost. After that, if conditions permit, it will head to Antwerp or Rotterdam, marking what company officials say would be the first time a vessel has crossed from Asia to Europe through the Arctic on a commercial passage."
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/07/29/0052242
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/era-of-trans-arctic-shipping-nigh/
2. http://www.fni.no/INSROP/konf.htm
3. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/more-on-thinning-arctic-sea-ice/
4. http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=908938&cid=128

And:

Greenland Comes in from the Cold

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...nt/8167211.stm

[Starving Steve]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Yes, and again you make it clear what your point of view truly is.

The full excerpt:



Note this paper doesn't attack or support AGW - it merely states that even assuming existing AGW temperature increase projections, the actual observable net temperature effect will be zero for the next decade.

If this happens then the models are WRONG, because the models assume temperature increases over time as CO2 ppm increases.

Which is what Lindzen pointed out in the article to begin with.

There are other possibilities as well:

a) temperature may go down dramatically
b) AGW may be exaggerated.

Apparently in your point of view, predictions that global temperatures will go down or stay even for the next 10 years still means AGW is dramatic and requires eco-Nazi tactics.

To hammers, all problems are nails.

We are entering into the El Nino phase of the broader 11 or 12 year El Nino/La Nina cycle in the Pacific Ocean. This cycle appears to co-relate with the cycle(s) of sunspots on the Sun.

Right now, the El Nino phase means warmer surface sea temperatures on the east side of the Pacific, and cooler surface sea temperatures on the west side of the Pacific. This would mean a tendancy toward warmer and wetter years on the east side of the Pacific in both the northern and the southern hemisphere, and it would mean a tendancy toward cooler and drier years on the west side of the Pacific basin, again in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

The El Nino developing means fewer and weaker typhoons on the west side of the Pacific basin because of cooler surface sea temperatures. But the developing El Nino means stronger and more frequent hurricanes on the east side of the tropical Pacific because of warmer surface sea temperatures.

For the Atlantic--- and this is really stretching the climatology data--- this might also mean warmer and wetter in the east side of the Atlantic basin, and cooler and drier conditions on the west side of the Atlantic basin. This might imply fewer and weaker hurricanes on the west side of the Atlantic and stronger winter storms on the east side of the Atlantic. This might even imply some drought relief for Morocco and also some drought relief ahead for south-west Africa.

As far as so-called man-made global warming is concerned ( "AGW climate forcing", to write in the Greenspanese of the eco-frauds nowadays ), there is little or none now to affect the El Nino and the later La Nina arriving around 2014 or 2015. The Earth's climate will be driven mostly by storms on the Sun (which co-relate nicely with the El Nino/La Nina cycle) and not by the models concocked (sp?) by Hansen and his bunch at NOAA.

[radon]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Sorry, but a little bit of knowledge in a complex subject is completely meaningless.

So why are you quoting journalists?

I've worked with computer models for years - does that make me an expert on climate models? It does not.

What I can say about models is that they can do whatever you want them to. A complex model is millions or even hundreds of millions of lines of code. At this level of complexity - the only way to validate its behavior is to run batteries of tests to see if real world behavior is met.

Anyone who isn't intimately involved in this process of development and testing is no better than the marketing guy.

So why not take the data and charts as published and comment on them directly? There is no need to edit them.

And as I've said many many times - the inability of existing models to even predict the last couple of Ice Ages bodes poorly for their ability to predict the future.

There are many models, some are better than others. You seem to be of the position that all the work and data gathered since then is invalid because some 20 year old model that ran on a computer with less power than my desktop was inaccurate?

Of course it is going to be inaccurate, but show it for what is was worth. Exaggerating the inaccuracy by editing the chart does nothing for your credibility.

Yes, your graph. The source graph of both the GISS and the UAH data (non-satellite vs. satellite) is direct from GISS. Thus the point is that there is a peculiar anomaly why the GISS earth data is so different from the GISS satellite data. Others have pointed out that the GISS earth surveying stations do not take into account urbanization around the stations in the past 20 years, but I haven't bothered.

No the chart I posted aggregates both land station and satellite data. What you never bothered to do was read about was the chart creation methodology.

The simple point is that the cherry picking being done is not by me - but rather by you and the AGW crowd. I continue to point that the satellite data shows significantly different temperature behavior than the earth-based data.

Instead of looking at the data you developed an opinion first and then went on an expedition to find obscure papers to justify it. The "AGW" crowd, as you put it, is looking at the warming trend and trying to find out why it is accruing.

As for Hansen: you again failed to reconcile how Hansen's own words in the Hansen co-authored paper I posted that 'Scenario A' was "the high side of reality" - which is what he told Congress. Thus any misrepresentation is not by anyone other than Hansen himself - and irregardless the jury is still out as to whether Scenario B or Scenario C are correct even though Scenario C is with full compliance to the Hansen eco-Nazi regime. Scenario A is clearly WRONG.

So what? Does that somehow justify editing a chart he published to misrepresent his position? That is pretty dishonest.

I have never said that warming cannot be occurring - what I have said is that it is inconclusive that the majority of said warming is due to man-made CO2.

The papers I have pointed out from a cursory search (all published in the last 2 months) all point to the man-made component of warming being less than originally estimated by IPCC and others.

If the man-made component of warming is 0.18 degrees C, then the need for draconian eco-Nazi crap is much less than if the man-made component of warming is 3 to 5 degrees C.

Once again like many of the AGW crowd - you seem to think that disagreement with your position means I think the earth is cooling, or that warming is entirely natural, or any number of other straw man positions.

No, what I object to is an argument based purely on rhetoric with the intent to sway the uninformed.

[c1ue]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

So why are you quoting journalists?

I've pointed out arguments posted by both the journalist in question and also the MIT climate scientist who personally worked on the IPCC paper. Yet I still see no so-called scientific or rational view on the peer reviewed papers nor the concepts therein - instead you continue to try and attack the source.

So why not take the data and charts as published and comment on them directly? There is no need to edit them.

...

No the chart I posted aggregates both land station and satellite data. What you never bothered to do was read about was the chart creation methodology.

...

So what? Does that somehow justify editing a chart he published to misrepresent his position? That is pretty dishonest.

Again, you are trying to pin some chart modifications on me when in fact every single chart I posted came from either Hansen himself or someone else. Once again you are trying to obfuscate the information by attacking the source rather than speaking to the data.

More importantly I am not the one advocating massive societal changes; as I noted before when a so-called scientist crosses over from exploration and analysis to advocacy, the burden of proof is on this scientist and not on any of his detractors.

You seem to be of the position that all the work and data gathered since then is invalid because some 20 year old model that ran on a computer with less power than my desktop was inaccurate?

My position has been very clear long before this thread: that models purporting to predict catastrophic future temperature increases due to man-made CO2 are worthless if they cannot even replicate near past temperature behavior - specifically the recent mini-Ice Age in Europe and the warming period before that. Even the Hansen organization modeler himself said that the models aren't very good for long term predictions, yet huge changes are being advocated based on these models.

Even merely in the month of July a number of papers have come up which question a number of the underlying assumptions behind the models as well as the IPCC report based on said models. Yet again rather than try to explain or understand, I'm still seeing just plain old attacks on the source.

The few attempts to actually look at the papers so far have all shown no apparent understanding of what the papers speak of.

So you can continue to try and pretend that Hansen's and others' various models represent various states of reality when it is not clear to me that ANY of them are real.

No, what I object to is an argument based purely on rhetoric with the intent to sway the uninformed.

Yes, I see how you are yourself arguing based on data. Perhaps you might show some of it instead of continuing to attack countervailing positions (and failing).

Some more data - as opposed to rhetoric:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/sc...ewanted=2&_r=3

A panel of 12 scientists assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that the May 2013 peak will average 90 sunspots during that month. That would make it the weakest solar maximum since 1928, which peaked at 78 sunspots. During an average solar maximum, the Sun is covered with an average of 120 sunspots.

But the panel’s consensus “was not a unanimous decision,” said Douglas A. Biesecker, chairman of the panel. One member still believed the cycle would roar to life while others thought the maximum would peter out at only 70.

Among some global warming skeptics, there is speculation that the Sun may be on the verge of falling into an extended slumber similar to the so-called Maunder Minimum, several sunspot-scarce decades during the 17th and 18th centuries that coincided with an extended chilly period.

The idea that solar cycles are related to climate is hard to fit with the actual change in energy output from the sun. From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun’s energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent.

But the overlap of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age, when Europe experienced unusually cold weather, suggests that the solar cycle could have more subtle influences on climate.

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.
Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

But other scientists found no such pattern with higher clouds, and some other observations seem inconsistent with the hypothesis.

Terry Sloan, a cosmic ray expert at the University of Lancaster in England, said if the idea were true, one would expect the cloud-generation effect to be greatest in the polar regions where the Earth’s magnetic field tends to funnel cosmic rays.

“You’d expect clouds to be modulated in the same way,” Dr. Sloan said. “We can’t find any such behavior.” Still, “I would think there could well be some effect,” he said, but he thought the effect was probably small. Dr. Sloan’s findings indicate that the cosmic rays could at most account for 20 percent of the warming of recent years.

Even without cosmic rays, however, a 0.1 percent change in the Sun’s energy output is enough to set off El Niņo- and La Niņa-like events that can influence weather around the world, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Climate modeling showed that over the largely cloud-free areas of the Pacific Ocean, the extra heating over several years warms the water, increasing evaporation. That intensifies the tropical storms and trade winds in the eastern Pacific, and the result is cooler-than-normal waters, as in a La Niņa event, the scientists reported this month in the Journal of Climate.

A reasonably balanced article - note the key point: there is still much to learn.

This is the same cosmic ray thesis which is pooh poohed by the AGW crowd as being irrelevant. Yes, irrelevant if not supporting the view of the pious...

[radon]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

I've pointed out arguments posted by both the journalist in question and also the MIT climate scientist who personally worked on the IPCC paper. Yet I still see no so-called scientific or rational view on the peer reviewed papers nor the concepts therein - instead you continue to try and attack the source.

Posting papers which are either factually incorrect or do not support the views you attributed them does not falsify AGW.

Again, you are trying to pin some chart modifications on me when in fact every single chart I posted came from either Hansen himself or someone else. Once again you are trying to obfuscate the information by attacking the source rather than speaking to the data.

More importantly I am not the one advocating massive societal changes; as I noted before when a so-called scientist crosses over from exploration and analysis to advocacy, the burden of proof is on this scientist and not on any of his detractors.

Whether you modified it or not, it is still does not represent Hansen's position. Maybe you were in a hurry and grabbed a chart without vetting its source. Whether this was deliberate or accidental doesn't make it less of a straw man.

My position has been very clear long before this thread: that models purporting to predict catastrophic future temperature increases due to man-made CO2 are worthless if they cannot even replicate near past temperature behavior - specifically the recent mini-Ice Age in Europe and the warming period before that. Even the Hansen organization modeler himself said that the models aren't very good for long term predictions, yet huge changes are being advocated based on these models.

Even merely in the month of July a number of papers have come up which question a number of the underlying assumptions behind the models as well as the IPCC report based on said models. Yet again rather than try to explain or understand, I'm still seeing just plain old attacks on the source.

Nearly every single one of your posts have been riddled with invectives attacking Hansen, and yet, you seem to take issue with me refuting articles that are factually incorrect, misleading, and possibly politically motivated.

The few attempts to actually look at the papers so far have all shown no apparent understanding of what the papers speak of.

I started by actually reading the first few that were posted in this forum. Their quality was quite poor. So poor in fact that I have stopped wasting my time. It is far easier to grab the headlines from a crackpot website and post it without reading than it is to go through a paper and point out all the flaws. Perhaps I'll just start posting studies that support AGW instead.

So you can continue to try and pretend that Hansen's and others' various models represent various states of reality when it is not clear to me that ANY of them are real.



Yes, I see how you are yourself arguing based on data. Perhaps you might show some of it instead of continuing to attack countervailing positions (and failing).

You know you can go to those organizations you hate and download many data sets, and play with them yourself if you are so inclined. You obviously know how to get to GISS and other for information and supporting studies. I've linked them before. You don't even read them because they they do not support your position.

I give you GISS et al charts and data supporting my position and you give me books by sensationalist hacks, obscure papers, and other internet flotsam. And down below the pattern continues, you give me a times article and I link to an actual paper. That doesn't seem like much of a trade to me.

Some more data - as opposed to rhetoric:

A times article is not data; Furthermore there is quite a bit of debate on whether the effect is real. Well balanced, does not mean correct. This isn't Fox News.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9..._2_024001.html

A reasonably balanced article - note the key point: there is still much to learn.

This is the same cosmic ray thesis which is pooh poohed by the AGW crowd as being irrelevant. Yes, irrelevant if not supporting the view of the pious...

Irrelevant as in not statistically significant.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

I would welcome you to post articles that support the AGW hypothesis. The closer we look at the data which supporters of the AGW hypothesis are using, the easier it may be to blow this AGW thesis out of the water.

For the young kids who may read this, AGW is anthropogenic global warming, which to speak in plain English is man-made global warming. The AGW thesis blames CO2 on the warming of the world.

In a day or two, I will post some of the record or near record cold July mean temperatures now being recorded by the National Weather Service throughout the lower Midwest and the North-east U.S. We also are below normal near here at San Francisco Airport. (The data is just coming in now.) ;)