An Inconvenient Scientist

[Lurker]

Awesome Wikipedia cut and paste, Jecks! The climate scientists (thousands of them; an overwhelming majority) that thought global warming was caused by human activity have been soundly crushed by this detailed proof to the contrary. And in an homage to the deniers tendency to bury actual information, you even removed people from the list that didn't fit your point. Nicely done.

[Harlowe]

D'oh...right from Wiki.

[Trollbait]

I actually got that list from my friend who teaches at Ohio State and the only person I removed was Dr. Gray since his comments are already listed in this thread.

If my friend got it from Wiki then oh well...the citations are accurate quotes from real scientists.

See, unlike you I prefer to listen to all sides of a scientific discussion before making up my mind.

At the present time there is not enough evidence to definitively state that climate change is being caused primarily by humans.

You can yell about thousand's of scientists and consensus all you want but yelling will not put the evidence on the table.

Now, aside from your typical reaction of attacking the source and ignoring the content, do you have anything meaningful to add or would you like to have a go at refuting these scientists?

To be honest I posted them for Harlowes benefit and not yours since she is obviously not a global warming religious zealot and is open to have an honest discussion on the topic.

[Lurker]

See, unlike you I prefer to listen to all sides of a scientific discussion before making up my mind.

I have no problem listening to all sides. Listening to demonstrably false talking points is another matter. I'm not anti-skeptic; I'm anti-denier.

At the present time there is not enough evidence to definitively state that climate change is being caused primarily by humans.

Not true.

You can yell about thousand's of scientists and consensus all you want but yelling will not put the evidence on the table.

There's a mountain of evidence presented by the overwhelming majority of scientists that agree human activity is the main driver of current warming. I'm not yelling, merely stating a fact.

Now, aside from your typical reaction of attacking the source and ignoring the content, do you have anything meaningful to add or would you like to have a go at refuting these scientists?

Which was the whole point for vomiting up a huge cut-and-paste in the first place. Let's see... how much time should I spend refuting each scientist while you just move on to the next cut-and-paste? I'll go with zero.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Post your "evidence" Lurker. It should be easy since "thousands" of scientists purportedly see humans as the PRIMARY cause of global warming. You keep saying the evidence is overwhelming, but all I see you doing is just parroting the same words over and over and over and over and over and over.... without posting any legitimate source for your statements.

[Rsak]

Does this mountain of evidence contain any actual proof that the theories are correct?

[Lurker]

Post your "evidence" Lurker.

IPCC Report for starters.

You keep saying the evidence is overwhelming, but all I see you doing is just parroting the same words over and over and over and over and over and over.... without posting any legitimate source for your statements.

Wow. Talk about the most extreme case of projection ever. Coming from someone that went some 13 pages in the other thread making the same demonstrably false statements over and over, moving from one to the next and then back again, without backing any of it up ... just wow.

[Trollbait]

The very same IPCC report that is severly questioned by the scientists I named and quoted?

I will take that to mean you have jack, nil, and dick.

I am a skeptic.

I have not posted talking points.

I have posted legitimate scientists with legitiment concerns.

All you have posted are the ranting of a religious zealot.

[Partha]

You did realize that even Richard Lindzen thinks Gray is full of it, correct?

[Lurker]

I am a skeptic.

I have not posted talking points.

I have posted legitimate scientists with legitiment concerns.

HA! Your original post was about Dr Gray claiming nearly every scientist on the planet was committing fraud to get grant money and you call that a legitimate concern? You then post something you got from a friend who copied a Wiki article. You have no idea if those scientists were quoted accurately and in context or if their statements are based in research or just opinion. You've done no research or fact checking at all about any of this. Some skeptic.

I'll get more into this later, but one quick reply... the hockey-stick data presented by Gore has largely been discredited by the scientfic community. Even the people who agree with Gore admit it. The data used to create that graph was misinterpreted, leading to a mathematical artifact that mispresented the true picture.

How you can deny that is imcomprehensible to me.

Hey, Embar, if you do nothing else in this thread, please back up your statement that the "hockey stick" "misrepresented the true picture" and was "largely discredited by the scientific community".

[Partha]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opini ... an.html?hp

Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing. In this case, people have to be given a reason to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. We know that such policies work: the U.S. “cap and trade” system of emission permits on sulfur dioxide has been highly successful at reducing acid rain.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

[Trollbait]

You have no idea if those scientists were quoted accurately and in context or if their statements are based in research or just opinion. You've done no research or fact checking at all about any of this.

Says the man who has yet to post a relevant quote, article, or fact of any kind in this discussion.

That is also a VERY large assumption to make. I recieved that list some days ago from my friend and since have had time to verify that much of what these scientists are saying is true.

We simply do not have enough data to prove any theory that global warming is primarily man made. If you have such evidence please produce it now.

To assert that all the data is in and man induced global warming is proven science is ridiculous and you would know that if you were not a religious fanatic.

[Lurker]

We simply do not have enough data to prove any theory that global warming is primarily man made. If you have such evidence please produce it now.

I'd have as much luck trying to explain the Theory of Evolution to someone that doesn't believe in it. Sorry, Jecks, but with a theory as widely researched and accepted as human caused climate change the ball is in your court, as a skeptic, to knock it down. That takes more than just repeating statements that are proveably false.

You and Embar are the perfect examples of deniers, not skeptics.

For example, Embar said the 'hockey stick' data was 'largely discredited by the scientific community' and that it 'misrepresented the true picture'. Those are denier talking points, because while a skeptic found minor errors in the Mann study, only a denier ignores the fact that fixing those minor errors did not alter the graph very much; the true picture was unchanged. Not only that, the graph has been reinforced by more recent studies, all of which ended up in the latest IPCC report.

Another example was when Embar said "temeratures in the lower troposphere, where greenhouse gas effects are expected to be as large or larger than lower atmosphere effects, have been very stable from 1958 onward, and have been trending downward ince 1979." This was as clear a sign as any that Embar was not a skeptic, he was a denier. He made a totally false statement (the temperature trend was upwards, not downwards), relying on talking points eight years out of date.

Nobody has claimed to have proven that human activity is causing global warming, but the IPCC is over 90 percent confident we're the cause and the vast majority of scientists hold the same view. My reading of the studies supporting the theory and my experience with people who don't also leads me to conclude we're the cause of current warming. Once a denier gets beyond vague statements like 'we do not have enough data' things fall apart very quickly. I haven't seen a single specific statement against the theory that has withstood scrutiny.

[Trollbait]

That sums up your religious zealotry of the topic quite well, Lurker.

You claim I am a denier and then you proceed to list everything Embar said. How does what Embar said make me a denier?

Sorry, Jecks, but with a theory as widely researched and accepted as human caused climate change the ball is in your court, as a skeptic, to knock it down.

That is a huge cop out either because you are lazy or because you have no way to support your position with solid evidence.

I am asking for the evidence. Please produce it.

Nobody has claimed to have proven that human activity is causing global warming

Now we are getting somewhere.

See, to you, anyone who does not tow the Al Gore line must be a denier. That is the easiest way to identify a religious fanatic...you just cannot abide anyone who questions your position.

I would like you to address the the statements from the scientists I posted. Please demonstrate what is wrong with their statements starting at the top.

[Lurker]

That is a huge cop out either because you are lazy or because you have no way to support your position with solid evidence.

I am asking for the evidence. Please produce it.

Too funny. You demand evidence while summarily dismissing the evidence, and then state with confidence that we just don't seem to have enough information to make a judgement. After all, what is the most comprehensive report to date by an international panel of thousands of scientists when weighed against a few quotes on Wikipedia?

Now we are getting somewhere.

See, to you, anyone who does not tow the Al Gore line must be a denier. That is the easiest way to identify a religious fanatic...you just cannot abide anyone who questions your position.

I'm not sure how that follows from what you quoted, but I've been pretty clear on the difference between a skeptic and a denier. A skeptic challenges the theory; a denier makes proveably false statements or ignores the data altogether.

I would like you to address the the statements from the scientists I posted. Please demonstrate what is wrong with their statements starting at the top.

You said you have verified "that much of what these scientists are saying is true." Why don't you pick the best one, list what you found showing the statement is supported by evidence and not just their opinion, and then I'll address it.

[Rsak]

Your original post was about Dr Gray claiming nearly every scientist on the planet was committing fraud to get grant money and you call that a legitimate concern?

It damn well is a legitimate concern. If you have young scientists learning their trade and seeing the kind of money they can be given by doing global climate research and how much more money they can be given if they have "positive" results through more research grants, corporate funding, and other sources. Greed is a strong motivating factor and has plagued other professions for ages and it is delusional to think that scientists are above that.

Now having said that just because it is a legitimate concern does not mean that Gray is necessarily accurate in making that statement without evidence. At the moment it remains an opinion which ultimately doesn't factor into the larger questions of Global Climate.

Claiming scientists are 90% certain is pretty silly as well because they are only spouting more opinions. Science is based on provable theories/laws and peer review/reproducibility. We simply haven't proven anything at this point. Not the "Holy word or our prophet Gore" or the "Satanical denials of ostriches sticking their heads in th sand". Until we actually have any proof I suggest we stick to the actual science of the matter, but if you are still bound and determined to stay political then why don't you go back and answer the questions I posed earlier?

1. Is Global Warming a bad thing?
2. Can Human actually stop it?
3. What kind of society and civilization will we have then?

[Trollbait]

How about this one

Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Combined with thise one

Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated...Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away

?

Now when you look up the claim of CO2 levels 450 million years ago it is accepted that it was a time of extremely high CO2 levels and extremely low temperatures.

It is also not arguable that as the CO2 reaches the upper atmosphere it will "give away" it's absorbed heat.

Why then does the reports you cite make the claim that anthropogenic activities resulting in increased CO2 emissions are primarily responsible for global warming when increased CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be demonstrably proven to be the sole cause of increased temperature?

I can see a causation effect if you take into account a recent significant increase in solar activity where the increase of solar activity combined with the increase in emissions would cause a warming trend and in that case you could say that 1/3 to 1/2 of the cause is anthropogenic. That is to say that in a normal period of solar activity the CO2 would exchange it's stored heat as it rises in the atmosphere but because of increased solar activity that heat is not being released at a normal rate.

If that is the case then as the period of solar activity diminishes and CO2 emissions remain constant then the warming trend should either stagnate or reverse itself.

[Partha]

Jesus Christ, are you people myopic. You'd think the entire world consisted solely of a temperature gauge and a CO2 reader.

Do any of you deniers happen to know what life was like on the planet 450M years ago? You're trying to compare apples to hockey pucks.

Truth is, 450 million years ago is when the first plants appeared on land. They were slow and inefficient at scrubbing out CO2, so they were a negligible impactor on CO2 levels. Now, however, we have the majority of the land masses of the earth covered in green things that eat CO2 - and levels are STILL rising.

You know what chemicals are produced by modern industrial practices like burning coal - or you should. You can measure exactly how much CO2 they're putting into the air. How you deny that humans are influencing the condition of the planet by a level unseen in modern life history of the planet is beyond belief.

[Ddrak]

How you deny that humans are influencing the condition of the planet by a level unseen in modern life history of the planet is beyond belief.

Influence? Of course. The question is how that influence compares to other influences and how stable the equilibrium is. They are all actually very difficult questions, but that doesn't mean that minimizing our influence is a bad thing in the near term.

Dd

[Partha]

That's the really buggy thing about it, Dd. We're having an influence, no debate necessary. To try and apportion it before working on fixing it is the worst kind of juvenile behavior, when the worst case scenario means the destruction of our way of life. After all, no one has YET connected the dots on the right to the kind of resource fights we'll be having in the future as the climate changes, or how it's ALREADY starting in places like the Congo. What happens when India or Pakistan decides they REALLY need any water stored in Kashmir to keep their own country afloat?

I'd rather plan for the worst and hope for the best. The deniers among us want to stick their heads in the sand and wait for Godot to come and save them in the nick of time with his Enviro-Ray.