tom
and if we had "record levels" of CO2 wouldn't it follow that we would have record warmth? But some reports say we are warming, some show cooling, some go this way, some go that way so it became easier to drop "Global warming" and embrace "Climate Change". We can't even get real good data that does not need to be recalculated and massaged, yet you continue to drink the Kool Aid

Tom if you actually have data that shows cooling, please link it...

GMTom wrote:and if we had "record levels" of CO2 wouldn't it follow that we would have record warmth? But some reports say we are warming, some show cooling, some go this way, some go that way so it became easier to drop "Global warming" and embrace "Climate Change". We can't even get real good data that does not need to be recalculated and massaged, yet you continue to drink the Kool Aid

Tom, all raw data needs to be normalised, for a great many reasons.

Still, using satellite data (which doesn't have the problems that ground-based measurements do), 2010 was one of the warmest years on record. Of the warmest 10 years, all are in the last 12 years. The trend is generally upwards over periods longer than a decade. If you are going to fixate on the 1998 outlier not being beaten, what will you do when it is - if it wasn't already by 2010?

I'd take what you say about the scientific method if I thought you understood it. How about you try to apply it to pure maths, and show how it works there. To saveyou some effot, the answer is that the traditional 'Method' does not work for pure maths, because experimentation and demonstration cannot prove anything, only theory can disprove or prove mathematical theories. Now, does this mean you can assume pure maths is bunk?

I have read a review on the following book (I have not read the book) about how some select scientists have sown seeds of doubt about climate change. Some of the scientists were previous shills for the tobacco industry. The review I read was in Scientific American (vol 98) so if you have access, it's worth a look. The Amazon reviews and descriptions give a good picture but not as detailed as the SA piece.

Merchants of Doubt

If anyone has read the book, comments would be appreciated.

[edit] Heh. I just came 'back' here and started to read my post as if it were someone else's. I need my old avatar again!

whoa, what short memories you alarmists have! Lets back track a touch, the world was warming for about two decades and we were warned of "Global Warming" Then came a general cooling trend the past 10 or 11 years and the mantra was changed to "Climate Change" not because of one single outlier year but due to a trend of cooling. But lets not let that get in our way, lets instead grab data that supports our view and ignore anything that doesn't fit?

Suddenly the cooling never happened?
Yes, the average is still warmer than many past decades but it is in normal ranges. If CO2 is continuing to increase and the theory states the earth will warm then why has it not continued to escalate? It's not a one year outlier (even then, it would still make no sense) but rather a decade or more of cooler weather than a decade ago.

GMTom wrote:whoa, what short memories you alarmists have! Lets back track a touch, the world was warming for about two decades and we were warned of "Global Warming" Then came a general cooling trend the past 10 or 11 years and the mantra was changed to "Climate Change" not because of one single outlier year but due to a trend of cooling. But lets not let that get in our way, lets instead grab data that supports our view and ignore anything that doesn't fit?
Suddenly the cooling never happened?

Ok i think i start to see what your problem is.

What you are exposed to are media hypes of single papers or sometimes 1 sentence out of paper thats published completly out of context or popular books on the topic, like say Lomborgs (one of the better written and researched ones) or rants by politically affiliated think tanks. That's how FOX, NCB, ABC News, Breitbart, Huffington, Druge, the NYT, WP, etc work in their 24h news cylce.
However that's not how the scientific community communicates and works to develop a theory. Papers are published and from that point on they are never forgotten. The data and conclusions are either worked into the general theories or reviewed and rejected (and if they are very insteresting or polarising they will be reviewed again and again).
Simple fact is we have today a far more clear picture (albeit far from complete) about what's happening with the climate than 20 years ago.
We are pretty good at explaining geographical or seasonal fluctuations (if you have enough knowledge about the topic and enough time to listen through some highly complex stuff).
So now you have a highly complex topic with data supporting the general theory and you are supposed to go on TV and defend it against someone who wants to poke a hole in it in 3 minutes of interview time.
Good luck with that, it simply doesn't work. Just go look at the ID idiots who still run around with their 10 times refuted irreducable complexity argument or the demented crowd that claims vaccination causes autism.
The media doesn't have an interest in objectively inform the public, they have an interest in controversy for the sake of ratings.

So i guess what i'm saying is that the information you have is very minimal and distorted opposed to the real data and information the scientific community relies up to make it's deductions.

GMTom wrote:Yes, the average is still warmer than many past decades but it is in normal ranges. If CO2 is continuing to increase and the theory states the earth will warm then why has it not continued to escalate? It's not a one year outlier (even then, it would still make no sense) but rather a decade or more of cooler weather than a decade ago.

Yes and that's very interesting and all and can be explained very well to a person that has the appropriate knowledge to understand the very complex reasoning. Which means you should at least have acess to the papers to check up on salient points (as to not be too easily swayed by authority) and the abiltiy to read and understand scientific papers. Best to have some personal research experience to check the methodology used in the paper.
And lots of time too.
Baring that you have either to put your trust in science or believe those that see systemic corruption by the left everywhere.

So we accept anything and everything they say? We ignore any and all scientists who oppose their thinking and we ignore their financial incentives to fudge facts (I still find it amazing that liberals who embrace this stuff are the first to yell "Question Authority" yet buy this hook line and sinker without questioning anything... they raise suspitions that opponents are paid by big oil or others and have financial reasons to lie but they ignore their own side's financial windfall) we ignore other things raised that should at least make us take pause, nope, they are scientists and we must believe them and only those who happen to embrace our side?

Ignore how science is supposed to work, open and transparent access to your data and your work, hypothesis that can be tested and proven, welcome questions and doubters, no, none of that is here and it should make one wonder. It really is more religion than science and it blows me away, hell that "wind" blowing me away is probably due to global warming?

SLOTerp wrote:I have read a review on the following book (I have not read the book) about how some select scientists have sown seeds of doubt about climate change. Some of the scientists were previous shills for the tobacco industry. The review I read was in Scientific American (vol 98) so if you have access, it's worth a look. The Amazon reviews and descriptions give a good picture but not as detailed as the SA piece.

Merchants of Doubt

I bet it's a fascinating book and would generate outrage in me. (After all, I'm a victim of the tobacco fraud!) However, insofar as it's in our interest to try to separate out the politics from the science, do not fail to note that it's possible for two things to be true at the same time:
1) some industry segment to hate a theory, and
2) the theory to be unfounded
In other words, just because "the bad guys" lie and cheat to make X seem untrue doesn't mean X has to be true.

Also, for the sake of balance, it's worth mentioning that just as an industry segment employs people who see it in their interests to politicize and lie about the facts - to substitute wishes for truth, similar accusations have been made about the environmental lobby and some segments of academia. The late Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" does an artful job of illustrating this. Freeman Dyson shares the sentiment, according to a writer for the NYT:

[Dyson writes] that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. [And he contends] that protecting the existing biosphere is not as important as fighting more repugnant evils like war, poverty and unemployment.

According to Wikipedia, Dyson...

...has also argued against the ostracization of scientists whose views depart from the acknowledged mainstream of scientific opinion on climate change, stating that "heretics" have historically been an important force in driving scientific progress. "[H]eretics who question the dogmas are needed... I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies." ... Experts are, he thinks, too often crippled by the conventional wisdom they create...

Apropos of an above discussion, the NYT re Dyson also says:

Dyson has great affection for coal and for one big reason: It is so inexpensive that most of the world can afford it. “There’s a lot of truth to the statement Greens are people who never had to worry about their grocery bills,” he says. (“Many of these people are my friends,” he will also tell you.) To Dyson, “the move of the populations of China and India from poverty to middle-class prosperity should be the great historic achievement of the century. Without coal it cannot happen.”

Note, however, that Dyson doesn't dispute AGW, only its implications. (He also says that in 50 years solar will replace coal.) Likewise, I post this not to weigh in on the truth/falsehood of AGW or any particular prediction or assertion associated with it, but merely to remind everyone that in this world it's very rare for one side to 100% right and the other to be 100% wrong, while it's very common for everyone to believe this doesn't apply to them.

Finally, relevant to a separate discussion above and for what it's worth, froma BBC interview with Phil Jones of East Anglia fame:

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Hi everyone,

It may be a little off topic (and to be honest I haven't read all the posts) but I think that the biggest obstacle to raising public awareness is that despite all of the talk, no one actually puts any of the evidence into REAL terms that the public can understand. By no one, I mean the mainstream media and most of the left-leaning media as well, which dwell more on the utlerior motives of big business rather than the POSITIVE motives to tackle climate change.
Anyway, for interest's sake here is an email I sent to some friends of mine about some of what I learned over the holidays, which scares the hell out of me:

2. I've learned from my father-in-law that the bay off of Hudson strait in the north, where he lives, is not yet frozen - and that the weather is warmer there than here (FYI here is Montreal). This typically freezes by the end of November and serves as the Polarbear's and Inuit's main means for hunting (the natives have already put away their boats). He doesn't leave home anymore without the rifle that the school board provided because Polar Bears typically start to get dangerousin October when their fat reserves start to run out and before the ice permits them to hunt seals. This year they are still starving! The rumor that is circulating is a shift in the Gulf Stream, closer to North America.

Searching for info, I came up empty, but I did find this article that described last year's warm temperatures and how they hurt the formation of ice:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default. ... 1&toc=show

In spite of a 2-week earlier-than-normal freeze-up along the western shores of Hudson Bay in the second half of October, freeze-up was delayed almost everywhere else by 3-4 weeks as a result of the above normal November and December air temperatures. Air temperatures during the first half of November were near normal everywhere. In the second half of November, air temperatures were 4-6°C above normal for most of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait except 7-10°C above normal for northwestern Hudson Bay. They were 1-3°C above normal for Frobisher Bay but 1-3°C below normal over the Cumberland Peninsula. In December, air temperatures averaged 10°C and greater above normal in northeast Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait and southern Baffin Island. Air temperatures were 4-8°C above normal over the rest of Hudson Bay except only 1-4°C above normal along the southwest shore of Hudson Bay and James Bay. By the first week of January, measured ice thickness values lagged normal ice thicknesses by 12cm. At the end of January, measured ice thicknesses lagged normal thicknesses by 17cm.

GMTom wrote:Ignore how science is supposed to work,

Collect data, interpret data, form a hypothesis, check, recheck ... that is done all the time

GMTom wrote:open and transparent access to your data and your work,

Well buy acess to all the periodicals to read the papers and much of the raw data is public domain i believe ...

GMTom wrote:hypothesis that can be tested and proven,

Well what do you think is happening ? new data is always added to the body of theories we have and it's checked wether the theories and the data correllate. Same way evolutionary biology is always collecting new data and looking wether it fits were it's supposed to fit.

GMTom wrote:welcome questions and doubters,

Maybe they are not welcome, but they are definitly there. And their data and evidence is checked over and over and either the theories are adapted or the evidence is rejected. There's no compelling evidience that would have led to a complete collapse of our understanding how climate systems work and what's happening right now.

GMTom wrote:no, none of that is here and it should make one wonder.

All that is happening on a continous basis you just have no clue about it because very little of it is broadcast by any sort of mass media. And some scientist or journalist or general crackpot going on TV spouting something doesn't mean he's believable or has been ignored or silenced by some cabal of evil scientists. Quite often their ideas have simply been rejected as lacking evidence or outright false.

GMTom wrote:It really is more religion than science and it blows me away, hell that "wind" blowing me away is probably due to global warming?

That's funny. If religions would allow or even encourage 1/100 of the scrunity that scientists of all the differents fields that have collaborated on climate change are putting themselves through + the outside pressure they'd have long ago collapsed under their contradicitions that are evident even after a cursory examination.

Tom you keep repeating the claim that the "data' has been manipulated and is somehow hidden. Its as if you don't bother to read anything that is sourced by your opponents in this debate: To wit the data used is publicly available.... (Below is From the GISS story I quote and link to on page 1. You could go back to page one and read how data is collected in detail... If you actually have a real source that can legitimately critique this that would be swell.... Or are you still under the impression that Climate gate was real and that refering to a couple of emails from over a decade ago legitimizes your claim? Pretty flimsy compared to all the data isn't it?

To conduct its analysis, GISS uses publicly available data from three sources: weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world; satellite observations of sea surface temperature; and Antarctic research station measurements. These three data sets are loaded into a computer program, which is available for public download from the GISS website. The program calculates trends in temperature anomalies — not absolute temperatures — but changes relative to the average temperature for the same month during the period of 1951-1980.

The reson all of this is publicly available is to help people understand the process and trust the scientific work. I suppose thats necessary because of the hard work done by groups who don't want you to trust the "elites". In this case the elites are people who know more about climate science than any of us. And apparently aren't swayed by arguemetns from geologists and other scientists from other fields.

You refer to a cooling period that Time latched onto ..(Indeed you refered to the scientist who's work prompted that cover as someone who has switched sides, though I pointed to his obvious ignorance...) That cooling period was generally caused by aerosols. Remember the hole in the ozone caused by CFC's? Thats a result of aerosol dispersion. It was fixed (that is the deteriation was stopped) by a world wide near ban on CFCs
At the time people trusted the scientific community. What if the CFC Industry had funded a group like the Heartland industry to spread disinformation and poorly supported alternatiove theories? And successfully delayed implementation of a ban? You'd need SPF 168 sunscreen by now...

I keep asking you where your data comes form? You havn't bothered sourcing anything except the hysterical Internet postings that originate from the good folks at Heartland....

Faxmonkey wrote:Baring that you have either to put your trust in science or believe those that see systemic corruption by the left everywhere.

GMTom wrote:So we accept anything and everything they say? We ignore any and all scientists who oppose their thinking and we ignore their financial incentives to fudge facts (I still find it amazing that liberals who embrace this stuff are the first to yell "Question Authority" yet buy this hook line and sinker without questioning anything... they raise suspitions that opponents are paid by big oil or others and have financial reasons to lie but they ignore their own side's financial windfall)

Walter Russell Mead wrote a column about this back in August called The Greening of Godzilla. The column questions why the environmentalist movement is having such a hard time getting traction with the public over climate change. It is a good read but can be pretty much summed up as

The greens have forgotten where they come from. Modern environmentalism was born in the reaction against Big Science, Big Government and Experts.

It talks about how the modern environmental moved started out a one questioning the expert. So examples are experts say Nuclear power is safe, environemtalist doubt it. Big dam projects are safe but environmentalist say but what about other consequences. Expert claims that genetically modified foods are safe lead to the creation of the organic food industry. The result was that

Experts lost their mystique. The guys in the white coats were no longer deemed all-knowing and all-wise. A better educated and more skeptical public opinion was no longer prepared to defer to technocrats, experts and government bureaucrats who said they knew best.

So now, according to Mead,

... when it comes to global warming, the shoe is on the other foot. Now it is suddenly the environmentalists — who’ve often spent lifetimes raging against experts and scientists ... - who are the pious advocates of science and experts. Suddenly, it’s a sin to question the wisdom of the Scientific Consensus. Scientists are, after all, experts; their work is peer-reviewed and we uneducated rubes must sit back and shut up when the experts tell us what’s right.

I think it is an interesting hypothesis with more then a little truth in it.

Experts lost their mystique. The guys in the white coats were no longer deemed all-knowing and all-wise. A better educated and more skeptical public opinion was no longer prepared to defer to technocrats, experts and government bureaucrats who said they knew best.

Its a bit rich to claim that the environmental science debates are responsible for the sceptical public opinion. First, the environmental debate happened world wide but scepticism of climate change is largely centred in the United States. The difference in ths US versus the rest of the world has been the attack on science by religious conservatives in the US. Science being seen by them as a major problem, what with its evolution and requirement for evidence and a scientific method of inquiry. Its been a major block to indoctrinating school age children with the concept of creationism.
According to a Pew poll last year more people in the US believe in Guardian Angels than in man made climate change.....
Me thinks the "scepticism" Mead claims has other sources than an earlier scientific debate. After all, the environmentalists based their arguements on the scientific method and provided evidence .....They didn't just say "I beleive its so...." It would seem to support the idea that science does evolve because of reasoned inquiry and healthy examination of ideas ...And thats the antithesis of the opposition to climate science today.

Archduke Russell John wrote:

Faxmonkey wrote:Baring that you have either to put your trust in science or believe those that see systemic corruption by the left everywhere.

But i did go on and on how you can also can check for yourself in case you want to spend the time and energy, BARING that you have to beleive either one or the other

Archduke Russell John wrote:So now, according to Mead,

... when it comes to global warming, the shoe is on the other foot. Now it is suddenly the environmentalists — who’ve often spent lifetimes raging against experts and scientists ... - who are the pious advocates of science and experts. Suddenly, it’s a sin to question the wisdom of the Scientific Consensus. Scientists are, after all, experts; their work is peer-reviewed and we uneducated rubes must sit back and shut up when the experts tell us what’s right.

I think it is an interesting hypothesis with more then a little truth in it.

There's some truth to it i agree. Many authorities nowadays face much more scrunity than they used to, science is no exception and that is a good thing.
In the case of GW though i think the debate is highly misrepresented and controversy is played up to increase ratings or for political purposes.
I'll say it again, just because some sceptic is let on TV for a 3 minute interview doesn't mean what he says is either true, new, interesting, relevant, ignored or that he's ostracized in or silenced by the scientific community for being a sceptic.

rickyp wrote:the environmental debate happened world wide but scepticism of climate change is largely centred in the United States.

Well, it is basically a U.S. centric article meaning about why the argument is being lost in the states.

rickyp wrote: After all, the environmentalists based their arguements on the scientific method and provided evidence .....They didn't just say "I beleive its so...." It would seem to support the idea that science does evolve because of reasoned inquiry and healthy examination of ideas ...And thats the antithesis of the opposition to climate science today.

Again, that is largely the point, if you have bothered to read the actual article(isn't that something you often accuse other of). The earlier actions of the modern environmentalist movement were not based on scientific method but rather an opinion that

modern science was too crude and too incomplete to...capture all the side effects and the unintended consequences.

However, now we are to believe that modern science is sophisticated and complete enough to accept climate change. In other words, we couldn't trust the science of experts that Nuclear power was safe but that they are 100% correct on something that will happen 100 years from now. Do you not see the hypocrisy in that position?

I wrote this during lunch, and since then things have moved on, but after all that effort, I'm darned if I'm going to edit it all. SO there will be some repetition of what other have said, but so far Tom has added nothing that makes much difference.

OK, Tom. Time to fisk [*cracks knuckles*]

whoa, what short memories you have! Lets track back a touch, the world was warming for about two decades and we were warned of “Global Warming” Then came a general cooling trend the past 10 or 11 years and the mantra was changed to “Climate Change” not because of a single outlier year but due to a trend of cooling.

Firstly, the underlying warming trend was not just for the 80s and 90s. It goes back about 100 years, but has been more marked since the 1960s. Satellite data only goes back to when we had enough coverage, so to the 1970s, but the trend is verified there.

Secondly, we have not really had a general cooling over the past decade. The actual trend for the past 10-11 years has been fairly flat, not really a cooling as much as a slowdown in the warming. It could be that this is the end of a warming period, or it could be a pause, but it is not yet a sign of a cooling trend.

Thirdly, the term Climate Change has been used for much longer than you suggest. Temperature is only one factor in climate, there are also humidity/precipitation and prevailing winds or currents, and it is likely that a major change in one will have an effect on the others, so researching climate is more than just about whether we are warmer. If this phrase is so new, how come the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) was established with that name in 1988, about ten years before your claimed cooling trend would have started, let alone have been noticed?

Suddenly the cooling never happened?
Yes, the average is still higher than many past decades but it is in normal ranges

The cooling is not as much of a fact as you seem to think it is, as mentioned above (and below). The last decade was not ‘normal’, it was the warmest decade that we have ever recorded, and certainly warmer than any decade from the previous century, indeed as far back as we can tell from historical records. I would love to know how you would include that in a definition of normal.

If CO2 is continuing to increase and the theory states that the earth will warm then why has it not continued to escalate?

Well, I can think of two candidates. There are known solar cycles that have an effect. Look up the sun-spot cycle. It runs over an 11 year period. At the height of the cycle (the last peak was around 2001-2002) we see warming. At the troughs we see cooling (the last trough was in 2007-8). So we would expect that if all were equal, the early part of the last decade would be warmer than the latter part. It’s actually about the same (and the variance much less than between this decade and the previous one) Additionally, the intensity of the peak activity has been shown to be a factor in global temperature. The Medieval maximum is believed to have been a period of higher peak sun-spot activity. The period afterward certainly coincides with the Maunder Minimum of the 1600s, when sunspots became much rarer for several decades. The last peak was slightly lower than in recent cycles, which in theory should have made this decade slightly cooler than normal.

Another factor is El Nino/La Nina. In La Nina years, the global average tends to be lower. In an El Nino year, it tends to be higher. In the last decade we have had only one short El Nino period, but far more La Nina.

So, that’s two possible reasons for you that may explain why the underlying increase has been observed to slow down. There is also the reality of random variation in datasets based on a huge number of factors and inputs, such as the temperature record or a stock market Index. A short period of downticks or flat activity in the Dow after a long term period of rises does not necessarily mean that the underlying trend is no longer upwards. It might be related to a particular sector (or even a single company if it is large enough) having a problem. The only way to be sure is to see what happens afterwards.

Now it could be that El Nino/La Nina cycle changes are caused by, rather than a cause of climatic changes. And it could be that the sunspot cycles are contributing more than we think to the current trend. So, as I have always maintained, we need more research and more data to look at as many contributory factors as possible. Certainly looking at one decade in isolation is not actually that useful. The issue is that the current scientific position suggests that if we wait too long it could too late to do anything, and so it would appear prudent to take precautionary measures in the meantime, even if you are unconvinced by the science.

It’s not a one year outlier (even then, it would still make no sense) but rather a decade or more of cooler weather than a decade ago.

Tom, if you don’t understand the effect of outliers in statistical analysis, then I suppose this must be confusing for you. But if there’s an unusually warm year that brings up the longer term average, then removing it will clearly have some effect on the average. The lower the number of years you average over, the more likely that an outlier will perturb the results.

Still, I want to be clear about what you are saying here though. Are you saying that the average temperature for 2000-2009 was lower than it was for 1990-1999? Everything I have seen suggests that this is not the case, even if you include 1998. According to NASA, 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade, and yet was warmer than each of 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999. Several years in the past decade have been about as warm (or for 2005, warmer) than 1998. So it is impossible for the nineties to have been warmer than the noughties on that basis.

Even if you meant to compare 2000-2009 with 1995-2004, a simple paring of the uncommon years (because the common years of 2000-2004 will cancel each other out) shows that 2005 was higher than 1995, 2006 was higher than 1996, 2007 was higher than 1997 and 2009 was higher than 1999. The difference in just one of those (2009 and 1999) is greater than the amount that 1998 was warmer than 2008. So again, the average for 2000-2009 is higher than for 1995-2004.

Now, before you start, the NASA data is not the same data as the in famous Hadley CRU data. NASA uses the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Sciences) data instead. Even though the CRU data has not actually been found to be incorrect, I have deliberately avoided using it because I am aware that the scandal of a year or so ago means that it is tainted and you would challenge any use of it. If you have an issue with the GISS data, please explain what it is before deciding you can ignore it or make vague claims about cherry picking. If you have alternative sources, that show a different trend, then by all means let us know.

Until then, your assertion that there has been a cooling would appear to be contradicted by the facts. Repetition of a falsehood does not make it a truth. Repetition of a proven falsehood is called lying.