Scientific Consensus?

[MTAtech]

This forum is not adequate to debate, back-and-forth, the merits or refutations of global warming science. The topic is vastly more complicated than those here (including myself) are knowledgable to discuss. It's therefore a waste of time engaging.

In addition, offering this climatologists vs that climatologists is also not only not fruitful but also not the way science validity is tested. It is done by trying to repeat the scientist's methodology and arriving at the same results. Then the whole study is put to one's peers in the field for review.

Speaking of junk science, it is junk to collect a list of scientists, in every field imaginable, ask them a poll question and use that as a refutation of a scientific finding.

[Pexster]

Many global warming scenarios predict an Ice Age in Europe, due to a disrupted Gulf Stream. The fact that the author of that article/blog/post/letter/whatever uses the temperature in Baghdad as evidence of some kind shows me that he/she is ill-educated on the entire subject.

[Beemer]

Sarah
Tim Ball is not a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. You're bringing up a lot of old arguments and discredited ones at that.

The sun has done nothing out of the ordinary to produce the rapid warming. Each one of the planets you mention have their own distinct reason for their temperature change. It isn't one scientist against another. It’s evidence weighed against a claim.

Get to know the players before you bring up any of their nonsense. Many of these deniers have had their science debunked but yet they keep peddling junk science to the masses.

Just got home so I'll be back later to see what other incredible claims are being made in the other posts.

[Cmptr-Gy-Dv]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beemer

Sarah
Tim Ball is not a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. You're bringing up a lot of old arguments and discredited ones at that.

The sun has done nothing out of the ordinary to produce the rapid warming. Each one of the planets you mention have their own distinct reason for their temperature change. It isn't one scientist against another. It’s evidence weighed against a claim.

Get to know the players before you bring up any of their nonsense. Many of these deniers have had their science debunked but yet they keep peddling junk science to the masses.

Just got home so I'll be back later to see what other incredible claims are being made in the other posts.

and the number is growing, i would say the global warming crowed has been debunked, they won't even call it global warming no more,

now it's climate change


fact the temp has been getting colder for the last ten years,

fact we had the coldest winter in 20 years,

fact it's may 27th and it will be 40 degrees out side tonight,

fact average low 50 degrees,

global warming

now excuse me while I go run my lawn mower and warm things up a bit

[Beemer]

What does IPCC stand for? Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the answer. Global warming is the direction of the observed climate change.

Fact 1 is not a fact. Global mean has been getting warmer steadily. We're talking about global mean temps not regional. This is 101 knowledge you need for the discussion.

Fact 2 is regional conditions. Colder winters and hotter summers with spring coming in sooner than normal is indicative of climate change.

Fact 3 is again in error as it relates to regional conditions.

Fact 4 is again in error as it relates to regional conditions.

I don't think you know the first thing about climate change or global warming. Why you decided to post anything on this topic is beyond me.

[Cmptr-Gy-Dv]

because I'm just as qualified as AL gore to talk about the climate,

and global warming is a joke so I treat it as such,


20 years ago we were heading for another ice age,

read the new York times on it, 1976 yep ice age

excuse me if I don't jump on the daily kos band wagon,

[Gomer]

Sarah:
DailyTech? You rely on DailyTech for your sound scientific reporting? That explains part of your problem.

We've already been over that particular article as well as another in which DailyTech took another scientist's out of context and spun them 180 degrees.

Dailytech.com is the same website that helped to spread the misrepresentation of Dr. Tapping's science as I outlined above. You can read about that incident here:
What global warming?

They do the same thing in the article you have linked to:

Quote:

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.


Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling... (that's the article that mispresents Dr. Tapping right within this new bit of garbage).

The source of the information that dailytech uses in their "article" has this to say:

Quote:

The website DailyTech has an article citing this blog entry as a reference, and their story got picked up by the Drudge report, resulting in a wide distribution. In the DailyTech article there is a paragraph:

“Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.”

I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine: “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”
There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.

[Gomer]

Here's what a real source of scientific information has to say, from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

Quote:

GISS Surface Temperature Analysis

Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation

The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the "El Niño of the century". The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle.
Figure 1 shows 2007 temperature anomalies relative to the 1951-1980 base period mean. The global mean temperature anomaly, 0.57°C (about 1°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 mean, continues the strong warming trend of the past thirty years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases (GHGs) (Hansen et al. 2007). The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

[Gomer]

And Sarah, and voogru as well....

You keep going on about how everyone is forgetting about the SUN and OMG there's global warming on MARS it must be the SUN. I don't have anything to back it up but I know they are ignoring the sun. ALL OF THESE SCIENTISTS HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE SUN!!!!!!!

Here is what the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has to say about the sun. They say that we are currently at a SOLAR MINIMUM!

Quote:

The sun is another source of natural global temperature variability. Figure 3, based on an analysis of satellite measurements by Richard Willson, shows that 2007 is at the minimum of the current 10-11 year solar cycle. Another analysis of the satellite data (not illustrated here) by Judith Lean has the 2007 solar irradiance minimum slightly lower than the two prior minima in the satellite era. The differences between the two analyses are a result primarily of the lack of accurate absolute calibrations and inadequate overlap of measurements by successive satellites.

This cyclic solar variability yields a climate forcing change of about 0.3 W/m2 between solar maxima and solar minima. (Although solar irradiance of an area perpendicular to the solar beam is about 1366 W/m2, the absorption of solar energy averaged over day and night and the Earth's surface is about 240 W/m2.) Several analyses have extracted empirical global temperature variations of amplitude about 0.1°C associated with the 10-11 year solar cycle, a magnitude consistent with climate model simulations, but this signal is difficult to disentangle from other causes of global temperature change, including unforced chaotic fluctuations.

Figure 3, at right. Solar irradiance from analysis of satellite measurements by Willson and Mordvinov 2003 and subsequent ACRIM updates. (Figure also available as large GIF or PDF.)

The solar minimum forcing is thus about 0.15 W/m2 relative to the mean solar forcing. For comparison, the human-made GHG climate forcing is now increasing at a rate of about 0.3 W/m2 per decade (Hansen & Sato 2004). If the sun were to remain "stuck" in its present minimum for several decades, as has been suggested (e.g., Independent story) in analogy to the solar Maunder Minimum of the seventeenth century, that negative forcing would be balanced by a 5-year increase of GHGs. Thus, in the current era of rapidly increasing GHGs, such solar variations cannot have a substantial impact on long-term global warming trends. Furthermore, recent sighting of the first sunspot of reversed polarity (reported Jan. 4 by, e.g., SpaceWeather.com and NOAA) signifies that the ~ 4-year period of increasing solar irradiance is about to get underway.

[Sarah L]

Questions for Al Gore

By Dr. Roy Spencer
25 May 2006

Gore's Inconvenient Truth....

Dear Mr. Gore:

I have just seen your new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," about the threat that global warming presents to humanity. I think you did a very good job of explaining global warming theory, and your presentation was effective. Please convey my compliments to your good friend, Laurie David, for a job well done.

As a climate scientist myself -- you might remember me...I'm the one you mistook for your "good friend," UK scientist Phil Jones during my congressional testimony some years back -- I have a few questions that occurred to me while watching the movie.

1) Why did you make it look like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, droughts, and ice calving off of glaciers and falling into the ocean, are only recent phenomena associated with global warming? You surely know that hurricane experts have been warning congress for many years that the natural cycle in hurricanes would return some day, and that our built-up coastlines were ripe for a disaster (like Katrina, which you highlighted in the movie). And as long as snow continues to fall on glaciers, they will continue to flow downhill toward the sea. Yet you made it look like these things wouldn't happen if it weren't for global warming. Also, since there are virtually no measures of severe weather showing a recent increase, I assume those graphs you showed actually represented damage increases, which are well known to be simply due to greater population and wealth. Is that right?

2) Why did you make it sound like all scientists agree that climate change is manmade and not natural? You mentioned a recent literature review study that supposedly found no peer-reviewed articles that attributed climate change to natural causes (a non-repeatable study which has since been refuted....I have a number of such articles in my office!) You also mentioned how important it is to listen to scientists when they warn us, yet surely you know that almost all past scientific predictions of gloom and doom have been wrong. How can we trust scientists' predictions now?

3) I know you still must feel bad about the last presidential election being stolen from you, but why did you have to make fun of Republican presidents (Reagan; both Bushes) for their views on global warming? The points you made in the movie might have had wider appeal if you did not alienate so many moviegoers in this manner.

4) Your presentation showing the past 650,000 years of atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide reconstructions from ice cores was very effective. But I assume you know that some scientists view the CO2 increases as the result of, rather than the cause of, past temperature increases. It seems unlikely that CO2 variations have been the dominant cause of climate change for hundreds of thousands of years. And now that there is a new source of carbon dioxide emissions (people), those old relationships are probably not valid anymore. Why did you give no hint of these alternative views?

5) When you recounted your 6-year-old son's tragic accident that nearly killed him, I thought that you were going to make the point that, if you had lived in a poor country like China or India, your son would have probably died. But then you later held up these countries as model examples for their low greenhouse gas emissions, without mentioning that the only reason their emissions were so low was because people in those countries are so poor. I'm confused...do you really want us to live like the poor people in India and China?

6) There seems to be a lot of recent concern that more polar bears are drowning these days because of disappearing sea ice. I assume you know that polar bears have always migrated to land in late summer when sea ice naturally melts back, and then return to the ice when it re-freezes. Also, if this was really happening, why did the movie have to use a computer generated animation of the poor polar bear swimming around looking for ice? Haven't there been any actual observations of this happening? Also, temperature measurements in the arctic suggest that it was just as warm there in the 1930's...before most greenhouse gas emissions. Don't you ever wonder whether sea ice concentrations back then were low, too?

7) Why did you make it sound like simply signing on to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions would be such a big step forward, when we already know it will have no measurable effect on global temperatures anyway? And even though it represents such a small emission reduction, the economic pain Kyoto causes means that almost no developed country will be meeting its emission reductions commitments under that treaty, as we are now witnessing in Europe.

8) At the end of the movie, you made it sound like we can mostly fix the global warming problem by conserving energy... you even claimed we can reduce our carbon emissions to zero. But I'm sure you know that this will only be possible with major technological advancements, including a probable return to nuclear power as an energy source. Why did you not mention this need for technological advancement and nuclear power? It is because that would support the current (Republican) Administration's view?

Mr. Gore, I think we can both agree that if it was relatively easy for mankind to stop emitting so much carbon dioxide, that we should do so. You are a very smart person, so I can't understand why you left so many important points unmentioned, and you made it sound so easy.

I wish you well in these efforts, and I hope that humanity will make the right choices based upon all of the information we have on the subject of global warming. I agree with you that global warming is indeed a "moral issue," and if we are to avoid doing more harm than good with misguided governmental policies, we will need more politicians to be educated on the issue.

Your "Good Friend,"

Dr. Roy W. Spencer

Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. In the past, he has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. ??Dr. Spencer is the recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and the American Meteorological Society's Special Award for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work. He is the author of numerous scientific articles that have appeared in Science, Nature, Journal of Climate, Monthly Weather Review, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology, Remote Sensing Reviews, Advances in Space Research, and Climatic Change. Dr. Spencer received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in 1981.

Roy W. Spencer: Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat