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He was having beers with a Harvard professor just this past fall! Man, you forget everything...

Or, y'know, people who have read your crap for years and know your views on such things :-P

I don't understand your hatred of actors in the White House. Did you feel this way when Ronnie was there?

That's the first thing I noticed, the number of Indian names on that list. Businessmen, lawyers, journalists, doctors...oh wait! I see a name I recognize...Steven Speilberg...

"Climategate": a perspective.



Edited, Dec 10th 2009 10:12am by Samira

There's an obvious flaw there though. Those guys were largely fighting against the current consensus and had to prove they were right. The IPCC is the false consensus. They're the guys insisting that the world is flat and dismissing anyone who disagrees as a crazy denier of the truth.


"Settled Science" is an oxymoron used by those who don't want to know what is true, but want what they believe to be accepted as truth.

You're an expert on ancient Jewish culture and religion now? Wow.

Edited, Dec 10th 2009 3:30pm by Xsarus

/shrug. I'm not, but I've absorbed a lot of information. Being roommates with a Judaic studies professor for 8 years tends to do that. Language use is pretty significant in the OT, and subtle wording differences which seem a bit odd to the modern English ear do often have specific reasons for being there.

For example, she was a member of a group who were consulted on the animated film "Prince of Egypt". The original title and words to one of the main songs was "You can do miracles", which seems sensible enough in modern English. They corrected the phrase to "There can be miracles". The reasoning is similar to what I was talking about earlier with regard to the odd phrasing of the request by David to punish his enemy. Ancient Jews did not believe that they could cause things to happen, even (or especially!) by asking God to do it for them. However, they could pray that something would happen and let God work out the details. Seems like a silly semantic difference to us, but it was pretty darn important to them.


We had a lot of really interesting discussions over the years.

The link is about attacks against the personality of scientists rather then their science.

Newton's law of gravity is about something really simple. That's why it works so well mathematically. It gives a single formula which has the power to produce Kepler's laws of orbits which until then were empirical results only. So powerful, so simple: unlikely to be wrong. I think it's wrong to say Newton was fighting against that consensus: he was explaining it.

Weather, on the other hand, is very complicated. Many groups work very hard at complicated models - and they don't work without CO2 (see my pdf link and figure: it has the temperature with and without CO2 effects). Of course they don't reproduce all the noise in the data - only the long term trends - and they are vastly complex and could be done far, far better with more computer power.

If there are serious flaws in the paper I cited I'd like to hear about it. What I've heard thus far is that either all these papers are obviously wrong for reasons I have not seen or that there are a lot of non-peer reviewed climate skeptic websites. I just haven't found any substantive criticism here.

If they are not very accurate, why use them at all? Because it will cost us a lot of lives, money and comfort down the line if they are right and we do nothing. No, we don't know exactly how hot. And we can do something about it. We could curtail CO2 emissions or on the other, deal with the consequences. Apparently, it's cheaper to do the former.

It will take decades for any benefits to emerge: and even then it is a slowdown to the warming, not a cessation. Thus largely we're doing this for our children. We can either tell them we acted on the best information we had at the time or that we didn't.

Personally, I don't think we'll ever have the impact we need via CO2 curtailing. We will probably have to try to the vastly more expensive and difficult corrective actions later. However, some of those measures will allow human habitation of the large northern land masses currently sparsely populated at the expense of a higher sea level which will cost either a great deal of shoreline or a fabulous expense in levy building.

Edited, Dec 10th 2009 2:22pm by yossarian

They are basing their premise on data which is itself not fully proven. The fact that they admit that their model shows a CO2 concentration and temperature for *today* which is higher than either actually is shows that there's something they're missing. They dismiss this because the short/near term slope matches that which is predicted, but that's kinda fudging things

Yeah, it's kind of fudging things when your probabilistic model doesn't unerringly predict the future. Fuck, you're slow.


It's not about just the CO2 levels themselves, nor the temperature today and in recent history. It's about the assumed relationship between those going forward. These scientists are attempting to project a relationship between CO2 and temperature, but have no baseline to use. The baseline they have correlates the two, but as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, that correlation is based on "natural" forces working together. We simply cannot say how much of that relationship is caused by those other natural forces and how much is caused by the CO2 levels alone.

True. What can be said is that is that it's certain increased CO2 levels, in isolation, increase overall temperatures. If can be said, in isolation, that humans produce CO2 in excess of what would be produced if there were no humans. Therefore, without taking into account any other factors, humans increase overall temperatures by increased CO2 production, QED.

This is the starting point. It's inarguable, and should be stipulated at the start of any discussion. It's PROVEN, long long long long PROVEN, ABSOLUTE, INCONTROVERTIBLE FACT. Humans increase overall temperature by producing CO2 in the absence of other factors. Start there.

If it's your assertion that this increase in temperature is offset by some other force, great, offer evidence. If it's your assertion that this increase in temperature can be offset by some action other than reducing CO2, great, offer evidence. Regardless of whatever cut and pasted from DFA's blog theory you want to spew out, offer some evidence and argue it. Continuing to dispute CO2 evidence wastes everyone's time. We already know you're ignorant and uneducated while lacking even the most basic deductive or logical faculties. There's no need to hammer it home, sport.

Semi-obvious conclusion for the scientifically literate (that may be wrong anyway): the sun's output is decreasing at a rate roughly comparable (say, 80~120% of) to the projected increase in temperatures if all other factors had remained the same.

Yeah, that must be it, nuclear fusion is generating less energy. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, there is some other factor involved, like, say the amount of opaque pollution produced reflecting more light away from the surface of the planet.

Um... Did you read the paper? It failed to unerringly predict the present. Their model was based on some assumed starting point of CO2 and temperature in 1860 (I think that was the year), and they then plugged in the model and calculations and moved forward. The result was that their projected temperature and CO2 levels were higher when they got to the last couple decades than they actually were.

Since the curve their model predicts is geometric in nature, a relatively small error relatively early in the curve would expand into a very large error at the end of the curve. Since they're presumably measuring an effect of CO2 saturation effects on soil and plants, the start of the curve isn't that far before the same time period the error is. They dismiss this by stating that the slope during those couple decades (1980-2000 IIRC) is the same as that predicted, but it's the change of the slope over time that really matters from that point on. If they're off that early, it's not a minor problem for their model, it's a major problem.


It's like a rocket in which the amount of thrust released increases over time. For the first X second of burn, it doesn't move because it hasn't produced enough to counter gravity. For the next y seconds, it moves slowly upwards. Then, for the remaining Z seconds, it moves very fast and increases it's rate of speed. If you had calculated a base thrust and rate of thrust increase over time which would put you into orbit by X + 5 minutes, and calculated that at X = 10 seconds, you should be 500 feet off the ground according to your model, but then when you actually fire the rocket, you're only 490 feet off the ground at that point, what appears to be a very small error will result in you not coming anywhere near the orbit you expected.

That's the kind of error they're reporting in the model. And they acknowledge it, but just move on anyway. It's not "bad science", because they reported it, but if you take their end calculations as anything other than a really big "IF", you are likely making a huge mistake.




Not in isolation. As part of a larger system. I get what you meant though. If all other factors stay the same, increased CO2 levels within a certain range will cause an increase in temperature as a result of a greenhouse gas effect. We can't observationally state that this effect will happen outside of any range we've measured or tested it. Everything else is a guess.



Without taking into account any other factors. Sure. But it's those other factors which are a problem, aren't they? And let's not pretend that this isn't just side factors either. Increased CO2 concentrations themselves have other effects than just greenhouse. If you ignore those, then you'll conclude that we're all doomed. But that's because you're looking at one piece of the puzzle.

You're also ignoring the other issue: How much temperature increase? At what range of CO2? With what level of effect based on that concentration range? Those are kinda relevant if we're debating whether or not the earth will heat up by a few degrees over the next century or not...



But we don't live there. And it's situational itself (as I pointed out above). Humans living on a spaceship don't increase temperature by producing CO2. They don't do it underground. They *only* do it if the conditions are correct for greenhouse effects to occur. By definition, your "starting point" assumes conditions which you are then ignoring when discussing the "facts" you're working with. Greenhouse gas effects occur as a result of more solar radiation absorbed by the earth not escaping when released. Guess what? Increase or decrease the solar radiation levels, and temperatures will change as well. More relevantly, the ratio of temperature change to greenhouse gas concentrations change as well. It's not a constant, and it's not "in isolation". It's part of a system.



Sure. How about the fact that the world hasn't spiraled into a hot humid Venus-like planet at some point in the past? That's what would happen if greenhouse gas effects were the primary force at work, and no other factors existed to counter it. CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) increase relative temperatures. But higher temperatures increase the release of greenhouse gases from the earth (soil, plants, and water all outgass more at higher temperatures). If we look "in isolation" as you insist, then there should be nothing to prevent this from happening. Not just today, but in the past. We've had higher temperatures in the past, yet this didn't happen. A runaway greenhouse gas effect didn't occur. Why?

There are lots of theories, but regardless of which you accept or believe, it's clear that something in our climate system acts to break this warming cycle. One theory I've heard is that the cloud effect caused by greenhouse gas concentrations (evaporation of water) offsets the greenhouse effect at higher concentrations. So basically, at low concentrations, adding more of the gas to the air increases the temperature because it's dense enough to trap in heat, but not dense enough to block the solar radiation. As the gas density increases, it still blocks heat escaping, but it blocks proportionately more heat entering the earth by blocking the suns rays, resulting in an overall cooling effect.

This is why I mentioned concentration range. It's relevant. You stated that it's an absolute and indisputable fact that humans produce CO2 and that CO2 increases temperature. But that second "fact" is not nearly as indisputable as you claim. We can only say that increases of CO2 within a specific concentration range will increase temperatures. It's not only quite reasonable, but almost certain that at higher concentrations it will have different effects. Again. The very fact that earlier instances of high temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations reversed themselves shows that it must happen and this is as good a theory as any to explain it.



Just did. I could link to sources explaining this if you want, but it's pretty readily available and it's not exactly a fringe theory. It's just conveniently ignored when people like you take studies like the one Yossarian posted at face value.

The "other factors" are what make it a climate system. Ignoring them may be convenient for the argument at hand, but doesn't really provide for a great way to make a good decision about the issue itself.



I have not disputed the CO2 "evidence". I've disputed the policy conclusions based on that evidence. You can't take lab results and apply them directly to the real world. But that's exactly what we're all be asked to accept. We plug data into a computer model which was written specifically to assume that as CO2 increases, temperatures will increase without end and we get results that show (GASP!) that if we increase CO2 levels, the temperature will keep increasing! OMG! Alert the media. Of course we'll get those results. We wrote the model to assume that would happen.

If we wrote the computer models to assume that if we increased CO2 levels, it would result in a decrease in temperature, we'd all be talking about how we need to decrease CO2 levels to avoid freezing the planet into a ball of ice. It's not the data that is wrong. It's the assumptions about what that data means when it's applied to a larger system that is. Leaving out key elements when constructing your models cause us to come to false assumptions out the other end.

As I stated earlier. It's Garbage In, Garbage Out. You can't get correct results if you start with a flawed premise. Right now, no matter how much data you toss around, the reality is that the entire global warming argument is based on the assumption that increased CO2 levels will cause increased temperatures without any end and with no other factors which will stop it. That's not something we determined scientifically. It's something someone just guessed was true. That's the "theory" part of all of this. And no one is testing that theory. They're just plugging massive amounts of data through the same computer models and then rushing off to show the doom and gloom results and collect their funding.

They aren't lying. Their data is presumably accurate. The calculations they used were correct, the graphs were good, etc. But that doesn't mean that the end result that's predicted is even remotely true. Good science can produce false results if the assumptions are wrong. Just as sound logic can produce false results. It's the same thing.


I'm questioning the validity of their assumptions. Not their data.