The Temperature Record Reliability Attack

Oh come on. The temperature must be way above average in New York and London, how else can you explain the economic MELTdown??

Doesn't the plot of temperature rise from 1500 predate the anthropolocical contribution and suggest another mechanism could be driving temperature rise?

Hi Matt,

I don't think a global rise starting from 1500 is a reasonable characterization of the temperature record, though it does appear it was generally lower in the LIA and started rising ~1800. But yes, this is not thought to have been anthropogenic and it is well understood that many mechanisms can drive temperature changes. The current warming is being driven by CO2, CH4, other anthropogenic gases and black soot for coal burning, in that order of impact. Solar changes account for about half of the early 20th century rise.

"of more than a dozen decades into a single globally averaged trend. " hahahah a half degree of change even in that miniscule-in-year ridic chart. a HALF DEGREE! and even in that chart (unlike all the others I have seen which show the 30's to be higher in temp than now) the temp is DROPPING.

Comment, if you will, on Yuri A Izraels confirmation that there is no anthropogenic basis for global warming. Also please explain how anthopogenic gases accounting for perhaps 9% of the 'greenhouse' effect can overwhelm the other 91%? Your answer will be nothing if not amusing.

Nothing worse than pseudo science in the service of govt (worldwide tax schemas) and industry (carbon credit trading and markets, 'enviro friendly' product lines) lest it be pseudo scientists making something up out of thin air (pun intended) to feed at the govt. trough. Quite an interesting twist in evolution, the change from logical humanoid...to base parasite.

Addtionally, please provide links to studies that prove that
1. CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and
2. Any definitive study that proves that as CO2 increases on this planet, temperatures rise.

Why comment on the uninformed opinion of another AGW denier... his personal opinion confirms nothing.

If you are looking for some interesting reading, try the latest IPCC report (AR4). It will answer all of your questions.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

It's even available in Russian.

John D -

Comment, if you will, on Yuzi A Izraels confirmation the global scientific consensus that there is no likely an anthropogenic basis for global warming. Also please explain how anthropogenic gases accounting for perhaps 9% of the 'greenhouse' effect can overwhelm the other 91%? which have increased 148% (CH4) and 36% (CO2) since pre-industrial levels would have zero influence on the climate. Your answer will be nothing if not amusing.

Nothing worse than pseudo science in the service of govt (worldwide tax schemas) and industry (carbon credit trading and markets, 'enviro friendly' product lines) right-wing demagogues lest it be pseudo scientists not even pseudo-scientists making something up out of thin air (pun intended) to feed at the govt. trough fanatical freemarket ideologue trough. Quite an interesting twist in evolution, the change from logical humanoid...to base parasite.

There, fixed it for you.

There's a bit of a straw man here; all of your arguments address skepticism for warming, period. My skepticism is of AGW, not GW per se. See if you can poke holes in this pair of papers:

Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 18, 1049-1058.

Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.

They do a reconstruction on a 2000-yr scale excluding tree ring data, the primary source for pre-modern temp proxies in Mann et. al.'s famous "hockey stick". The shape of this reconstruction is markedly different from Mann. The authors are statisticians, not paleoclimatologists, but considerable statistical manipulation underlies all reconstructions from proxies and I suspect modeling errors to be the weakest link of any climate reconstruction.

If there is data tracking CO2 on a similar time scale with similar granularity, I am not aware of it and would be grateful for pointers. It would be most interesting to see what the correlation is. As we know, the correlation is rather strong for proxies of solar activity, even though direct irradiance variation is not sufficient to explain temperature variation. It is not unreasonable to postulate an amplification mechanism for solar effects which we do not understand yet, and the recent warming coincides with the Modern Maximum of solar activity.

Nature may be running the experiment for us. We are currently in the midst of the longest solar minimum in a century or so. If the next solar max, which should only be 5 or 6 years away, is also substantially below the average for the Modern Maximum, then perhaps we will have better data for deconvolving the effects of solar influence vs. CO2 forcing. Right now, I don't believe their relative importance is sufficiently well understood to drive drastic policy change.

"LONDON and other cities could see summer temperatures rise to more than 10C above those in the surrounding countryside, according to Met Office research being used to help devise the first official climate change map of Britain."

What!!?? I thought the Urban Heat Island effect was an Urban Myth - too small to affect Global Temperature readings that show Global warming. Yet it seems this effect is large enough to make us all sizzle and die.

Coby - Your site, devoted as it is to AGW religion, assumes AGW as a fact. The very title of the blog is arrogant, dogmatic and has religious overtones. How to talk to a doubting Thomas who does not believe the true religion. None of my posts have been answered. Would you care to have a debate with me on whether AGW is indeed a fact?

Richard -

The Urban Heat Island effect is real. However, it is well-known and adjusted for. The city-center can be as much as a few degrees warmer as the surrounding suburbs, which are warmer than the surrounding country-side. What is (more or less) negligible is the effect on the temperature trends.
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/02/warming-due-to-urban-heat…

Richard, Part II -

Coby - Your site, devoted as it is to AGW religion, assumes AGW as a fact. The very title of the blog is arrogant, dogmatic and has religious overtones. How to talk to a doubting Thomas who does not believe the true religion. None of my posts have been answered. Would you care to have a debate with me on whether AGW is indeed a fact?

What is the denialist obsession with calling AGW theory a religion? It meets all the normal criteria for a scientific theory (explanation that ties a set of facts together, used to make predictions, testable, etc.) Do you also consider the Theory of Gravity to be a religion? How about point-particle physics? Do you think there is a Pope of String-Theory?

There's no real reason to claim it is a religion, except as an ad hominem attack. You're making an emotional argument, not a rational one, and frankly, just makes it easy to dismiss you. Your two posts above are just another example of standard denailist bollocks; you bring nothing new or even remotely clever to the table, so get over yourself.

First, some non-tree ring based studies, both regional and Northern Hemisphere that show that MWP and LIA was more than the tree-ring based studies indicate and was world wide:

Millet et al (2009) The chironomid-based inference model reconstructed a July air temperature decrease of c. 0.7°C for the DACP and 1.3°C for the LIA compared with the temperature prevailing during the MWP.

Axford et al (2009) Much of the first millennium AD was relatively warm, with temperatures comparable to warm decades of the twentieth century. Temperatures during parts of the tenth and eleventh centuries AD may have been comparably warm.

Loehle (2007) The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.

Blass et al (2007) We found exceptionally low temperatures between AD 1580 and 1610 (0.75°C below twentieth-century mean) and during the late Maunder Minimum from AD 1680 to 1710 (0.5°C below twentieth-century mean).

Polissar et al (2007) Here we report a 1,500-year reconstruction of climate history and glaciation in the Venezuelan Andes using lake sediments. Four glacial advances occurred between anno Domini (A.D.) 1250 and 1810, coincident with solar-activity minima. Temperature declines of â3.2 ± 1.4°C and precipitation increases of â20% are required to produce the observed glacial responses.

Richey et al (2007) Two multi-decadal intervals of sustained high Mg/Ca indicate that Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were as warm or warmer than near-modern conditions between 1000 and 1400 yr B.P. Foraminiferal Mg/Ca during the coolest interval of the Little Ice Age (ca. 250 yr B.P.) indicate that SST was 2â2.5 °C below modern SST

Mangini et al (2005) The precisely dated isotopic composition of a stalagmite from Spannagel Cave in the Central Alps is translated into a highly resolved record of temperature at high elevation during the past 2000 yr. Temperature maxima during the Medieval Warm Period between 800 and 1300 AD are in average about 1.7 °C higher than the minima in the Little Ice Age and similar to present-day values.

Mossberg et al (2005) According to our reconstruction, high temperatures - similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990- occurred around AD 1000 to 1100, and minimum temperatures that are about 0.7K below the average of 1961-90 occurred around AD 1600.

Tan et al (2003) The WTR agrees well with the HCC (Table 1), including the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) [Lamb, 1965] and the Little Ice Age (LIA) [Matthes, 1939]. (Vernon - Figure 3 shows MWP was +1C and LIA was greater that -1C from the mean.)

Yang et al (2002) General characteristics of temperature change in China during the last two millennia are most clearly expressed by the ââWeightedââ reconstruction (Figure 3). According to the ââWeightedââ reconstruction curve, temperatures in China were above average in AD 0â240 with two peaks around AD 50 and in AD 100â240. The peak at about AD 200 represents the warmest stage of the last two millennia, temperature was even higher than during the 20th century. (Vernon - Figure 3 shows that MWP was +1C and LIA was -1C but RWP was warmer than Modern warming)

deMenocal et al (2000) The most recent of these events was the Little Ice Age, which occurred between 1300 to 1850 A.D., when subtropical SSTs were reduced by 3° to 4°C.

Now some studies that show that there are significant issues with the temperature reconstruction methodologies and tree rings in particular:

Christiansen et al (2009)
The underestimation of the amplitude of the low frequency variability demonstrated for all of the seven methods discourage the use of reconstructions to estimate the rareness of the recent warming. That this underestimation is found for all the reconstruction methods is rather depressing and strongly suggests that this point should be investigated further before any real improvements in the reconstruction methods can be made.

von Storch (2004)The centennial variability of the NH temperature is underestimated by the regression-based methods applied here [Mann et al], suggesting that past variations may have been at least a factor of two larger than indicated by empirical reconstructions. Frank et al (2005) The ring-width-based reconstruction substantially underestimates temperatures during the most of the overlap period with early instrumental data, with substantially lower values during the late 1700s and maximal divergence during the temperature minima around 1815.

D'Arrigo et al (2007)on divergence. The causes, however, are not well understood and are difficult to test due to the existence of a number of covarying environmental factors that may potentially impact recent tree growth. These possible causes include temperature-induced drought stress, nonlinear thresholds or time-dependent responses to recent warming, delayed snowmelt and related changes in seasonality, and differential growth/climate relationships inferred for maximum, minimum and mean temperatures.

Datsenko et al (2008) It is found that the Mann et al. reconstruction drastically underestimates low-frequency temperature variations, whereas the Moberg et al. reconstruction reproduces them much better, although with a certain underestimation rather than overestimation, as Mann et al. have recently argued.

Von Storch et al (2009)
The methods are Composite plus Scaling, the inverse regression method of Mann et al. (Nature 392:779â787, 1998) and a direct principal-components regression method. ⦠All three methods underestimate the simulated variations of the Northern Hemisphere temperature, but the Composite plus Scaling method clearly displays a better performance and is robust against the different noise models and network size.

Riedwyl et al (2008)
This paper presents a comparison of principal component (PC) regression and regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) to reconstruct European summer and winter surface air temperature over the past millennium. ⦠For the specific predictor network given in this paper, both techniques underestimate the target temperature variations to an increasing extent as more noise is added to the signal, albeit RegEM less than with PC regression.

So, based on these studies, our current warming is neither exceptional or unusual.

In order to save anyone the trouble of checking on Vernon's "quotes" they have all been debunked, or at least all that people have bothered to check on, it get's boring finding misquote after misquote, at Deltoid:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/open_thread_25.php

I doubt if anyone will have any doubts about Vernon's scientific honesty after reading that thread.

And still no response from Vernon on the two reports I gave him showing that Arctic Amplification has been well and truly documented.

Vernon, you are pathetic.

Ian,

you lie again. Please read that thread, it shows that none of these studies were disproved. Don't you get tired of never backing up any claims?

Vernon, the studies were not disproved, what you claimed they said was shown not to be true. You compared apples to oranges and cherry picked. You are a real fruit case.

Just in case you don't understand what these people were criticizing your for, there is a big difference in comparing global temperature changes (i.e on an annual basis) to maximum temperatures in the Arctic in July.

That is called quote mining and/or cherry picking and is just plain dishonest. So don't call me a liar when it is obvious who is being dishonest in these discussions.

Adam, you write "The Urban Heat Island effect is ..well-known and adjusted for. What is .. negligible is the effect on the temperature trends".

And you direct me to Coby's page which says "Urban Heat Island Effect has been examined quite thoroughly and simply found to have a negligible effect on temperature trends...it is one climate scientists are well aware of and have taken any required steps to REMOVE ITS INFLUENCE FROM THE RAW DATA." (emphasis mine)

The IPCC on reaching the above conclusion depends heavily on the analysis of the data by Peterson and Vose, 1997 and Peterson et al., 1998a, 1999, quoted in their 2001 report. On the basis of this analysis Peterson stated "Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures."

In 2007 Peterson sent Steve McIntyre the list of the 289 sites he had used in the study. McIntyre noted that many of the "Urban" sites were in fact very small towns and some completely rural, thus one could possibly imagine why there should be less or little trend divergence between the two data. However McIntyre did an analysis of the RAW DATA of 282 sites, for which it was available, AND FOUND A TREND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE URBAN AND RURAL SITES CHOSEN BY PETERSON - THE DELTA OVER 100 YEARS BEING JUST OVER 0.7C.

McIntyre goes on to say - "THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE IN TRENDS IN THE "RAW" DATA, WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN REPORTED. He" (Peterson) "believes that this difference is due to TOBS changes based on De Gaetano adjustments, but it's possible that there is some other explanation for the difference, including the obvious candidate - UHI."

Now the above does not conclusively prove anything either way but any reasonable person would say it does cast doubt on the claim that UHI is "found to have a negligible effect on temperature trends."

Recent studies using satellite measurements have clearly shown that there is a significant UHI influence. The Northern China study showed that regional temperatures were proven to be wrong due to UHI.

The AGW hypothesis does not even remotely approach the authority of Newton's Theory of Gravity. Many of the "facts" it ties together are debatable and the predictions it has made are either wrong or unproven so far.

When the trajectories of a projectile or a rocket fired towards Mars are calculated according to those very same equations of Newton's, they arrive at their predicted destinations at astonishing precisions and not with 60 to 90 percent confidence or 90 percent confidence that they will reach the calculated trajectory. The other 10 percent being not that it may be slightly off but take quite a different trajectory altogether.

The other reason I personally liken it to a religion is the intolerance its adherents have to dissenting views.

Having said that I apologise for have having called it so. Not because I do not believe it is so but because it takes away from the real debate whether the AGW hypothesis is in fact true or not. Calling the AGW hypothesis a religion is not an ad homenim attack. I have said nothing personal against anyone. Which is more than I can say of your remarks against me.

To Coby I repeat the challenge. WWould you care to have a debate with me on whether AGW is indeed a fact?

Richard -

The AGW hypothesis does not even remotely approach the authority of Newton's Theory of Gravity. Many of the "facts" it ties together are debatable and the predictions it has made are either wrong or unproven so far.

Whether what you say is true or not, none of this would make it even remotely approaching religion. It can be an unsupported theory, but the "discarding ground" of disproven theories isn't religion.

The other reason I personally liken it to a religion is the intolerance its adherents have to dissenting views.

There's no intolerance of dissenting views, just intolerance of denialists recycling debunked arguments over and over again.

Calling the AGW hypothesis a religion is not an ad homenim attack.

By calling it a religion, you're intending to imply that people who 'believe' in AGW are holding on to an irrational belief, without any evidence or support. Since this is essentially an 'attack the messenger' tactic, it clearly is an ad-hominem attack.

Which is more than I can say of your remarks against me.

I admit, my attacks against you are entirely personal. You're arguments have been debunked over and over again, yet you continue to spout off as if you have been granted some sort of divine insight into the science that no one else has thought of. This marks you as a dyed-in-the-wool denialist, and completely unworthy of any sort of respectful, honest debate, since you are not interested in such.

People interested in 'debating' global warming are much like those who want to 'debate' evolution: the contrarian party is only interested in getting a PR victory, they are not interested in getting the science correct. A true debate requires honest participants: global warming denialists are not honest brokers, no matter how much they have deluded themselves into believing their own nonsense.

Adam,

Debunked, you mean like the outdated, no longer debunking how to's of Coby's? Like recent studies that actually release the data and methodologies and show that UHI is actually a problem, unlike Jones et al would have us believe. You know Jones et al, they are the ones that lost the data for the benchmark study that proved that UHI had no impact? I point back to my comment #14 which shows that temperature reconstructions using strip bark pines are bad, per the NAS, despite what Mann et al (hockey team) says for used as a temperature proxy. That all tree rings have been shown to have problems being used as temperature proxies. That the statistical methodologies have been shown to not properly reproduce the low frequency temperature variability. Further, that the implemented statistical methodology used by the Hockey Team are flawed over an above the low frequency reconstruction issues. That the models are failing at many points; No Arctic amplification, no warming at all in the Antarctic, or no equatorial upper tropospheric hot spot.

It is really funny saying that skeptics are not after honest debate and the truth when it is the "warmest" climate scientist who are more concerned about a PR victory than the truth. If they wanted to find the truth they would not hide away their methodology and data. Jones still has not released the identity of the surface stations used to create the CRU Hadley temperature datasets. It took an order from Congress to get Mann et al to release his data.

This is really funny hearing the advocates of the group that stone walls any release of data or methodologies as long as possible saying they are the ones looking for honest debate and the truth.

Adam - The AGW hypothesis does not even remotely approach the authority of Newton's Theory of Gravity. Nor does it even remotely approach the authority of the Theory of Evolution, both of which theories you have likened the AGW hypothesis to. In logic this is referred to as a claim to False Authority. (Because the Theory of Evolution is a respected scientific theory and Newton's laws of Gravity is a respected scientific theory therefore the AGW Hypothesis is one also).

I am not interested in debating whether its more akin to a religion or not. This is irrelevant to the issue whether it is true or not.

I pointed out that the RAW DATA used by Peterson et al., when plotted by McIntyre actually showed a TREND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE URBAN AND RURAL SITES and this was not denied by Peterson. This was in response to your response to my post stating "What is .. negligible is the effect on the temperature trends."

You had nothing to say about this. Instead you admit that you made an ad-hominem on me and have repeated this attack.

If you have anything to say about the science I have revealed - do so. If you dont then please refrain from these ad-hominem attacks which only reveal the quality of individual that you are.

And to Coby I repeat the challenge. Would you care to have a debate with me on whether AGW is indeed a fact? I assure you my intentions are entirely honest.

Richard,
While I'm more aligned with your thinking than the AGW group, your best point is the fact that is still in the debate phase. Certainly not at a point where we alter lifestyles or spend the world treasury to fix something.

I think a debate will not sway either side, regardless of the outcome, but time will tell.

In the interim the questions to discuss are:

What do you want to do to avert this disaster?
What will it cost?
And what will be the results?

Let them answer/debate that.

Paul â Disaster? What disaster are you talking about? I think you and even the AGW proponents will agree that the Global warming of the last 35 odd years has not resulted in disaster.

In 35 years, since 1974, while the Earth has warmed, for whatever reason, it has added 2.8 billion people to its 1974 population of 4 billion and yet managed to feed itself. World grain production has risen from 1,200 million tons to around 2,000 million tons.

Sea levels have not risen and no vast populations or even small populations, seaside towns or villages have drowned, even partially. Not even the densely populated Maldives, which has a maximum elevation of 8 ft above sea level. (The sea level has actually fallen around the Maldives.)

In all this period, there was a news item on BBC, cold related deaths in Brittan, which far outnumber heat related deaths, (not only in Brittan but in every country outside the tropics), have fallen. Not only that, HEAT RELATED DEATHS HAVE SHOWN NO INCREASE. Resulting in the overall fall of heat and cold related deaths.

Where is the disaster related to this warming you are talking about?

Are you talking the prophesised disasters to come?

That assumes that the AGW hypothesis is correct. Should we not debate that first rather than just assume it to be so and then discuss its alleged prophesies? Because I think, after careful consideration of the evidence, that it is not correct at all.

I need to spell out what am offering to debate:

The AGW hypothesis claim (from the IPCC) - the major cause for the warming over the past 100 years or so has been the CO2 added to the atmosphere by human fossil fuel burning.

My view - the overwhelming cause of the warming over the last 100 years has been natural causes - in my view mostly due to the sun, directly and indirectly. The CO2 added into the atmosphere has contributed very little to any warming and its other effects have been entirely beneficial. The temperatures that have increased over the last 35 years or so are entirely coincidental to any CO2 increases and they fall well within the natural range of temperature fluctuations in the Holocene period.

The AGW hypothesis claim (taken from the IPCC) â If we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate (Which I think is highly probable) CO2 levels will rise to 750 ppm of the atmosphere (Which I think is very likely) and temperatures will rise by 4.3 C by the end of the century.

My view â yes we will continue to burn fossil fuels at current levels or higher and CO2 levels will rise but temperatures are not likely to be higher than today at the end of the century and the chances are they will be lower.

The AGW hypothesis claim (taken from the IPCC) â There will be mass extinctions around the globe, widespread coral mortality, cereal production to reduce, negative impacts of the food situation, widespread loss of coastal wetlands and coastal flooding, huge negative impact on human health ALL DUE TO AGW.

My view - None of this will be true as there is no AGW.

I am offering to debate the first two contentions.

Let me kick off the debate by asking some questions

1, A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored?

2, Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this is ignored in models.

3, Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable surface thermometer measurements used?

4, Why there has been no runaway greenhouse in the past when CO2 was far higher? Obviously due to negative feed backs. What were these negative feed backs and why dont they exist today?

5, Some 85 per cent of volcanoes are unseen and unmeasured yet these heat the oceans and add monstrous amounts of CO2 to the oceans. Why have these been ignored?

6, Why have there been five significant ice ages when CO2 was higher than now?

That should keep you all busy for a few days.

Crakar

Thank you Cracker. I commend you for your enthusiasm. And I applaud you for your scepticism. Scepticism and debate are the ways that science works. Only the AGW proponents think that it is something to be greatly frowned upon. I would like to point out that water vapour has been dealt with, in their own fashion, by this site. And though grateful for your kick start I think I will go about it my own way.

Before one considers the empirical evidence of any scientific hypothesis one has to lay down the logical foundations of the hypothesis. After that the hypothesis may be very logical but wrong or very counter-intuitive but right, or vice-versa, depending on the empirical evidence supporting or disproving it.

In a debate there could be many points of agreement. So there is no point arguing those.

I will lay out the logical foundations of the AGW hypothesis - that most of the global warming of the last 100 years has been due to the CO2 added to the atmosphere by the anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels (correct me if I am wrong):-

CO2 in the atmosphere has increased due to anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels. Whereas in the past CO2 has not been a cause of global warming, having lagged warming by several centuries, the CO2 addition to our atmosphere, specially the rate of addition of this CO2, has been unprecedented in Earthâs history.

CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas and although it has not historically caused Global warming it has enhanced it once it started. Since there has been no historical precedent to the current CO2 addition, we cannot rely on history for the Earthâs climate response to this addition, but on mathematical models instead.

In the present case the addition of CO2 has disturbed the delicate balance of our climate which has been in equilibrium for the past 10,000-20,000 years causing it to warm. This warming will continue if we continue to add CO2 to our atmosphere at the current rates, with disastrous consequences to our planet.

Mathematically if we double the CO2 in our atmosphere the temperature would rise by 1 C, provided nothing else changes. But our Earthâs climate is a complicated system and taking into consideration that water vapor will increase, and other positive enhancing effects due this addition, we estimate that there will be multiplication effect of this theoretical warming (which we call forcing) and the warming for a doubling of the CO2 in our atmosphere will be 3 degrees C to our best estimates, derived from our models.

My hypothesis â We cannot ignore natural forces affecting our climate even in these unique circumstances of CO2 increase. The best way to judge our future climate is examine our climatic history. Although the rate of increase of CO2 may be unprecedented yet there were times in our history when CO2 has been 5 times and 10 times as high as they are today. During those times also there were ice-ages.

The earthâs climate has gradually become colder in the last 40 million years. This cooling has fluctuated between periods of great cold (ice ages) and less cold (interglacial periods).

The atmospheric CO2 levels have also been reducing since 40 million years. The CO2 level at the end of the last ice-age of 180 ppm has been the lowest for the last 250 million years.

The defining climatic feature of Earths last 2 million years have been the ice-ages. During the last 800 years there have been 8 ice-ages, interspersed with short periods of inter-glacials of about 10,000 years. We are currently in an interglacial period which has lasted an unprecedented 19,000 years.

We are perhaps at the end of the latest inter-glacial. Based on this history, if I were to bet whether it would be colder or warmer in the future I would bet on it being colder and I would be grateful for any warmth that we have at present.

The start of an ice-age is brought on with chilling abruptness within the space of sometimes as short as half a decade by climatic phenomena known as climate ripples. We have to greatly fear the next ice-age, as did Svante Arrhenius, the commandeered father of AGW. It would wipe out Europe, America, Russia and much of China. We do not have any technology to deal with it.

I accept that, theoretically, if CO2 were doubled, temperatures would increase by 1 C, provided everything else remained the same. But, and here is where I differ from the AGW hypothesis, I think that the Earthâs climatic system is highly homeostatic. It tends to come back to its state of former equilibrium rather than go away from it. So instead of this warming effect being enhanced it will be reduced. Just a small increase in cloudiness for example could greatly reduce or even completely wipe out any greenhouse effect of CO2 and thus it will be eclipsed and dwarfed by natural causes that have historically caused global warming and cooling.

Secondly I do not accept that the Earthâs climate has been rock steady or stable over the last 19,000 years since the last ice-age. Even over the last 1000 years the temperatures have fluctuated dramatically, all due to natural causes, and the rates of recent change have been well within historical changes during the Holocene.

That should be 800,000 years not 800 years.

The natural root cause for our global climate and temperature fluctuations have been the sun. There was shown to be a very good correlation between the Northern Hemisphere land temperature and the smoothed curve of the varying solar cycle length. This was sought to be discredited but I am inclined to believe there is something in this rather than the poor correlation between global temperatures and CO2 levels during the last 150 years.

The mechanism that influences this, I believe, is the presence or absence or Solar Faculae which are linked again with solar cycles and correlated negatively very strongly with Cosmic Ray Flux, which in turn is linked very strongly with cloudiness.

This again was sought to be discredited by a recent paper. On examination of the paper it appears that the discredit is not based on any empirical evidence but on a computer model. Their model showed that changes in cosmic rays are two orders of magnitude too feeble to cause the changes in clouds. This caused the Science Daily to report that the cosmic ray theory "a troubling hypothesisâ?? (who did it trouble I wonder) âabout how the sun may impact global warming" was âfinally laid to rest."

However real data about this Hypothesis is yet to be collected from a CERN experiment called CLOUD which will take place in 2011. This will simulate GCRs, in a cloud chamber, at any altitude or latitude. Till real data comes from that experiment, I think that, in the words of Mark Twain, who read his obituary in the papers and replied, to paraphrase, âthe reported death of the Cosmic Ray Flux theory is greatly exaggeratedâ.

Richard,
I should have put "disater" in quotes.
Sorry for the confusion.

There was shown to be a very good correlation between the Northern Hemisphere land temperature and the smoothed curve of the varying solar cycle length.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-cycle-length.htm
In short: up until about the mid 70's - yes. After that - no.

Another way to look at solar influence is the solar irradiance, which shows a similar trend (i.e. ceasing to correlate well in the mid 1970's or so).

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/here-comes-the-sun/

No one denies that up until that time, solar influence was the most important driver of temperature change, until the mid 70's when Greenhouse Gases "took over" so to speak.
here's the typical attributions:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/image/a/a2/Climate_Change_Attribution.p…

Fill yer boots Richard, just one word of advice they do have a short attention span so try and keep your posts shorter OK.

Crakar

To Adam,

Have a read of this article, it talks about an opposing view to yours. It is a bit more scientific than "took over" so to speak.

climaterealists.com/attachments/database/The%20sun%20spot%20message1.pdf

You also have this link;

w.w.w.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

I suspect these articles will be ignored by the faithful, and i will be expected to accept a theory which states;

Something caused an ice age when CO2 levels were much higher than to day, then something caused an interglacial, 800 years later CO2 "took over" then CO2 stopped "taking over" but since 1970 CO2 has "taken over" once again.

Forgive me for thinking your theory sounds ludicrous with scientific basis at all.

Solar irradiance does not correlate with global temperatures directly but solar cycles do. This is because though solar irradiance varies only very slightly it doesnt present the full picture. There is a much larger variance among the different spectral bands and also in the solar faculae during the cycles, which ties in well with the Cosmic Ray Flux hypothesis.

There were some valid criticisms of Friis-Christensen, Lassen correlation between temperature and solar cycles. Lassen on re-examining the data says "a solar model with decadal smoothing can now only explain about half the variance in the mean temperatures whereas it was able to explain about 2/3âs before 1988." 1988 was the year of seeming divergence and not the mid 70's and even after that it can explain half apparent rise.

In the Temperature Record Reliability post of Coby's above, he says "So how do we finally know when all the reasoning is reasonable and the corrections correct? One good way is to cross check your conclusion against other completely unrelated data sets" (I agree)"... all of the other various indicators of global temperature trends that are available unanimously agree... * Satellite measurements of the upper and lower troposphere * Weather balloons show very similar warming .. All of these ..lead to the same conclusion: the Earth is undergoing a RAPID AND LARGE warming trend". Excuse me but that is not true.

Satellite data has only been available since 1979 and since 1979 till date they show a warming of the lower troposphere of only 0.03 C per decade compared to the suspect land surface measurements which indicate a warming of 0.17 C per decade. This agrees extremely well with the independent Weather balloon data of the same period and contradicts IPCC's GCM models which predict that the lower troposphere should warm faster than the surface.

Since 1979 the suspect land temperature records rise sharply whereas the UAH satellite records are quite flat, much like the Lassen modified - Friis-Christensen, Lassen
curve. I suspect the correlation between the two would be very high. Indicating that the sun is still the prime driver of temperatures and not CO2.

In 2004 the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich reported that Sun was more active now than it had been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Coincidentally it has been warmer now that anytime in the last 1000 years.

The Sunspots started vanishing in 2008 and activity is still very low. Coincidentally world temperatures dropped in 2008 and here in NZ NIWA showed May temperatures were between 2.0 and 2.5deg C lower than average in many areas. Its pretty cold right now. Things are really supposed to hot up this year and onwards according to the AGW hypothesis. Well lets see.

Cracker - apologies for the long post. A rookie reporter was told by his editor to cut down his 3 page report on an inmate from a mental institution who raped a female guard and then escaped. He finally got it right when he wrote Nut, screws and bolts.

Could you make a nut screws and bolts precis for me of all that I've written?

No need to apologies to me Richard, you can write posts as long as you want.

All i know is the longer you make them the more chance you give them to focus on a minor issue of what you have written whilst successfully avoiding the major areas of the debate.

Looks like my comments are going into moderation and never coming out again.

[All of your prolific output gets posted, I think insinuations of censorship are a rather low blow considering how much you post here.
- coby]

Lets try this again.

UHI was discounted and claimed not to be a regional or global problem with SAT records but that has been shown to not be true.

Zhang et. al. (2008,) says: The amplitude of the urban heat island is remarkably asymmetric: it is larger during summer where it reaches 4.3C, while during winter the excess heat due to urbanization is only 1.3C. In desert environments we find that the LST response to ISA is bowl-shaped. Zones with moderate ISA are cooler than the surrounding desert but as ISA increases above 75% the LST becomes more like the non-urban desert fringe. These observational results are in line with previous studies and indicate an increase in the urban heat island amplitude with increase in city size that is consistent among cities across a broad climatic range.

Further, Gutierrez, et. al. (2008) found: Urban heat island (UHI) was traditionally examined using WMO 2m surface air temperatures. Such effect was considered as significant at night, namely, a nighttime phenomenon. Using the recently available satellite remote sensing data from NASA MODIS, we find that UHI can also be identified from surface skin temperature and that the daytime UHI is more evident than the nighttime UHI. Furthermore, the regional climate model simulations reveal that the albedo reduction in urbanization area contributes the most for the daytime UHI.

The final proof that UHI is a regional and possibly a global problem is found in Ren et. al. (2008) where they say: The contribution of urban warming to total annual mean surface air temperature change as estimated with the national basic/reference station dataset reaches 37.9%. It is therefore obvious that, in the current regional average surface air temperature series in north China, or probably in the country as a whole, there still remain large effects from urban warming. The urban warming bias for the regional average temperature anomaly series is corrected. After that, the increasing rate of the regional annual mean temperature is brought down from 0.29°C (10 yr)â1 to 0.18°C (10 yr)â1, and the total change in temperature approaches 0.72°C for the period analyzed.

So, the fact that UHI was long claimed to no be a significant impact on the SAT record, it now is shown that UHI was and continues to have significant impact.

Vernon - you are not likely to get any reply other than, perhaps, please refer to page such and such of this site, where an argument has been laid out, with its own mistakes and falsehoods.

Carbon doomsdayers have thought of everything. The time for talking is over - it is time to close down our power plants, fork out the cash, from you and me, billions of dollars to send us back to the stoneage, while they fly off to conferences in Copenhagen and other places, for their brief moment in the sun. Because its all your fault. You have a bloody carbon footprint with your cars, houses, boats and cities. Why the hell cant you be like those people in the subsahara who walk 20 kms every day for a bucket of water, no fossil fuel, no carbon footprint and a (miserable) life expectancy of 40 years?

Dont expect a debate here. But keep questioning, be sceptical. Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who claim they have found it.

Before I go I would like to ask Coby some last questions. Do the mountains of contrary evidence ever trouble you? Do you ever doubt that the AGW hypothesis maybe completely mistaken? If you are an honest broker surely you must be having some doubts?

Itâs not over yet Richard, well at least here in Australia. The labor Gov cap 'n' trade tax plan will not get enough votes to pass in parliament.

The gov are voting "yes" along party lines the opposition are voting "no" for numerous reasons it would appear and the greens are ironically voting against it as it does not go far enough.

The gov are now trying to bribe the independents (why people waste their vote on them I will never know) to vote for it.

In short the legislation is doomed, some say it will be a trigger for a double dissolution of parliament and the next election will be fought on climate change policy.

Only time will tell.

Yeah mate Crud and the Penny (did not drop) W(r)ong should go. Boot em out. Looks like opposition to this ridiculous cap n trade is building up. Huge expense to accomplish nothing, for a hypothesis that doesnt stand scientific scrutiny and should have been discarded a million times over. How stupid can people get. I just discovered that Bob Carter is a good Kiwi bloke from Otago University.
Here is a must read for you : Energy Myths and Realities
http://www.questar.com/1OurCompany/newsreleases/2009_news/UVUSpeech.pdf

Richard -

you are not likely to get any reply other than, perhaps, please refer to page such and such of this site, where an argument has been laid out, with its own mistakes and falsehoods.

Yes, because the same nonsensical arguments from you lot are recycled over and over again, and they've been shown to be incorrect, over and over again, so why waste the time reinventing the wheel?

Because its all your fault. You have a bloody carbon footprint with your cars, houses, boats and cities. Why the hell cant you be like those people in the subsahara who walk 20 kms every day for a bucket of water, no fossil fuel, no carbon footprint and a (miserable) life expectancy of 40 years?

Yes, to an extent, everyone who uses fossil fuels is responsible for our current situation. And there's absolutely no doubt that cheap, abundantly available energy (along with a favorable climate and other factors) allowed humanity (at least, a significant minority of humanity) to create enormous wealth and an incredibly high standard of living. Of course, we want to PRESERVE that standard of living, but the challenge is to do it without destroying the planet we live on.

How you think a mere cap and trade policy can send humanity back to the stone age, but the consequences of climate change are just "meh" is completely beyond me. If you truly want to avoid the miserable life expectancy of 40 years I urge you to contact your representatives and get behind climate change legislation.

Do the mountains of contrary evidence ever trouble you? Do you ever doubt that the AGW hypothesis maybe completely mistaken? If you are an honest broker surely you must be having some doubts?

Wow, my irony meter asploded when I read this comment!

Normally i find parliamentary debate (in Australia)to be quite boring except when an argument breaks out of course.

Anyway I was listening to the debate on the Carbon Pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) in the House of Representatives (a bit like the commons in England) last night and found it very interesting.

Most of the labor MP's, toeing the party line simply regurgitated the same old thing, like "the science is in" and "we must act now" mantra.

However the MP's opposing the bill (some Labor MP's) actually stated their case quite well, For example one Labor MP said "We encourage farmers to produce ethanol based crops and yet the addition of ethanol reduces the fuel consumption so we use more fuel, and in the end we create food shortages"

"To tax a farmer for how many cows he has is absurd"

"Australia produces 1.4% of total man made CO2 emissions, this bill intends to reduce this 1.4% by 5%, most big companies (Alcoa etc) cannot compete even with such a small reduction and hence will go overseas where there is no CPRS"

"This of course will result in job losses and less income for Australia, Australia's CO2 emissions will drop but will be replaced by the country where Alcoa etc set up their new manufacturing facilities"

In response the Labor party went into mantra mode about dying polar bears and rising sea levels etc.

To Adam, i propose my own scheme and it is called "user pays" as Australia contributes 1.4% then we pay for that and countries like USA, China etc that churn out CO2 at a phenomenal rate can by pay their fair share also.

Or better still if people like yourself are serious about this new wonderful way of saving the planet why donât you just shut everything down as of now?

You sit there in your ivory tower preaching a good sermon but would you be prepared to do that? After all what could be more important than saving the planet.

1, A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored?

Cloud formation and climatic influence is one of the least certain and most intensely studied component of climate. A quick fossick in google scholar will set you straight.

2, Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this is ignored in models.

Bring up AR4 or TAR, search 'water vapour' (European spelling) and you'll find hundreds of hits. There are even sections devoted to water vapour. I can't comment knowledgably on whether the models account for regional differences in the hydrological cycle, but it's a little unbelievable that any well-known known dynamics would be left out.

3, Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable surface thermometer measurements used?

Where do you get the idea that this stuff is ignored? Radiosonde and satellite temps show warming over the long-term anyway. Again, you can find this stuff in AR4 or TAR online.

4, Why there has been no runaway greenhouse in the past when CO2 was far higher? Obviously due to negative feed backs. What were these negative feed backs and why dont they exist today?

The negative feedbacks are still operating (like increased plant growth sequestering more carbon). They were operating in the geologic past while CO2 was rising. A runaway greenhouse effect is unlikely with the carbon cycles we have.

5, Some 85 per cent of volcanoes are unseen and unmeasured yet these heat the oceans and add monstrous amounts of CO2 to the oceans. Why have these been ignored?

They haven't, and their effects quickly disperse through the water, so by and large they have been accounted for - unless someone wants to posit that there has been an unseen spurt of underwater tectonic activity in the last 50 - 100 years. But while we're tracking down unlikely causes, it might be prudent to run with the explanation we have so far.

6, Why have there been five significant ice ages when CO2 was higher than now?

You must mean the pre-quaternary ice ages, when the climate system was very different (eg, continents completely different). No one claims all other influences on climate should be repealed.

That should keep you all busy for a few days.

I've just spent a few seconds wondering why critics denounce the modern instrumental record as unreliable while confidently asserting factoids about the distant past.

The ranking experts on the temperature record- the keepers of the record, who analyze it constantly so they can adjust the definition of 'normal' have accounted for the urban heat island effect, as well as other influences development has upon the records.
Two of them appear in my film "Proof or Propaganda". Neither are interested in entering the public debate, unless Congress calls upon them.

Barry,

1, So we agree cloud formation is poorly understood and as such renders the models inadequate in regards to accurately modelling the climate.

2, The point is not that it has been left out, in fact it has been accounted for by the IPCC. Without WV the temp prodictions by the models would not be able to be reached, WV is a positive feed back according to the IPCC not a negative one.

The point i am trying to make is that WV can/does act as a negative feedback not just simply as a positive expressed by the IPCC/models. Also why is CO2 made out to be the GW culprit when even the IPCC acknowledge the major role WV plays. In other words should we have a cap 'n' trade on WV rather than CO2?

People i speak to do not even know that WV is by far most powerful GHG in fact they do not even know it is one, this is due to the very slick advertising blitz by the gw proponents so yes the IPCC ignore WV and if you do not beleive me have a lot at their pretty graph that shows what the attributed forcings to GHG's, do you see water vapour on the graph?

3, Sat and radiosonde data prove the AGW theory to be incorrect or at least merit a rethink (refer missing hotspot). Also why do the AGW proponents always point to the surface measurements as proof of GW? The surface measurements are not accurate enough to even see a meaningful trend. For example the SH was as warm 100 years ago as it is today so therefore GW is not happening in the SH? It would appar not as the Arctic ice extent (i mean sea ice not land ice) is at an all time high.

4, Your response here does not make sense, are you saying that increased CO2 will increase plant life therefore decrease CO2 therefore decreased positive feedback of WV therefore decrease in temps therefore cool the oceans therefore decreasing CO2 even more causing the global temps to drop not rise?

Thus proving the IPCC climaggedon theory incorrect? A runaway GH effect is unlikely due to the carbon cycle we have is exactly right Barry.

5, Ignorance is bliss Barry

6, This question is tied to #4 if CO2 has been higher in the past and yet the Earth plunged into an iceage it would suggest to me that there are other forces at work driving the climate which are more powerful than trace gases such as CO2.

What are these other forces? Why did CO2 not prevent an ice age?

Yes the planet was different back then in geological terms so are you know saying that CO2 only drives the climate under certain circumstances? You are correct we should not repeal other influences but lately we seem to be ignoring them.

Thanks for your reply

Crakar

#3 Sorry should read Antarctic and not Arctic sea ice.

Crakar -

Also why is CO2 made out to be the GW culprit when even the IPCC acknowledge the major role WV plays. In other words should we have a cap 'n' trade on WV rather than CO2?

You obviously don't understand what people are saying and why they are saying it, regarding global warming. Unless this is just another misguided (and failed) attempt at humour. To educate yourself, you can start with the wikipedia page on global warming (it's pretty decent).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Until you understand the basic facts and arguments, the rest of your posts are so much nonsense contributing to the already high noise:signal ratio of the internet.

Adam - ".. the same nonsensical arguments from you lot are recycled over and over again, and they've been shown to be incorrect, over and over again, .."

That's a lie. My arguments have not been shown to be incorrect - they have simply not been answered. You are not willing to debate the nonsensical so called "science" of the AGW hypothesis, but ever ready to fling ad-hominems, slogans and tired catch phrases at persons and arguments.

"How you think a mere cap and trade policy can send humanity back to the stone age, .." Because this "cap and trade", actually Tax and trade, is going to cost productive tax payers billions of dollars they cannot afford for a problem that does not exist. Its not only cap n trade - I never mentioned it - thats only only part of it - its the whole ideology of AGW, a preposterous lie, good money thrown down the drain for an imaginary problem.

The whole subsidy idea. Take money from productive industry throw it into unproductive industry - tax the tax payer dry doing so. Spain the shining example of Obama - now quietly dropped from his rhetoric in favour of Denmark- as the country is officially bankrupt. Subsidising bio-fuels so that farmers grow bio-fuel crops to produce fuel for cars that dont need the fuel, there is plenty from crude oil at much cheaper rates, and not grow food crops for people who need them.

"If you truly want to avoid the miserable life expectancy of 40 years I urge you to contact your representatives and get behind climate change legislation."

Good grief are you mad? The communities with the lowest carbon footprints have the lowest life expectancies and quality of life. I fortunately live in a country with one of the best qualities of life on the globe. I dont want it to regress backwards thanks to the totally idiotic policies suggested by the IPCC.

No sane person or one who is even remotely intelligent could possibly believe the scare mongering tactics of Al Gore, "Dr Strangelove" Hansen, "Hockey stick" Mann and their merry men. Dr Strangelove I believe recently said "the problem" (what problem?) is even worse than before and the sea levels are about to rise by 246 feet. Wow! Even Al Gore in apocalypse now in 2005 predicted only about 20 ft and then promptly bought a multimillion dollar property on the San Francisco shoreline, showing how much faith he has on his own predictions.

Do the mountains of contrary evidence ever trouble you? Do you ever doubt that the AGW hypothesis maybe completely mistaken? If you are an honest broker surely you must be having some doubts?

"Wow, my irony meter asploded when I read this comment!" Which fortifies the evidence that the Warmers are a religion - only a religious fanatic is one who has no qualms or doubts about his beliefs.

Two quotes from Richard above, offered without comment:

"No sane person or one who is even remotely intelligent could possibly believe the scare mongering tactics of Al Gore, "Dr Strangelove" Hansen, "Hockey stick" Mann and their merry men."

"only a religious fanatic is one who has no qualms or doubts about his beliefs."

Coby,

It is fun to take shots like that, but how about addressing the real issues with the temperature record, presented back in #40.

There is a serious problem with UHI bias in the temperature record. It has been identified and it has been shown to be regional in scope.

Further, we know the magic that GISS does with constantly rewriting the past to make it colder. The CRU Hadley temperature record is a black box. Jones still refuses to release what stations are used and he still claims that UHI is only a 0.005C decade. That has clearly been shown to be false.

vernon,

Everyone accepts that there are UHI biases in the station record and this is what the paper citations you posted in #40 say. However, none of these citations say there are UHI biases in hadcrut or gistemp. These are not station records but surface temperature records, which are supposed to have gone to some effort to remove such biases as UHI.

In fact you point this out:
"Jones ... still claims that UHI is only a 0.005C decade"

Assuming this is correct, do you have any reason to think this is not the case? None of the paper citations in #40 say anything obvious to refute this.

Richard -

Good grief are you mad? The communities with the lowest carbon footprints have the lowest life expectancies and quality of life. I fortunately live in a country with one of the best qualities of life on the globe. I dont want it to regress backwards thanks to the totally idiotic policies suggested by the IPCC.

Once again, a denialist completely misses the point. I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising, you muppets have not shown much ability to think coherently. Yes, cheap, abundantly available energy (in the form of fossil fuels) has to led to an immense creation of wealth and improved standards of living for a significant minority of the world. I said as much in an earlier post. There is no dispute over this. However, this same energy source is leading to the destruction of our environment.

Our quality of life (or more accurately, our children's and children's children's quality of life) will be significantly lowered (increased drought, food shortages, extreme weather, rising seas, etc.) regardless of who emits the greenhouse gases. If you think a mere carbon tax is going to result in disaster, you obviously aren't up to date on the research that has taken place (both in the IPCC report and elsewhere) and are, ironically, falling for the scare mongering of Marc Morano, Anthony Watts, and Rush Limbaugh.
Please see here for a start, I'll let you discover the rest on your own: http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MITJPSPGC_Rpt146.pdf

Which fortifies the evidence that the Warmers are a religion - only a religious fanatic is one who has no qualms or doubts about his beliefs.

You making a hilariously ironic comment proves that "Warmers are a religion"? Care to explain how that works? And there you again, making ironic comments and thinking that you're being clever. If anything, our little interchange has shown that you have a complete lack of self-awareness. At least you denialists are good for one thing, I certainly feel better about myself after reading your delusional, poorly written posts.

Adam,
I wonder if you can understand a few simple points? Memorise these and repeat these daily at night before you go to bed
1. CO2 - is not a pollutant - repeat NOT A POLLUTANT.
2. There are pollutants that we have to worry about - lead (already reduced), copper, mercury, SO2, Nitrous oxides - these are not even addressed by IPCC. I am as against pollution as you purport to be - but the difference is I know what pollution is whereas you havent a clue.
3. Alternate energy is all very well - I support it and have built my own solar water heating system for my house. But subsidies means that someone pays for it - the tax-payer (me for one) - it NOT SUSTAINABLE. You take money from a business that pays for itself and put it into something that doesnt - which ultimately bankrupts the nation.
4. Bio-fuels are a prime example but far more criminal. They are supported by 11 billion US dollars of subsidies to produce fuel for cars that dont need the fuel and take away 100 million tons of cereal production from humans who do need it.
5. AGW is a myth, wrong, totally unsubstantiated, built on wrong premises and has failed to predict the climate for 10 years running now. It has been disproved by evidence and data.

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove Global warming models right; a single experiment can prove AGW wrong" - Who said that? - Albert Einstein (paraphrasing)

Why a religion? - because it has the same characteristic as a religion. Formulate a hypothesis then defend it against all evidence to the contrary.

Fred,

You did not read the studies did you. Ren found that REGIONALLY the contribution of urban warming to total annual mean surface air temperature change as estimated with the national basic/reference station dataset reaches 37.9%. That is a bit more than Jones "found". I would suggest that you actually read the papers.

You have not read much on CRU have you. There is no adjustment per Jones for UHI because he says that it has too small an effect and none at the regional or global level. What the Ren study shows is that Jones was wrong. The UHI is much higher than Jones found and that there is a known regional impact that the study measured. Based on that and the fact that CRU will not release what stations are used to make up the CRU temperature record, the reliability of the CRU record is in doubt. GISS is a joke, if you do not know that Hansen et al constantly rewrite the record, then read up on how GISS does temps. The fact that GISS temp record is in constant flux calls that record into question for reliability issues

Richard -

1. CO2 - is not a pollutant - repeat NOT A POLLUTANT.

pollutant (p-ltnt)
A substance or condition that contaminates air, water, or soil. Pollutants can be artificial substances, such as pesticides and PCBs, or naturally occurring substances, such as oil or carbon dioxide, that occur in harmful concentrations in a given environment. Heat transmitted to natural waterways through warm-water discharge from power plants and uncontained radioactivity from nuclear wastes are also considered pollutants.
Source: The American Heritage® Science Dictionary

2. There are pollutants that we have to worry about - lead (already reduced), copper, mercury, SO2, Nitrous oxides - these are not even addressed by IPCC. I am as against pollution as you purport to be - but the difference is I know what pollution is whereas you havent a clue.

Nitrous oxide is in fact a greenhouse gas, and is addressed by the IPCC (see WG1 2.2, section "Greenhouse Gases" for starters). You obviously have never looked at it yourself, or you would not make such a foolish comment. The rest are not greenhouse gases (though you are correct in stating that they are pollutants), so the IPCC would have no reason to address them.

3. Alternate energy is all very well - I support it and have built my own solar water heating system for my house. But subsidies means that someone pays for it - the tax-payer (me for one) - it NOT SUSTAINABLE. You take money from a business that pays for itself and put it into something that doesnt - which ultimately bankrupts the nation.

I applaud you for your individual efforts. I, for one, generally do not support subsidies (and your corn ethanol is one example of a good reason not to) other than to provide R&D funds for new technologies. That being said, I far prefer a negative incentive (raising the cost of carbon-emitting technologies) to allow 'clean' (not the right word, I know) to be competitive with 'dirty' technologies. We can't rely on people's good intentions (such as your own). Cap-and-trade is a good policy, and worked very well with sulfur dioxide in the 90's (Predictions of doom notwithstanding).

4. Bio-fuels are a prime example but far more criminal. They are supported by 11 billion US dollars of subsidies to produce fuel for cars that dont need the fuel and take away 100 million tons of cereal production from humans who do need it.

I agree. Also, corn ethanol isn't even a low-carbon option over using gasoline, and you'll find no disagreement from me if you want to bash corn ethanol subsidies (this coming from someone who lives in a state in the US that has benefited enormously from it)

5. AGW is a myth, wrong, totally unsubstantiated, built on wrong premises and has failed to predict the climate for 10 years running now. It has been disproved by evidence and data.

Your claims are flat out incorrect. I know of no other way to state it.
Start here: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/05/there-is-no-evidence.php
I know not what evidence of which you speak that has disproven global warming. Please provide a reference. This will be tough for you, since there isn't any.

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove Global warming models right; a single experiment can prove AGW wrong" - Who said that? - Albert Einstein (paraphrasing)

I think you're misunderstanding what Einstein was saying here. And, on top of that, we haven't seen any evidence that disproves global warming, so I'm not sure what you're point in bringing it up is.

Why a religion? - because it has the same characteristic as a religion. Formulate a hypothesis then defend it against all evidence to the contrary.

This comment is yet another one of your hilariously ironic statements, especially in light of your apparent need to pray the Denialist's Creed every night before bed.
Memorise these and repeat these daily at night before you go to bed

You are certainly good at making yourself look quite silly.

Vernon, re #57

You are comparing a regional UHI bias from china with Jone's global figure. The two are not compariable. If anything I would expect UHI bias in China to have been greater in recent decades than most places on Earth, for obvious reasons.

You obviously don't understand the nature of the required analysis if you don't understand why past figures change. Skeptics seem to believe in a simple world where a temperature record is written in stone as the months come in. But in the real world we have raw station data that existed before the temperature record did. We also have biases in the records that must be corrected. Any change to the algorithm will therefore affect the entire record. Even if the changes are minor, but then skeptics are renowned for raising hell about irrelevant minor changes (1998 vs 1934 anyone?) just because they thrive off noise and smear.

Fred,

your digging a hole. Please read Jone's work and see how he treats UHI and why. The central premise of his work is that UHI is so slight that it cannot have a regional or global impact. There were many studies out of CRU by Jones and other all showing that UHI was not significant. New studies now show that not only is UHI significant but it does have regional impacts. Please read the works rather than making noise that is at odds with the group your championing.

You say raw data existed before the temperature record did and there are biases in the records that must be corrected for. Thats fine, why do you have to keep correcting the correction every day, month, or year? I agree that there are bias that must be adjusted for. What I do not agree with is why once you have adjusted for the bias, changes, they keep a coming.

CRU, RSS, and UAH all do a temperature record and they don't seem to need to constantly rewrite history as GISS does. Speaking of 1998 and 1934, once the flaw was found in the GISS record, 1934 was the warmest year in CONUS. Since that correct, GISS has keep lowering past temperatures until 1934 and 1998 are tied.

The fact is that there is no basis for making further changes in the past record once the biases were corrected for.

At first I though you just did not understand the issues, now I know you don't.

"CRU, RSS, and UAH all do a temperature record and they don't seem to need to constantly rewrite history as GISS does. Speaking of 1998 and 1934, once the flaw was found in the GISS record, 1934 was the warmest year in CONUS. Since that correct, GISS has keep lowering past temperatures until 1934 and 1998 are tied."

Vrnon, can you please provide more details about this? My recollection is that a problem was found and a statistical tie with 1998 slightly higher than 1934 (in the continental US) changed to a statistical tie with 1934 slightly higher than 1998 (in the continental US). I do not recall any further changes.

"The fact is that there is no basis for making further changes in the past record once the biases were corrected for."

This makes the odd assumption that there is a way to know that all possible problems have been found and completely understood. Back in the real world, new findings, new issues and better methods constantly arise and science progresses and strives for the best representation of reality it can construct.

At first I though you just did not understand the issues, now I know you don't. - Vernon

More unintentional irony from denialists!!!! Man, the complete lack of self-awareness you lot exhibit is an absolute spectacle to behold.

Adam,
I cannot believe the level of your ignorance. You have obviously not repeated CO2 is NOT, repeat NOT a pollutant a hundred times, as you should have. I dont know where you plucked "The American Heritage® Science Dictionary" from. Obviously it has been polluted itself. However even to take that unscientific source, what you should have highlighted were the words "that occur in harmful concentrations in a given environment." Harmful concentrations as per OSH standards are over 5,000 ppm. Upto 1,000 ppm in a closed building is supposed to be well ventilated and healthy.

You warmers have started using the expression "in the real world", which is pretty rich considering that you live in a modelled Alice in Wonderland. Well in the real world please find out about Air Pollutants by visiting EPA's website on this subject here http://www.epa.gov/air/airpollutants.html.
You will find many air pollutants mentioned there, but CO2 is not one of them.

CO2 for your information is essential for life, so depleted in our atmosphere that horticulturists pump it into their hot-houses to make plants grow better.

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove Global warming models right; a single experiment can prove AGW wrong" I am not misunderstanding what Einstein said here. He was just enunciating the basic scientific principal. If there is even one piece of data or evidence that refutes a hypothesis - the hypothesis is wrong. It stands disproved.

In the case of the AGW hypothesis there is not one but several, any one of them being enough to disprove it.

AGW is a myth, wrong, totally unsubstantiated, built on wrong premises and has failed to predict the climate for 10 years running now. It has been disproved by evidence and data.

To this you direct me to Coby's page which says "Objection: Despite what the computer models tell us, there is actually no evidence of significant global warming."

Excuse me that is not the objection. The objection is that computer models tell us that the warming is more than that actually observed (even using the highly suspect land surface data but much more so using satellite data). Thus they are wrong - disproven according to the scientific principal and Einstein.

Built on wrong premises - built on the premise that the slight warming from CO2 will have a positive feedback from water vapour and clouds. Actually there is a negative feedback. There are studies for this - but why bother - examine the empirical evidence.

Empirical evidence of this
1. Warming much less than the models predict
2. Warming fall well within the natural range of past climate change. There is no need to assume any other source or reason - evil man, devils angels etc.
3. Very poor correlation between the CO2 time curve and the Temperature time curve from 1880 to 1998
4. Zero correlation between the CO2 time curve and the temperature time curve from 1998 till now.

Excellent or good correlation does not prove causation but poor or no correlation definitely shows there is none

"Yes, cheap, abundantly available energy (in the form of fossil fuels) has to led to an immense creation of wealth and improved standards of living for a significant minority of the world. I said as much in an earlier post."

You did say so but you are wrong. Cheap abundantly available energy from fossil fuels has not led to the creation of wealth in my country. We hardly have any. We did it with hard work, innovation with what we had and good sense as did Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Iceland with no fossil fuels at all. And we have a better quality of life than Saudi Arabia, all of the middle east, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran with all their oil, whose citizens are queuing up to come here, but we are not dying to settle there.

"However, this same energy source is leading to the destruction of our environment." - That is the greatest lie and myth ever told.

Richard -

I'll focus on this, since it seems to be the crux of your argument:

Excellent or good correlation does not prove causation but poor or no correlation definitely shows there is none

So, I'll start off by saying, yes, this statement is true and I actually agree with it. This is where our agreement ends, however.
You state in (3) and (4) that there is very poor or zero correlation between CO2 and temperatures since the late 19th century. This is an odd claim, and one which you have left completely unsubstantiated. I can only assume you are parroting this bit of misinformation from some other source, as it seems to come up with some frequency (getting back to denialists using debunked, recycled arguments).
Robert Grumbine did an interesting analysis of this claim, which I find particularly relevant to our discussion.
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/03/does-co2-correlate-with…

Now, before you claim that correlation does not equal causation, your specific claim (and apparent qualm with the theory of global warming) is that CO2 and temperature have, at best, very poor correlation since the late 19th century. This simple analysis shows that, actually, there is significant correlation between the two. You are incorrect. I will accept your apology.

I had a look at your site. He is wrong. You cannot take the correlation as he has done over the entire period. Will explain in detail later over the weekend.

Mull over this in the meantime - correlations and indeed statistics cannot be taken in isolation with other evidence, in this case the science behind the alleged correlation. And the words of your champion ".. you need 20-30 years to be talking about a climate trend. So the sources which use only 10 or so are being doubly misleading." No not necessarily (that depends) and it so happens there are such periods. In fact a crucial period of almost 90 years with very poor correlation. The only RECENT period where the correlation seems to be well nigh perfect is from around 1976 to 2000 - the exact period where the AGW hypothesis was born.

Correction - that should be 40 years

C0by,

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
Page 22 graph of US temperatures. !934 is significantly higher than 1998. The issue with GISS temperature adjustments is that to infill missing data. Say they are missing a month in 1933 at a given station. What is done is to take all the known temperatures for that month a do a linear fit based on the trend line. They do this every month which means that the past record is being rewritten for every period of missing data. The methodology would suggest that there would be a random chance of the missing month being either warmer or colder than it actually was, but analysis shows that almost all adjustments for the past are reductions, i.e. showing them cooler than the actual raw data.

If you look at page 18 figure (g) you will see that Hansen's paper shows that infilling lowers the past temperatures.

Richard -

Well, I suppose your reaction shouldn't surprise me. Mindless dissembling in the face of actual data is a typical denialist response.

correlations and indeed statistics cannot be taken in isolation with other evidence, in this case the science behind the alleged correlation.

I agree, but this wasn't your claim. You said in comment #63, specifically:

3. Very poor correlation between the CO2 time curve and the Temperature time curve from 1880 to 1998
4. Zero correlation between the CO2 time curve and the temperature time curve from 1998 till now

I have shown (or at least Mr. Grumbine has) that correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration during this period is not poor, and is in fact quite significant (though insufficient to explain all the variation).

Refusal to admit you are wrong in light of direct evidence is another typical denialist trait. You've lost this one, man. Just admit to error, it's not a crime to be wrong.

No time except for a hurried reply - Yes what I said

3. is true, remains true. I will unravel Grumbine's analysis for you shortly (after work). Have patience before pouncing on me.

4 Absolutely true. Cannot be disputed by anyone who can do a simple analysis of the data. Not denied by Grumbine who says "As I discussed before, you need 20-30 years to be talking about a climate trend.."

I do my own computation of temperature data - with the data freely available on the web, in reply to your "Please provide a reference. This will be tough for you, since there isn't any." (Besides looking at references from research).

Richard -

3. is true, remains true. I will unravel Grumbine's analysis for you shortly (after work). Have patience before pouncing on me.

I eagerly await this. Should be good for a few laughs. And I'm not pouncing on you, just pointing out the fallaciousness of your arguments. We're all friends here, even if tempers flare from time to time.

4 Absolutely true. Cannot be disputed by anyone who can do a simple analysis of the data. Not denied by Grumbine who says "As I discussed before, you need 20-30 years to be talking about a climate trend.."

It's well known that cherry-picking start and end dates, and using a short enough time span, can give you the result you are looking for. That's why you need to use a longer timespan.
see here, specifically, Figure 3: http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and-tempera…

"When looking at short periods (eg - less than a decade), climate shows strong variability. Consequently, it's possible to select short periods throughout the long term warming trend where the warming slows or stops. For example, the periods 1977 to 1985 and 1981 to 1989 both show little to no warming while CO2 continues to increase. One might've made the conclusion in 1985 or 1989 that global warming had stopped based on the previous few years data."

(Besides looking at references from research)

As of yet, you have failed to post any references whatsoever, including to any data manipulation you have done yourself. Just one reason why people should be skeptical of your claims.

Youre rushing me but I'll give it a go. I have about an hr before my gf gets back from work so if its half finished the rest will have to wait for tomorrow. She organises my social life and keeps me sane and balanced.

When I said that "correlations and indeed statistics cannot be taken in isolation with other evidence, in this case the science behind the alleged correlation" this is profoundly true in what is being sought to be established here - does CO2 correlate with rising temperature over time? and by that we mean - On the balance is there evidence or possible evidence, in this correlation, that CO2 has raised the temperature of the Earth, or is this evidence lacking?

Correlations are intimately linked with probabilities, logic and existing evidence in their interpretation. So I will argue with logic using little mathematics and "uncontroversial facts". By uncontroversial facts I mean things like surface temperature data from NOAA and HadCRUT3 which are suspect but accepted by the warmers. Why get tied down in endless debate when your own figures can prove my point.

Let us recap the AGW hypothesis: - CO2 levels are rising among other things due to anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels. This is a greenhouse gas and theoretically, all other things remaining unchanged, if CO2 rises from its pre-industrial level, purportedly of 280 ppm to 560 ppm then the average temperature of the Earth will rise by 1 C. So far so good (accepted by IPCC, the warmers and me). But, the AGW hypothesis hypothesises, if such a thing happens then because of amplifying effects of CO2 (forcing) mainly because of increased water vapour and cloudiness, the temperature will go up by, best estimates, 3 degrees C. (Newer models suggest even higher).

Another thing to note in the undisputed science. If all other things remain unchanged, plus no forcing or reduction of this greenhouse effect, when CO2 doubles again from 560 to 1120 ppm the temperature rise will be far less than 1 C and another doubling still less etc till eventually, very rapidly, increasing CO2 will have virtually no greenhouse effect at all.

Also keep in mind that again, if all things remain unchanged, the greenhouse effect at lower than 280 ppm levels are greater than those at higher than 280 ppm CO2 levels.

Now lets see what Grumbine says. For the period 1850 to 2007 - 78% of the variance explained by CO2. For the period 1850 to 1958 - 28% of the variance explained and for 1959 to 2007 - 82% of the variance explained (according to IPCC). But says he the correlations for all 3 time periods are "more gory" amounting to a significance of better than 0.0005. Now this seems convincing enough doesnt it?

He also makes a graph where the time is not shown on any axis but presumably corresponds with the x axis and rising CO2 line falls smack within the scatter plot of temperature. He invites us to eyeball it and even a school boy could see the correlation there.

Graphs are a marvel of scaling. Just arguing from first principles, according to NOAA using HadCRUTEM3 data, from 1880 to 2007 Global average land temperatures increased by 0.64 C and Global Sea Surface Temperatures were 0.12 C higher. Average increase for the world was 0.276C. If we plotted the average annual temperature curve of actual temperatures instead of the anomalies over 127 years it would appear a more or less straight line and the trendline an almost imperceptibly upward sloping horizontal line. The CO2 curve would appear the same and sure there would be a correlation between the two.

Ok I have to go so to be continued. I will add why should those 3 time periods be taken? They are not logical. The temperature anomaly graph goes up and down during certain time periods. Correlations between these periods have to be taken and examined in the light of the hypothesis.

RE post #61

This link shows that 1934 was the hottest year for the USA

wattsupwiththat.com/2007/08/08/1998-no-longer-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-usa/

Here is the top ten, the old being before the figures were changed and the new after.

Year Old New
1934 1.23 1.25
1998 1.24 1.23
1921 1.12 1.15
2006 1.23 1.13
1931 1.08 1.08
1999 0.94 0.93
1953 0.91 0.90
1990 0.88 0.87
1938 0.85 0.86
1939 0.84 0.85

So we have 5 years at/after 1990 and 5 at/before 1953 the 1930's were very hot due to the +ve PDO, so was there global warming back then? Well they thought so;

docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/061/mwr-061-09-0251.pdf

But then of course the PDO turned -ve again and temps dropped until the 1970's when they then thought we were going into an iceage.

But then the PDO turned +ve again and temps rose until 1998 when they thought there was global warming again.

But then the PDO turned -ve again and temps have begun dropping.............Ooooops sorry got a little carried away must be my denialist personality.

Crakar

Richard -

Your post #72 is what can best be described as word salad. Please show, mathematically, that there is no correlation between CO2 concentrations and increased temperatures.

Crakar, you bring up what I consider to be one of the best bits of seemingly deliberate misinformation I've ever witnessed. It manages to mix tiny bits of truth together, leaving out key bits of information, to present what ends up being a lie in a very compelling fashion.

The Amazing Presentation:

Scientists used to go on about how 1998 was the warmest year on record. Then, a guy named Steve pointed out an error in their data. Suddenly, 1934 was the warmest year on record! Now you never hear them talk about 1998 any more.

The More Complete Version:

Until 2005, 1998 was the warmest year on record for global temperatures. Meanwhile, in the record for the continental USA, 1998 was tied with 1934 for first place. Technically, 1934 still claimed the record (according to Jim Hansen in 2001) - even though 1998 was slightly higher - because the difference was smaller than the error range and 1934 got there first. Some years later (in 2007), Steve McIntyre pointed out what looked to be an anomaly in the data. After a small error correction due to a change in datasets being used, the data for the USA temperatures changed slightly (putting 1934 slightly ahead of 1998 now, but still within the error range) and global temperatures imperceptably. 1998 was never touted as being the hottest on record for USA temperatures and now 2005 is either warmer than or just as warm as 1998 worldwide, so 1998 doesn't get mentioned any more for global temperatures.

I can't blame you for being fooled. It really was a masterful use of ambiguity. The fact that 1998 had the highest numbers in the USA record and the global record was a perfect opportunity to switch from global to USA and back again (making sure to ignore 2005) without people noticing. The opportunity was there for Steve to present himself as a hero, insinuate incompetence and fraud, and even make it seem like the temperature records for the world had been stood in its head without even telling any specific lies!

I am coming to the bloody mathematics. I will work it out and give you the figures which you can check or have checked. More important is the interpretation of the figures.

What do you mean by word salad? What I have outlined is simple enough. Do you
A Not understand somethings or anything I have said?
B. Do not agree with the science I have outlined regarding the greenhouse effect of CO2?
C. Do not agree with the AGW hypothesis as I have outlined it? Because that is what is being tested.
C. Dont see how some or any of this is relevant?
If its B or C please correct me. We must proceed from a point of agreement.
If its D I am only half finished - wait till I have.
If its A methinks I'm wasting my precious time.

Crakar, you mention a "they" who thought we were heading into an ice age, apparently because of the PDO being in a cool phase (and based solely on USA temperatures?) You should perhaps know that some actual work has been done to look for the "they" mentioned in many places.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

My favourite bit comes from the description of a graph that shows papers per year, charting the numbers of papers that predict cooling, warming or are neutral: "During
the period 1965 through 1979, our literature survey found 7 cooling papers, 19 neutral and 42 warming. In no year were there more global cooling papers than global warming."

"They" were a rather select bunch, wouldn't you say? I'd say consensus seems to be a rather difficult subject for denialists. You don't accept it when it exists and make it up when it doesn't. You don't accept it from experts, but embrace it from yahoos.

Richard -

I am coming to the bloody mathematics. I will work it out and give you the figures which you can check or have checked. More important is the interpretation of the figures.

You posted on Sunday the 7th (3 days ago) that there was no correlation between CO2 and temperatures (post # 63). How could you possibly make this claim if you didn't have ANY references or independent work done???? Perhaps... because you are uncritically accepting any denialist talking point without evaluating the claim? And you have the freaking nerve to call yourself a skeptic??!?!

You're just pulling standard denialist nonsense out of your arse, and then when someone calls you on it, dissemble until you can throw together some numbers (which, really, shouldn't take more than 30 minutes if it's as obvious as you claim that there is no correlation). You find the time to write long, irrelevant posts, yet, strangely, can't find the time to make a simple plot showing a lack of correlation. Hmm, I wonder why that is. Perhaps... because you can show do such thing? Perhaps... because there is significant correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature?

What do you mean by word salad? What I have outlined is simple enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad

Your post is completely and utterly devoid of any meaning. I specifically asked you to present evidence for your claim that CO2 concentrations do not correlate with temperatures. As of yet, you have been completely unable to do so. Instead, you post long diatribes ignoring the quest, before finally stating that there is correlation between the two!!
The CO2 curve would appear the same and sure there would be a correlation between the two.

He also makes a graph where the time is not shown on any axis but presumably corresponds with the x axis and rising CO2 line falls smack within the scatter plot of temperature. He invites us to eyeball it and even a school boy could see the correlation there.

Each point on the scatter plot represents one year. The x-axis of that point is that year's average CO2 concentration. The y-axis is that year's average temperature anomaly. The line is a linear regression of the data (with r-squared of .78). Hence why we can state reliably that there is significant correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature, but that CO2 concentration is insufficient to completely describe temperature, which is exactly what 'warmists' say. Now, in reality, the relationship isn't exactly linear, but a linear fit is reasonable using this data set. You can go further with the analysis, like Mr. Grumbine did, if you want deeper understanding, but the first part of his analysis is enough to falsify your claim that there is very poor (at best) correlation.

I have got to hand it to you pough, you and your fellow brethren have an answer to everything, not very good answers but answers none the less.

You run around in ever decreasing circles yelling CO2 is driving up the temp but even blind man freddy can see by the geological record that CO2 lags temp by 800 or more years, you respond to this by the scientific wording of "that was then, this is now" mantra.

You point to isolated occurances in the past as proof positive of a correlation but the vast majority of the geological past proves you wrong and you respond with an equally stupendous answer "thats just weather not climate".

Well i dont know so much, if as you say CO2 does drive temps then why is the correlation so poor? Maybe something is in control.

Here is an example of consensus, my favourite football team did not lose one game leading up to the grand final last year and the consensus said we would win by a mile well guess what we lost. To put it another way science is not conducted by way of consensus, in other words it only takes one to prove a consensus of many wrong.

In regards to the temp record i was adding info to Vernon/Coby's debate and added the bit about the PDO which in fact does play a large part in temps on Earth.

In regards to the PDO, i doubt you even know what the 3 letter acronym stands for so i doubt you could comprehend the ramifications of it. But dont worry you did a google search and because there were less cooling than warming papers you know what you are talking about right?

Looks like you have been taking tips from Adam in how to post gibberish.

Answers? You have none. At least we don't do the Gish Gallop, which seems to be your stock in trade. When challenged, change the subject. Hell, change it a few times. It's far easier to throw out a bunch of crap than it is to patiently debunk it.

Any chance of you actually responding to what I wrote instead of changing the subject and insulting me?

PDO stand for Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I thought that's what it was, but I did look it up. I wanted to make sure I was correct. It's true I didn't know the ramifications of it, but I'm enjoying reading about it. What I'm reading is making me wonder, though, if you don't understand it. For one thing, it's an oscillation, so it won't affect climate in the same way a forcing like CO2 does. For another, it seems to switch temperatures east and west. Doesn't that mean overall the temperatures remain the same or similar? I haven't found an answer to the question yet, so I'm not so confident. You seem pretty confident. What do you say?

With regards to posting gibberish, what makes you say so? Also, are you drunk?

Crakar -

Well i dont know so much, if as you say CO2 does drive temps then why is the correlation so poor?

See post #65 and then #71 for refutation of this claim. Maybe you can respond more competently than Richard.

Here is an example of consensus, my favourite football team did not lose one game leading up to the grand final last year and the consensus said we would win by a mile well guess what we lost. To put it another way science is not conducted by way of consensus, in other words it only takes one to prove a consensus of many wrong.

Not only are climate scientists liars and tools of the double-secret socialist world order, they are also as insightful as football commentators!! Did they also kill your dog, Crakar?

But dont worry you did a google search and because there were less cooling than warming papers you know what you are talking about right?

Do I even need to point out denialist ironic comments anymore? C'mon, man, don't make it so easy.

Looks like you have been taking tips from Adam in how to post gibberish.

Coming from you, Crakar, I consider this a compliment. Thank you.

Adam,

I misjudged you. You have a low attention span and your expertise consists of doling out insults rather than any intelligent conversation,analysis or understanding. I asked you if you agreed about the science of the CO2 greenhouse effect and the AGW hypothesis I had outlined. They seem like "salad" or gobbledygook to you. You obviously do not understand them, yet believe that the hypothesis is true anyway.

I will none-the-less quickly give the relevant facts. After this I am done with this site. The standard statistical correlation for the time period 1880 to 2007 with CO2 is meaningless. Statistically there will be a correlation between two parallel horizontal lines. It does not prove anything either way and actually Grumbine admits that.

There is however little correlation between temperature anomalies and CO2 levels between the period 1934 and 1972 and Zero correlation between temperature and CO2 between the periods 1998 and 2008 - I have given you the figure for 1998 to 2008 0 - get that checked out. This is relevant in disproving the hypothesis. Because actually warming should have increased between 1934 and 1972 because of the increase in CO2 and certainly between 1998 and 2008 because the oceans should by now have warmed up and spiraling upward temperatures should be evident. This is the simple explanation the more detailed one would be beyond you.

Again you say "I'll focus on this, since it seems to be the crux of your argument: Excellent or good correlation does not prove causation but poor or no correlation definitely shows there is none" - well I've shown you, and that was not my only argument - what I said was
1. Warming much less than the models predict
2. Warming fall well within the natural range of past climate change. There is no need to assume any other source or reason - evil man, devils angels etc.
3. Very poor correlation between the CO2 time curve and the Temperature time curve from 1880 to 1998
4. Zero correlation between the CO2 time curve and the temperature time curve from 1998 till now.
I'll add another one
5. the lower troposphere warming less than the surface when actually the AGW hypothesis predicts the opposite.

1 2 and 4 and 5 are as relevant as 3 which you have seized upon and even there I said very poor because it has to be interpreted in the light of the science and the hypothesis which is to be tested. Any one of them is sufficient to disprove the hypothesis.

Pough,

No i am not drunk, wish i was though however its only 1330 here so a bit early in the day.

Sorry if i insulted you its just that the way you dish it out i thought you could take it. I will make a mental note to hold back a bit from now on OK.

The -ve PDO does a bit more as it cools the oceans and El ninos are not as strong with stronger La Nina's. The big temp rise from the 70's (+ve PDO) and multiple strong El Ninos coupled with a very strong solar cycles was a major reason for the late 20th century temp rises.

We now have a -ve PDO (started about 2002) oceans have cooled slightly since then a couple of mild to medium La Ninas and a very quite sun are the reasons why temps have dropped.

Notice how i did not mention CO2, all GHG's play a part in the climate or temps of course but as i have said in a previous post somewhere May was less than +0.10c above the anomoly so there has been virtually no increase in temps since 1980. And yes i now its only weather but you need to look at the big picture.

A doubling of CO2 will increase temps by 1C so from 280 to 385 means CO2 has increased temps by 0.375C you then need to add in feed backs -ve or +ve its your choice.

The IPCC would appear to be the outlier here with there +ve water vapour feed back doomsday scenario. All Earthly (and extraterrestrial for that matter) indicators are not supporting the IPCC projections.

Adam my dog died of natural causes, it got run over by a bus so naturally it died. I will attempt to convince you of the non correlation but i suspect it will just fall on deaf ears but i will try anyway. And yes it was a compliment.

Cheers

PS roughly I have worked out the correlation between CO2 and temperatures between 1934 and 1972 to be -0.132 implying a poor negative correlation.

Just saw Richards post (need to refresh the page more often) looks pretty good to me.

But here we go anyway, first of all let me say that during my google sebatical to find the answers i came across a tremendously pile of crap so what i have done is give one dodgy link that supports your case, one dodgy link that supports mine and one that i thought the author had both eyes open at time of writing OK.

So here is your dodgy link

w.w.w.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

Now what i like about this one is the use of the words "might", "could" and "probable".

It seems that he forgot one thing when he said

"In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming."

Do you know what that is Adam, yes thats right he forgot water vapour which suprises me a little as without wv the IPCC theory of AGW would not work, any way onto the next link.

Here is my dodgy link

w.w.w.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen/correlaEng.html

This link gives you a break down of the correlation over 1000's of years

w.w.w.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_100_yrs.html

Still looking for another reputable site. (site? god i hope i got it right)

Found one, here is another good site although they go right into disproving AGW so it might not be your cup of tea. However if you have a look at the correlation points they raise you might find it interesting.

w.w.w.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

For example the trend in sea level rise and trend in glacial retreat starts many many years before the industrial revolution, this trend does not change even though CO2 levels have risen so much.

Cheers

Crakar

Any chance of you actually responding to what I wrote instead of changing the subject and insulting me?

For the record (and because I fear you'll fixate on it) I have no problem with being insulted. I didn't mention it because I want you to stop. I mention it because you've done two irrelevant things instead of responding to what I've written: change the subject and insult me. Until you respond to what I've written I will continue to mock you for it.

So, any chance of an actual response instead of just changing the subject and insulting me? How about maybe responding and insulting me?

Whoops! Forgot something:

May was less than +0.10c above the anomoly so there has been virtually no increase in temps since 1980. And yes i now its only weather but you need to look at the big picture.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I love irony! Do it again! Do it again!

You talking to me Pough? If so what post? #77 or 75

My response to post 75, yes it is true that 1934 was supposedly hotter than 98 in the USA, as for the world temps i do not believe this to be the case ie 98 was hotter.

In post 73 the first line states

"This link shows that 1934 was the hottest year for the USA"

My response to post 77, Every 30 years or so the PDO changes from -ve to +ve and vice versa which means the planet warms and cools about every 30 years. Now "they" are the consensus of the day and whenever the planet cools "they" run around screaming ice age and the same "they" then run around screaming GW when it warms.

In short i could not give a fat rats arse about consensus no matter what they were preaching. In my experience i have found just because a group of people all agree on something does make them right.

If you still require further insulting let me know. By the way if you dont like getting insulted then i suggest you stop insulting others.

Cheers

Crakar

as for the world temps i do not believe this to be the case ie 98 was hotter

No matter how amazing your confidence in your own misguided expertise is, your belief is irrelevant. What was being discussed was the temperature record from the GISS, and their record has 2005 warmer than 1998. Personally, I think that your belief varying from rather obvious facts is indicative of how your brain works. Or are you so vain that you think the GISS will ignore their own data and instead issue statements and press releases based on Crakar's Beliefs on Temperature?

My response to post 77, Every 30 years or so the PDO blah blah blah blah...

Yes, but I wasn't really talking about PDO, was I? Did you not notice that I was actually talking about the global cooling scare myth and the PDO comment was an aside?

whenever the planet cools "they" run around screaming ice age and the same "they" then run around screaming GW when it warms

Ah, finally you address that. You get it as wrong as anyone possibly could, but at least you're actually addressing it. I'm not going to bother asking you to re-read it (this time with brain set to "on") because I'm going to end with a nice example of your reading comprehension skills.

I wrote:

I have no problem with being insulted.

You reply:

By the way if you dont like getting insulted then i suggest you stop insulting others.

BTW, I do put some effort into writing things that are readable. If anyone else finds what I write to be "gibberish" I'd appreciate hearing about it. I'd like to improve my writing skills and valid criticism helps.

For example the trend in sea level rise and trend in glacial retreat starts many many years before the industrial revolution, this trend does not change even though CO2 levels have risen so much.

Whoa. I had no idea that CO2 melted ice directly and puffed up the water. Do you have any cites for that?

5. the lower troposphere warming less than the surface when actually the AGW hypothesis predicts the opposite.

No, it doesn't. What to look for as a sign of AGW is the stratosphere cooling while the troposphere warms.

Richard -

PS roughly I have worked out the correlation between CO2 and temperatures between 1934 and 1972 to be -0.132 implying a poor negative correlation.

I'd love to see your work for this (at reference the data so I can work through it myself). And I'd also like to know why you choose 1934 - 1972 when you stated earlier that the correlation was poor between 1880 and 1998.

pough -

I find your posts quite coherent and readable. And in addition, I too love denialist unintentional irony.

Pough,

re #91, i paraphrased a paragraph in the link i provided. You need to read the articles before you responed OK.

Adam,

It comes as no suprise that Pough post are coherent and readable, between the two of you you have have both done more damage to the AGW movement that i could have ever achieved on my own. Thanks for your assistance.

Crakar

i paraphrased a paragraph in the link i provided. You need to read the articles before you responed OK.

Nope. The article may very well be interesting, but I just wanted to make fun of what seemed to me to be either very strange expectations or poor wording. You make it sound like we would expect ice melting and sea level rising to be connected directly to increasing CO2. It reminds me of the expectation that temperatures should definitely be going up in a two year span if it were true that CO2 affects temperatures. It's truly bizarre.

Coincidentally, there's a post today over at Pharyngula where PZ talks about the bizarre assumptions held by creationists about evolution. Whether it's creationism or climate science denialism, it's not just that strawmen get erected; it's strawmen with three boobs, no legs and a head where the rectum should be. If you're going to make stuff up, at least try to make it be sensible.

It comes as no suprise that Pough post are coherent and readable, between the two of you you have have both done more damage to the AGW movement that i could have ever achieved on my own.

You get a gold star for that run-on sentence. I'm tempted to call it gibberish, but I like it too much. It combines irony, lunacy and a wonderful - if unintended - compliment for me! Thanks!

Pough,

Here is my statement, read this in conjunction with the link supplied.

"For example the trend in sea level rise and trend in glacial retreat starts many many years before the industrial revolution, this trend does not change even though CO2 levels have risen so much."

I will break it down for you OK

"For example the trend in sea level rise and trend in glacial retreat starts many many years before the industrial revolution"

What this means is the trend starts prior to the CO2 level increase caused by man.

"this trend does not change even though CO2 levels have risen so much."

What this means is the trend shown prior to mans CO2 emissions has continued at the same rate even though all this extra CO2 is in the air.

Hence if the trend has remained the same then ergo so has the temps then ergo there is no correlation between it and co2.

If you still cant grasp the concept now then sorry but i cannot help you anymore.

Crakar

Hold on, wait. I think I've figured out what you're trying to say. If glaciers melt as temperatures rise and CO2 is one of multiple possible forcings of temperatures, then CO2 should have been a forcing even when there wasn't enough of it or else it isn't a forcing at all. How's that?

As i said Pough you have helped me immensely in showing the world just how foolish AGW believers are, once again thanks for your assistance.

Really? How so?

if the trend has remained the same then ergo so has the temps

But we know what the temperatures have been. Don't we? Haven't I seen the temperatures somewhere before? Doesn't this just add an unnecessary step? Isn't adding an unnecessary step more stupid than smart? Why do you need to use glacial melt to assume a steady temperature increase that you already know in a far more detailed way from actual temperature measurements?

You're like the Maxwell Smart of armchair climate scientists.

Would you believe there's no correlation where correlation has been shown to exist because some glaciers melted?

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

ergo there is no correlation between it and co2

No correlation, eh? May I refer you to the link in comment #65? A much better way to figure out correlation is to... figure out correlation. Or maybe by correlation you mean something else. Maybe you're like Humpty Dumpty and when you use a word it means just what you choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.

Impenetrability! That's what I say

He quoted from the Oregon Petition trash for god sake.

The same paper that compares US temperature with solar activity and Arctic temperature with solar activity and concludes 'wow great fit', but deliberatel avoids comparing *global temperature* with solar activity because they know it doesn't fit.

A crock of sh**

I see that it is more fun to talk about crap rather than the studies that show that the current temperature record is very flawed.

How about addressing what I posted in #40 for the modern record of what I posted in #14 on why the temperature reconstructions, espically the ones that use tree rings, have been found to be flawed. Basically they do not capture the low frequency varibility.

This is all from current studies. How about addressing the, as Ian likes to call it, PRSL for once.

Pough -

You're like the Maxwell Smart of armchair climate scientists.

This is my new favorite line.

For anyone who has not read any of the drivel put out by Vernon previously, here is a short summary of how he distorts science.

He cherry picks papers, he quote mines, he misinterprets what the authors say (I'm not sure whether this is deliberate or if he is just that stupid).

Vernon is a classic denier, everything he reads has to be distorted to conform to his denier view points.

It gets rather tiring going over all his quotes (is that why you give such a long list of your pseudo-science drivel?)

His comment above which says that tree-ring proxies are not reliable is just not true. There is at least one study (unfortunately I cannot find a reference for it right now and I am not going to waste my time chasing down cites which show Vernon is wrong since he is not worth my time) which shows that it doesn't make any difference whether you include the BCP's or not.

He is a despicable and pathetic person who is both arrogant (he thinks that he is better informed than the scientists who frequent this site) and selfish (he wants to emit as much CO2 as he can because he doesn't care what happens to future generations).

You will notice that he still has not responded to the two reports I cited which show that he is completely wrong about Arctic amplification.

I lied, I did waste some time and found the graph which shows that Vernon is full if it when he claims that "espically (sic) the ones that use tree rings, have been found to be flawed. Basically they do not capture the low frequency varibility (sic)".

Here it is:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_nodendro.html

Anyone who wants to see how often Vernon can be proven wrong should check this thread at Deltoid:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/open_thread_25.php

Since Vernon continually posts stuff which is shown to be not true, perhaps Coby should offer a prize to anyone who actually finds something that Vernon says that is true. His name doesn't count, but it is probably a lie too.

I think Coby's money would be very safe.

Ian,

I see that you cannot disprove what the papers say, you cannot point to where I did any "cherry picking" as you call it, or present anything that shows that the works I quote are wrong.

How about Ian, you find where I misquoted any of those studies.

Loser.

No one believes a word you say so why should anyone waste their time in finding, at great expense in time (since you refuse to cite properly), the papers which you cite when we know that you always tell lies? You should realize that in science honesty is number one. That is why most scientists, apart from a few well known deniers, are so honest and hate dishonesty when they find it.

You have shown over and over again that you are both dishonest and completely ignorant about what you post. Do the words "Dunning Kruger" mean anything to you?

Lets see if I have this right, you make accusations of me cherry picking, misquoting, and taking out of context but you have never looked up the works and read them.

I know what that means Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, Ian is a liar, and yet again Ian is a liar.

There is that simple enough for you. Oh, in your "Scientist" (hahaha) world view is there some other name for a person that makes up stories and that are not based on truth. Who makes accusations with no basis in reality.

Nothing useful to say? Just a load of your ad hominems. You are not a very nice person, no wonder you keep your identity hidden from us.

By the way, still no comments from you on the two reports I cited confirming that there is Arctic amplification. You are pathetic.

Ian,

what, the five modern reports, which you did not read, were not good enough for you.

It is funny to read that the poster that does not read the reference studies, that calls everyone that he does not agree with a liar or worse, got his poor little feelings hurt.

Speaking of identity, why don't you give your CV since you claim to be a scientist. But then your still a loser that would rather call people names rather than deal with the PRSL.

Vernon, no matter how many times you misinterpret the papers you quoted THERE IS AMPLE PROOF Of ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION.

Are you trying to get a prize for posting the highest number of ad hominems in a single day? You are pathetic.

And you still haven't discussed the papers I cited. Why not? It is clear that since these reports have not been discussed on denier web site such as CO2science, icecap etc Vernon doesn't have a clue and is unable to discuss them himself. Pathetic.

Ian,

Please stay on topic. This is a discussion of the temperature record. No where in this topic did I discuss polar amplification, but for the record, there are many studies that show that no, there is not yet.

What did you cite on this tread about this topic?

Oh, yeah, nothing. You gave one link to a web page, not PRSL as you like to quote.

LOSER!

Vernon, you are getting worse and worse. The cites I referred to are not "web pages" but are two reports which review a number of papers which show that you are wrong.

Please stop the ad hominem attacks, they are lowering the standard of this blog.

Wow, Ian, your really sensitive when your the one being called names. If it hurts your feelings so much, why do you do it continually to others?

I repeat what studies did you cite in this discussion? I do not see any. You know PRSL not just links to web pages. Also, where did I cherry pick, misquote, or take out of context the studies I quoted in #40 and #14. After all, you accuse me of this yet in your own words, you have not read the studies.

If you do not like being called names, then stop calling others names.

Vernon, it does not matter in which thread I gave you the cites. What does matter is that you give long lists of cites of your own which you claim say something but when in fact they are checked show that you have misinterpreted what the authors say. I do not know whether you do this deliberately or because you have a very poor understanding of basic science and logic skills.

What does matter is that you are usually wrong. When this is pointed out to you, as I did when I gave links to the two review papers (reviews of papers from the PRSL) you refuse to answer.

That is typical behaviour from an AGW denier.

I am not sensitive to being called names. I just think that your behaviour is lowering the standards of this blog. When I call you a liar it is because I have shown you to be dishonest. You have not once shown that what I say is not correct or honest.

Ian,

I am really sorry that you cannot seperate different conversations. So, in this converstation, your a liar. Actually, in most conversations your a liar.

If your talking about the discussion on deltiod, you linked to one PRSL paper and a book. I am pretty sure that books do not get peer reviewed to be published. Both were done before the more modern studies I presented were done. I guess you did not like that answer then or now so you keep up the claims.

Anyway, about this discussion. You claim to be a scientist, so as a scientist, how does someone that refuses to read the works be treated if they were making claims about the facts in the studies. I know a LIAR.

So, either read the studies or shut up with the name calling. All you are is hot air, you present nothing of value to any discussion that I have seen other then the continual personal attacks.

Oh, an since you claim to be a scientist, please point to some PRSL that you have had published.

Interesting stuff from NOAA about the climate record.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf

I am new here. I saw this web site (linked) in a news article where it referred to this site as one used by "scientists". And, so I was interested in seeing what "scientists" had to say about Global Warming.

What little time I have spent perusing this site, I find that it is quite sophisticated - politically. Noting in particular the highlighted article that I'm posting in response to..."how to talk to a climate sceptic".

Therefore, my first impression (as an actual scientist) is that this site is more political than scientific. Be that as it may, I remain open minded regarding the fundamental topic of Global Warming. However, I must tell you that I did my own research from about 1 to 3 years ago and found absolutely no credible evidence to support Global Warming.

"The temperature record reliability attack" is certainly one of the key issues. And yes, I would certainly attack the reliability of the data you are using. I have studied the data and found it to be not only unreliable but grossly inaccurate. One of my favorite examples of the distortion of the data is the weather station in Phoenix where it was originally built 'to spec' surrounded by a grassy field. Then, the University built a parking lot right up to the weather station where a car's exhaust is literally 1.7 meters from the temperature sensor. This (not to mention) the substitution of black asphalt for grass produces not only higher average temperatures by the sensor but significant temperature spikes - all of which are "averaged into the data". This is only one of many examples of where the data is corrupted - and always to the high side. So citing names like NASA and NOAA who use corrupted data as well as reports using the same data is meaningless.

And you people claim to be scientists? But, again, I remain open-minded. However, I have yet to see any credible evidence of Global Warming.

So this article tells you how to argue with people like me. Well, try this on for size. The only way you can argue with me is to show me credible data.

I'll give the author this much, he admits that there are problems with the data. However, in a very unscientific manner he also claims that you should compare data sets as a viable alternative to having good data. REALLY? So if you have a lot of bad data - you just average that? Folks, the average of erroneous data is an erroneous average.

So where are the scientists that use logic and good critical thinking?

Let's see, your also supposed to point out the observations of ice melting. Yeh, another area of subjectivity with contradictory conclusions. Your supposed to point out the artic ice melting - what? But not the growing ice in the antartic?

In conclusion I find this cite to be not one of scientists but political hacks pretending to be scientists. However, I do remain open - if anyone can point out credible data that supports global warming. Don't bother wasting your time spouting opinions.

And you people claim to be scientists?

No, you claim to be a scientist. I don't believe you.

BTW, how do all those parking lots and air conditioners pollute the satellite record (which shows a similar warming trend), how do they melt glaciers, cause long-term decline trends in sea ice extent in the Arctic and ice mass loss on Antarctica and Greenland, cause earlier spring blooms, etc etc etc.

As a scientist, I assume you'd know that you need to examine all the data.

If the corrections done by GISS are worthless you need to show why. As a scientist, you should know that claiming "I thought I saw a parking lot" isn't sufficient to disprove the utility of the algorithmic adjustments done to correct the known problems with surface stations.

This (not to mention) the substitution of black asphalt for grass produces not only higher average temperatures by the sensor but significant temperature spikes - all of which are "averaged into the data".

Like, dude, this just shows you don't know what GISS actually does with the raw data. It's not just averaged. As a supposed scientist, you're supposed to know that you must understand what GISS does before you can dismiss their work, and that dissing a strawman mischaracterization is not only insufficient, but dishonest and cowardly.

Let's see, your also supposed to point out the observations of ice melting. Yeh, another area of subjectivity with contradictory conclusions. Your supposed to point out the artic ice melting - what? But not the growing ice in the antartic?

Yeah, things are going pretty much as predicted by climate models in both the Arctic and Antarctic, therefore they're wrong.

Wow, that's logic for you.

Thanks for playing, troll.

Since you claim to be a scientist, care to share your degree? PhD in physics? BS in B.S.? What, exactly?

Rick, if you are a scientist, and have done research into the topic for 1 to 3 years, you should have been able to find the various peer-reviewed articles discussing what you perceive as the problem with the data: the urban heat island. You would then also know that there ARE correction procedures in place, in particular at GISTemp. You would then also know that also satellites show significant warming. You would also have known, being a scientist, that individual examples where there may be indications, but no proof, that the data may be skewed are simply no good, however many you have. For example, NOAA took the relatively few stations that Anthony Watts labelled "good", compared them to the whole dataset (of which there were many more labelled "bad"), and found an extremely marginal difference for the warming trends. Add to that that all over the world biologists see shifts in behavior of animals and plants that fit with the observed warming trend (earlier flowering, different bird migration patterns, new insects that used to live in warmer regions, etc.). All because a temperature station is placed 'incorrectly'?

Your example of the ice melt is also problematic, considering the fact that Coby actually also discusses that on this site, showing you there are multiple issues to take into account. More interestingly, however, is that climate models already in the 1990s indicated that Antarctic ice would increase in volume in warming world. Since that is so counterintuitive, it is a bad example to use when teaching lay people about climate change.

Having said all of that, may I laugh heartily AT you for saying "So where are the scientists that use logic and good critical thinking?" Apparently, they are not at your place...

"Therefore, my first impression (as an actual scientist)" - Rick.

Political scientist?, mad scientist?.

"Let's see, your also supposed to point out the observations of ice melting. Yeh, another area of subjectivity with contradictory conclusions. Your supposed to point out the artic ice melting - what? But not the growing ice in the antartic?" - Rick.

You mean ice mass loss in Antarctica?. That your idea of "growing"?.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml

"We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time"

Guess you must be confused with the Antarctic sea ice.

Research, 1 to 3 years ago?. Sure you just didn't visit some denier blog?. Not much science in those sites.

dhogaza and Dappledwater - sorry but your personal attacks, sarcasm and total focus on casting aspersions makes you scientific?

Marco: Thanks for your response. At least yours was somewhat intelligent. The study that you are referring to...if it's the same one that I reviewed a couple of years ago, NOAA took the "bad" vs "good" labeled data and did a straightforward statistical analysis. In other words, based on variance, they threw out the highs and the lows. It was on THAT basis that they drew the conclusion that there was only a small difference. The problem that I have with their approach is that they would be throwing out valid data along with the "bad" data. They did nothing to determine which data was valid data.

In that vein, you have the illegitimate practice of assuming that all data with high variance is "bad". Consequently, it would be very easy if not likely that NOAA's statistical massaging of the data is not valid. If they would have gone back and calibrated the temperature sensors at each station and made the appropriate adjustments that would have been legitimate. Just statistically massaging the data based on an unconfirmed assumption is not valid.

If the study you are talking about was done differently than I just explained, by all means please give me a link I am very interested.

In addition, I understand completely your comment about using the ice melting argument is not the best approach because of the counter intuitive problem. Nevertheless, I have heard of the model you mentioned but have not seen any science on that. Again, I'd be very interested if you can provide some links or references. As I indicated in my first post I AM OPEN.

As for the observations by biologists. Marco, I've read so many of those reports and, time and time again, the vast majority of those reports can be picked apart...and with the number of so-called scientists injecting prejudice into this whole picture, it's hard to assign credibility based on the shear volume of such reports.

Also to be sure, I an not some wacko in opposition to Global Warming. I simply have not seen any credible evidence to support it. I have seen much data regarding sun spots and solar flares and the like which explains very reasonably the trends that we've observed. I definitely support cleaning up the planet -if for no other reason than the fact that we do have localized warming not to mention pollution issues.

You slammed me regarding logic. "You laugh heartily." Well, sir if you do find a flaw in my logic by all means point it out. Otherwise, you may fall into the category of people who spend their time calling other people names and or just sarcastically trying to put people down -how scientific is that?

Rick, I very much doubt you reviewed that data several years ago, considering it was published four months ago. Note that a WUWT reader, JohnV (John Van Vliet) did a similar analysis, and found the same thing.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf

Regarding the antarctic, you can start here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-Antarctic-ice-melting-or-growing.html (an excellent site, if you are "open")
This Nature article from 1992 discusses antarctic ice growth expectations:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v360/n6399/abs/360029a0.html

Regarding your snipe at biologists, perhaps you should also tell farmers that what they are seeing is because they have a bias...I find your dismissal typical for the conspiracy believers and rather unscientific. Pick an article, and tell us why it is, according to you, biased. Do the same with this article:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j677l57p42812251/
(and tell us: what does a biologist in Lithuania have to gain by 'promoting' global warming?)

I know what you have "seen", and unfortunately, it looks like you have seen only all the deniosites. Start at "skepticalscience.com" to see some strong counterarguments for the "it's the Sun!"-claim. Notably, similar rebuttals can be found on this site, but since you already proclaimed it "political", you'll just dismiss the evidence and arguments provided.

dhogaza and Dappledwater - sorry but your personal attacks, sarcasm and total focus on casting aspersions makes you scientific?

Nope. Neither of us made that claim. I notice that you didn't bother answering any of our questions, either.

Rick said:

I have seen much data regarding sun spots and solar flares and the like which explains very reasonably the trends that we've observed.

You have just proved in that one sentence that you are either not a scientist or, if you are, you are not a good one (by a long way).

You are either quoting denier nonsense without actually looking at the data or, if you have looked at the data, you haven't a clue as to how to interpret it and what it all means. For your information, the data on solar cycles do not explain the recent global warming, as you would have discovered if you had done any actual reading of the peer reviewed scientific literature rather than dredging through denier web sites.

Also to be sure, I an not some wacko in opposition to Global Warming. I simply have not seen any credible evidence to support it. I have seen much data regarding sun spots and solar flares and the like which explains very reasonably the trends that we've observed.

Yeah, uh-huh. No mechanism known to physics could lead to these phenomena being sufficient to cause recently observed warming (and complaining about surface stations is total bullshit given the fact that satellite reconstructions, glacier melt, arctic sea ice extent and antarctic/greenland ice sheet mass loss, biological observations, etc are all consistent with the surface station record).

So Richard's "logical" and "scientific" conclusion is:

1. Well-established physics regarding CO2 must be wrong.

2. It's the sun - causing warming by a mechanism unknown to science, contrary to all surface measurements of TSI, GCRs, etc.

As for the observations by biologists. Marco, I've read so many of those reports and, time and time again, the vast majority of those reports can be picked apart..

So, you'll have no problem pointing us to one, and then picking it apart, right? You'll back up your blather with some analysis?

Marco,

Thanks very much for the info. I appreciate the time you put into that. I found that one of the reports you provided a link has some credibility. I will be spending more time on that report. I would very much like to take the time to give you some detailed data and analysis from some of the work that I did. Unfortunately, I'm in the process of moving - literally within the week. However, if you frequent this web site I will do that at some point in the future.

For now, I must say that you are the only credible poster that has replied. Others are obviously just political hacks who's agenda is simply to attack anyone that doesn't come across as sharing their views. For a moment, I thought well, maybe I'm wrong about one or two of these other folks. If they come back with some info to convince me of their position, I'll apologize for assuming...needless to say there won't be any apology. One wanted to know if I was going to respond to his bashing and ridicule. The answer is of course no. Why would I want to feed his penchant for bait and ridicule. I have no time for ugly people nor political hacks.

As for your last response, again thanks. I'm going to critique each link so that you can understand my position. The first link to the NOAA article has no author cited. I want you to know that I grew up respecting both NASA and NOAA. However, over the last decade or so, the credibility of these two organizations has crumbled. In particular, this link goes to a classic opinion paper written by someone with an agenda. More than that it is a self professed biased statement. Note the title itself, "Talking Points..." No credibility whatsoever. Besides if I had the time, this one can be torn to shreds - and I don't think you need my help to see that.

The second link was to Skeptical Science regarding an article on Antarctic ice. The entire site is dedicated to pushing the Global Warming agenda rather than science. No objective information or research here. The data represented by the graphs is very dubious as it completely contradicts several data sets that I have reviewed. In particular the ice mass in the Eastern Antarctic has been demonstrated to be growing not 0.0 mass change. Yes, the ice in Western antarctic is decreasing but less than the growth of ice in the East according to several data sources that I've seen.

The third link to Nature does have some credibility as they at least attempt to speak the unbiased truth, "...At present, studies supporting recent shrinkage or growth depend on limited measurements that are subject to high temporal and regional variability, and it is too early to say how the Antarctic ice sheet will behave..."

The fourth link was to an honest to goodness scientific report. This is the one that I'll spend some more time on. Thus far I only had time to scan it quickly but it looks like good evidence.

In summary some of these links are valuable. Some of them are riddled with an obvious dose of political agenda. Three of the four are opinions. I'm not trying to completely demean opinions but the problem TODAY is that so many of them are riddled with political bias that you have to have a great deal of skepticism. If you accept these kinds of opinion papers, I have a couple for you. the following two links provides some rather credible information on why we should be skeptical about this Global Warming theory.
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-complexity.html
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html

Again, I would call these opinion papers but very good ones. The fundamental problem with this whole Global Warming argument - regardless of which side of the argument you are on, is that 99% of the info is opinion. When we talk about NASA or NOAA data you have to look at the raw data...not just someones interpretation of that data. If you do this (as I did) you will find FIRST HAND that all these reports about studies done that show negligible difference between original and corrected data or analyzed data are complete bull. And, to be sure I'm talking about raw data - direct temperature measurements where you can see for yourself that environmental changes around weather stations has a DRAMATIC effect on the recorded temperatures - in direct contradiction to what most of these reports say.

As soon as I find the time, I'll pull some of this info together and share it with you.

Rick, the main reason that the others reacted like they did, is because they've been dealing with people like you for a very long time already. I DARE you to tear the NOAA report apart. Take the real raw data, you can get all data from the GISTemp website, and do the analysis yourself. JohnV (John Van Vliet), a reader of WUWT and Climate Audit and no 'climate alarmist' also once did that, and found the SAME as the NOAA report. You will also find that Watts himself does not do this analysis. Why not? The answer is simple: he most likely did, but knows it doesn't show a difference. Hence, he needs to keep up appearances.

Your links to Michael Crichton make the picture complete: you ARE a conspiracist. Rather than showing us where the science is wrong, you decide to just cry "fraud! Lie!", just like Michael Crichton does. Crichton shows such an utter failure to understand scientific language, as the second link shows, that I start to doubt that YOU are a scientist.

Sorry, Rick, you are welcome to come back to show me wrong on the migration of birds, but I predict you are unlikely to give me a scientific rebuttal, considering the way you just e.g. dismiss the NOAA "talking point"-memo. You could gain some credibility if you'd do the analysis yourself, and show where NOAA is wrong.

OK Marco,

Fair enough. As I said, as soon as I can I'll get back to you with in depth data and objective analysis. My apologies for the delay but as I said, right now I'm stuck with the arduous task of moving.

As for Crichton, like I said, it's just one more opinion paper and opinions are a dime a dozen. That doesn't make me a conspiracist now does it? I will say this, I'm a little surprised that you think that particular NOAA paper is anything more than an opinion paper.

Regardless, we are all entitled to our opinions. What continues to amaze me (noting that I didn't come on hear and rant that Global Warming was a hoax or spout vitriolic nasties - other than my disgust for the way this topic is politicized) and yet anytime someone who simply isn't convinced opens their mouth - the venomous response is over the top. Did you ever wonder why that is? I do.

Also, I didn't say there was anything wrong with the scientific paper on birds...in fact I said I thought it was good. Your skeptical. But you know what? That's OK. That's where I'm coming from too.

I appreciate the lively chatter. Sincerely.

Rick, if your doctor said you had an incurable disease would you go to a plumber or bus driver for a second "opinion"?

Of course not, you would go to someone who has expert knowledge and experience.

Your Crichton opinions are not provided by anyone with expert knowledge or experience. Or are you not capable of understanding what knowledgeable expertise is all about?

Some scientist you are showing yourself to be!

Rick, the NOAA paper is a *scientific* opinion, based on the *factual* analysis of actual data. You dismissed it outright, and you claim its author is "political", it can easily be torn to shreds, etc. etc. A TRUE skeptical scientist would have said "interesting, but since I am skeptical, I'll do the analysis myself before I accept OR REJECT this analysis". That's conspiracy-thinking nr. 1.

You then referred to Michael Crichton's presentations as a valuable opinion, completely neglecting that his opinion is filled with conspiracy thinking. However much you now say "it is just an opinion", you earlier referred to these presentations as containing "credible information" as to why we should be "skeptical". Since it claims a conspiracy, without you explicitely rejecting that claim, this makes conspiracy-claim number 2.

You also claim you do not say AGW is a hoax. However, there is no other way to interpret "I did my own research from about 1 to 3 years ago and found absolutely no credible evidence to support Global Warming", combined with your outright dismissal of the NOAA dataset. You just use more words to say the same thing.

What does that mean, he did his own research? A literature review? There just isn't the literature to show AGW is false. Does it mean he conducted original research? That, too, is difficult to believe, science nowadays being prohibitively expensive for a person of ordinary means. Most people's houses cost less than modern scientific instruments.

For now, I must say that you are the only credible poster that has replied.

Which is why you're still not asking the questions which have been asked of you, of course. We ask questions, you baldly state "you're not credible", and declare victory.

That's science and logic for you.

And you dismiss NOAA out of hand and come back with a science fiction writer? A SCIENCE FICTION WRITER? An MD with no training in physics or anything relevant to climate science?

You're lying when you claim to be a scientist ... I'm sure of it. No one credible (speaking of credibility) is going to worship the *opinion* of a science fiction writer which contradicts the work of a very large number of working scientists.

It's bullshit, pure and simple.

What does that mean, he did his own research? A literature review? There just isn't the literature to show AGW is false

You missed the reference to Michael Crichton. You see, in the non-scientist world, "literature" means "well-written and well-established fiction", not published peer-reviewed work. Oh, wait, Crichton fails that definition, too ...

The fundamental problem with this whole Global Warming argument - regardless of which side of the argument you are on, is that 99% of the info is opinion.

Yeah, the well-established physical properties of CO2 are just "opinion" ...

All the long-term trends we're seeing are just "opinion" ...

Again, Rick is no scientist. He's simply lying.

One wanted to know if I was going to respond to his bashing and ridicule. The answer is of course no. Why would I want to feed his penchant for bait and ridicule.

And not answering questions is going to lead to less ridicule? Not fucking likely.

I have no time for ugly people nor political hacks.

Except Michael Crichton, Anthony Watts ...

Great job men.
Just destroyed anothers will to live, who was curious enough to look beyond the headlines. We don't have to worry about converting him anymore, you've got another denier for life.
Again, thanks.

pim said:

Just destroyed anothers will to live, who was curious enough to look beyond the headlines.

No paul, just removing more rotten pond-scum from the fountain of knowledge.

Just destroyed anothers will to live, who was curious enough to look beyond the headlines.

Bull. People who lie about their scientific credentials are just trolling.

Here seems to be a good place to ask a question. What are the 95% certainty limits used in a) measuring temperature, now, b) applied to older measurements and c) applied to the forecasts made?
John Gresham

* Declining arctic sea ice
As opposed to growth in the Antarctic and the explosion of polar bears (500 to 2500 increase).

"Declining arctic sea ice......As opposed to growth in the Antarctic. - Marvin.

Yes, the Antarctic sea ice has increased. Study here discusses the issue:

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf

A decrease in the upward transport of heat from the deep ocean appears to be the reason behind this phenomenon, despite the warming trend. No doubt this is only a temporary phase. The polar regions were never expected to behave in in a totally synchronous manner, due to the underlying topography and geographical differences.

Of more immediate concern is the land ice in the Antarctic that is rapidly disappearing:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n12/abs/ngeo694.html

"explosion of polar bears (500 to 2500 increase)" - Marvin.

I know the term is probably foreign to you, but try googling "extinction debt". The long term prognosis for the Polar Bear is not good.

Yes, after unregulated slaughter of polar bears was ended, they reached the carrying capacity of their various habitat regions.

Now warming is beginning to impact that carrying capacity. The most recent polar bear research group report states that one population is increasing, 8 are decreasing, and IIRC there's not enough data on 9 to say one way or another.

Here is an interesting article by Jo Nova

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/the-mystery-deepens-where-did-that-dec…

Below is a graph which shows the GISS changes in temp over the years

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif

Now when you look at the graph you need to be careful as the scales are slightly different so dont be caught out on that.

What you can see is that the temps have been adjusted right across the board. The temps for the years pre 1940 have been adjusted down and the years post 1040 have been adjusted up.

This of course gives us a greater warming trend, can anyone explain why these adjustments have occurred?

Can these adjustments be justified?

Crakar

crakar

Seriously? Jo Nova again? Why don't you post something from the Kent Hovind - he has about as much credibility as that woman.

[this double posted comment has been removed. Interested readers can view it here]

You state that it doesn’t really matter the exact temps, but what is important is that they are both rising, and that is the critical information. So, if you do not have a base number, and that it's only important that it's changing, then how can you say one year is hotter than the other?

The post said "differing weather station locations, from proximity to lakes or rivers to elevation above sea level, mean it probably is impossible to arrive at a meaningful figure", not "it doesn't matter the exact temps". You can get an exact figure by just averaging all the measurements and see how that is moving. I only wanted to question whether or not the absolute figure is very meaningful and emphasize that it does not need to be as long as you are comparing like to like.

Jack, if the temperature is rising, IT DOES NOT MATTER FROM WHAT NUMBER, it is getting hotter.

Whether it is -12 from -20 or 100 from 80 or 5800 from 5600.

All of them the are getting hotter.

For the claim "it's warming", it doesn't matter what it was from, it is warming if it's a higher temperature than before.

Mister Adam Wow, freddy tells you again that a global thermometer that measures the global temperature does NOT exist. However there are many local thermometers which measure the local temperature of the surrounding air. Freddy is deeply convinced that you cannot compare all these local temperatures and hopes that you will one succeed to understand the underlying physics.

"freddy tells you"

Tell him to tell us himself, boriskaitroll.

"a global thermometer that measures the global temperature does NOT exist"

Tell the retard we know. Tell him too that there's no "whole body thermometer" to take your body temperature, yet we can still tell whether he's running a fever. Apart from the insane babbling which, for him, is a full time constant, so no indicator of fever.

"Freddy is deeply convinced that you cannot compare all these local temperatures "

Tell him he's a fucking moron, then. That isn't what's done.

Oh, and miss, you can probably accept that Adam isn't here and reading any more.

Mister Adam Wow

freddy informs you that any comparison between planet earth and one human organism is pain idiocy and reflects the total ignorance of a) planet earth, and b) the human organism.

freddy recommends you to sit in school and learn what you lack.

Who?

Nobody here by that name, retard, so you're passing on this moron freddy's message to the wrong forum. Try asking a grown up for help.

"pain idiocy"

That's you, all right.

But we understand you are incompetend, unlettered and ignorant. Probably the closely knit heritage of your genetic forebears which likely included a higher than average species diversity.

Ah, what we all lack is any evidence you have any brain, boris.

"comparison between planet earth and one human organism is"

Apt.

There's no whole body thermometer for either of them, yet we can still tell that they are warming.

Freddy does not like to disturb the hopes of AGW avtivists like Adam, as freddy has to report the late winter-onset in wide parts of Central Eurooe as of April 27, with unprecedented low temperatures in the range between -10 to -15 deg C in some areas, never seen in the history of thermometer records at this time in the year, and snow blankets of 50cm in wide parts of alpine valleys. These are facts, which freddy does not expect to be welcomed by warmists, as sea level will not increase in such a scenario.

Who?

And unprecedented? It was a mile under solid ice some time ago, dumbass.

Not forgetting that the average for this past month is the highest on record.

April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/16/april-third-month-i…

It's so satisfying to crush the fevered dreams of the ignoranti like kai. They HATE reality. So they never live in it.

"does not expect to be welcomed by warmists, as sea level will not increase in such a scenario."

Ah, so you're a warmist, boris.

Oh, by the way, retardo extramundo, I'm not called Adam.

Sorry fredski.