Answer to the global warming skeptics/denier

[kareface]

Well, you kept editing your post. It went from stating this wasn't "worldwide," to only those who are published, to only those that are published in the last 10 years because apparently being a climate scientist means absolutely nothing otherwise.

It's not that it doesn't mean anything, it's that the polling was done in the US. The only scientists we got from other countries were ones that were here doing research at the time. The entire point is in the context of the article which hasn't changed.

[kareface]

God damn. WATCH IT. He's not going against the grain here.

I have, Hiko, the guy who I mentioned in the first post sent me a link to the video. There are tons of refutations out there for his speech. He's widely know as a denier, this is old fucking news.

[Agito]

People say that global warming is a "myth" because they don't want to face the reality that planet Earth is fucked beyond repair. There's not a solution and the releasing of green house gasses into the atmosphere will only get worse as time progresses.

[kareface]

Oh, I'd like to add, but I guess editing to include more content is a carnal sin now, is that one of the major people who was responsible for his refutation was a climatologist from the UW as well.

I'll edit anyways, Max, what happen to your point about the sun?

[Gadritan]

There are tons of refutations out there for his speech.

What the fuck would they refute? His speech isn't about whether global warming exist, or if humans are a major contributing factor. It's about the political aspects involved that promoted alarmism. I wasn't posting it to support either side. I was posting it because I thought it was an interesting view on the politics involved.

The point, he argues, is to stay focused on the facts as they can be determined and to follow the science, not the political debate.

[kareface]

What the fuck would they refute? His speech isn't about whether global warming exist, or if humans are a major contributing factor. It's about the political aspects involved that promoted alarmism. I wasn't posting it to support either side. I was posting it because I thought it was an interesting view on the politics involved.

The implication that people shouldn't be worried about the consequences. The implcation that scientists will have a harder time getting funds for unrelated projects if they didn't support the mainstream. Referring to it as the alarm movement. The way he describes everything it sounds like scientists don't believe there is reason to be alarmed, that it's all some political system and that researches just go in step to avoid any problems. That isn't the reality. There are many scientists who are working to inform the public and realize that we are way past the date to make simple changes. Something substantial needs to be done to help reduce the mean temperature.

[Max™]

My entire point was that you were picking numbers which seem far more impressive than they actually are.

75/77 vs 97.4%

3,000/10,270 vs 77/13,000

You'd think if they were trying to get information from climate scientists, they wouldn't send it to a general collection of scientists from all disciplines, and Lindzen is notoriously reviled these days.


http://www.heartland.org/policybot/r...d_authors.html

Spoiler: show

The Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), expected to be released sometime in 2001, is already coming under heavy criticism from various directions. But none has been more devastating than the one delivered on March 1 by one of the report's lead authors.

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the world's leading atmospheric scientists, told a standing-room only audience at a briefing sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition in the U.S. Senate Environment Committee Room, that the IPCC process is driven by politics rather than science.
What are some of the problems with the IPCC process, according to Lindzen? It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say. It uses language that means different things to scientists and laymen. It exploits public ignorance over quantitative matters. It exploits what scientists can agree on, while ignoring disagreements, to support the global warming agenda. And it exaggerates scientific accuracy and certainty and the authority of undistinguished scientists.

No consensus here
The "most egregious" problem with the IPCC's forthcoming report, said Lindzen, "is that it is presented as a consensus that involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists . . . and none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on."

Spoiler: show

Indeed, most press accounts covering the January release of the TAR's "Summary for Policymakers" characterized the report as the work of 2,000 (3,000 in some instances) of the world's leading climate scientists. IPCC's emphasis, however, isn't on getting qualified scientists, but on getting representatives from over 100 countries, said Lindzen. The truth is only a handful of countries do quality climate research. Most of the so-called experts served merely to pad the numbers.
"It is no small matter," said Lindzen, "that routine weather service functionaries from New Zealand to Tanzania are referred to as 'the world's leading climate scientists.' It should come as no surprise that they will be determinedly supportive of the process."
The IPCC clearly uses the Summary for Policymakers to misrepresent what is in the report, said Lindzen. He gave an example from the chapter he worked on, chapter 7, addressing physical processes.

The 35-page chapter, said Lindzen, pointed out many problems with the way climate computer models treat specific physical processes, such as water vapor, clouds, ocean currents, and so on. Clouds and water vapor in clouds, for example, are badly misrepresented in the models. The physics are all wrong, he said. Those things the models do well are irrelevant to the all-important feedback effects.
"The treatment of water vapor in clouds is crucial to models producing a lot of warming," explained Lindzen. "Without them [positive feedbacks], no model would produce much warming."
The IPCC summarizes the 35-page chapter in one sentence: "Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea dynamics and ocean heat transport."
That, said Lindzen, does not summarize the chapter at all. "That is why a lot of us have said that the document itself is informative; the summary is not."

Spoiler: show

Lindzen briefly discussed a paper he published in the March 2001 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, clarifying the water vapor feedback issue. Using detailed daily measurements, Lindzen and his coauthors from NASA showed that cloud cover in the tropics diminishes as temperatures rise, cooling the planet by allowing more heat to escape.
"The effect observed," said Lindzen, "is sufficient such that if current models are absolutely correct, except for missing this, models that predict between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees warming go down to about .4 to 1.2 degrees warming."
Not the way science is done
The IPCC claims its report is peer-reviewed, which simply isn't true, Lindzen said. Under true peer-review, he explained, a panel of reviewers must accept a study before it can be published in a scientific journal. If the reviewers have objections, the author must answer them or change the article to take reviewers' objections into account.
Under the IPCC review process, by contrast, the authors are at liberty to ignore criticisms. After having his review comments ignored by the IPCC in 1990 and 1995, Lindzen asked to have his name removed from the list of reviewers. The group refused.
The IPCC has resorted to using scenario-building in its policymakers' summary to paint a frightening picture not supported by the science, Lindzen charged. Ignoring the science allows the IPCC to build a scenario, for example, that assumes man will burn 300 years' worth of coal in 100 years. They plug that into the most sensitive climate model available and arrive at a truly frightening global warming scenario.
"People wouldn't normally take that very seriously," said Lindzen, "but I think the IPCC understands the media will report the top number. I don't think, any longer, that this is unintentional."
The IPCC also exploits what scientists do agree on to support its agenda, according to Lindzen. For example, Lindzen said, scientists can more-or-less live with the idea conveyed in the IPCC report that everything is connected to everything else, and everything is uncertain.
Lindzen himself doesn't think these ideas are particularly reasonable. But politicians and environmentalists take this minimal area of agreement, and then claim that anything can cause anything and we must act to stop it.
Scientists agree, for example, that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased over the last 100 years. They also generally agree the climate has warmed slightly. Uncertainties remain, however, regarding even those basic propositions. Contrary to the impression given by the IPCC, there is no widespread agreement on what these two "facts" mean for mankind. Yet they are deemed by the IPCC sufficient to justify precipitous action.

Fun with numbers
Perhaps Lindzen's most devastating critique is aimed at the IPCC's use of statistics.
The IPCC's infamous hockey stick graph, for example, shows global temperatures have been stable or falling over the last 1,000 years, and that only in the industrial age has there been an unnatural warming of the planet. But if you look at the margin of error in that graph, "You can no longer maintain that statement," said Lindzen.
Lindzen also noted the margin of error used in the IPCC report is much smaller, a 60 percent confidence level, than traditionally used by scientists, who generally report results at the 95 or even 99 percent confidence level. The IPCC is thus publicizing results much less likely to be correct than scientific research is generally expected to be.
To illustrate his point, Lindzen showed estimates of some of the most precise numbers in physics with their error bars. He showed different measurements of the speed of light, for instance, from 1929 to the 1980s. The error bars for the estimated speed of light in 1932 and 1940 do not even include the value we think is the correct speed of light today. "Error bars should not be taken lightly," warned Lindzen. "There is genuine uncertainty in them."

Incentives matter
"Scientists are human beings," Lindzen concluded, "subject to normal instincts and weaknesses." They respond to incentives just like everyone else. "Current government funding creates incentives to behave poorly by maintaining the relevance of the subject," he said, noting that on some issues financial support for science depends on "alarming the world."
Indeed, Lindzen noted, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland were awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on ozone depletion--not for alerting the world, but for "alarming" it. "You don't want scientists to get hooked on this as the key to fame and glory," he warned.
There's little doubt, Lindzen said, that the IPCC process has become politicized to the point of uselessness. He advised U.S. policymakers simply to ignore it.

My point about the sun is that IT is heating the planet, without it, it would be a fucking iceball, obviously. We're not making it warmer, we're making it retain heat differently, yes, we are contributing to the effect... but as Billy Joel said, we didn't start the fire.


Again: I'm not denying that the climate is changing, that would be stupid as fuck. I'm simply skeptical that this is "almost certainly entirely caused by human activity", rightfully so, as science is never settled.

[kareface]

Congrats, you are quoting a guy who was just described as a denier who has been refuted countless times. I respect his work, but his opinions outside of his publications are always on the odd end of the spectrum. If this was the first time he's taken the opposing stance on an issue like this I think it would have more credence. However the guy seems to like the attention of being the only one in a group to disagree.

With that I gotta run. BBL.

[Max™]

Uh, that was one of the first times:

Environment & Climate News > June 2001
Email a Friend
Written By: Paul Georgia
Published In: Environment & Climate News > June 2001
Publication date: 06/01/2001
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Would you be so kind as to supply some of those countless refutations, I'll go find some myself.

After all, I can't seriously endorse one side of an argument if I can't argue the other side effectively, it's dishonest.


Now, I found this site:http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm , which claims to include times he was wrong:

• Have his scientific theories ever been wrong before?

Yes, and more than once. He was wrong about satellite data showing no global warming and his Iris effect.1, 2 Also, here is a quote from SEED magazine:


In 2001, Lindzen published a paper speculating that as the Earth warmed, water vapor would decrease in the upper atmosphere, allowing heat to escape back into space more efficiently, and thereby reducing overall temperature. The paper met with vigorous criticism. Eventually, he disavowed the idea. "That was an old view," Lindzen said about his five-year-old hypothesis. "I find it insane that I am still forced to explain this."

Those linkes, 1, and 2, are the following sites which don't mention Lindzen at all, instead going on about satellite data discussed by others.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...tellite-stuff/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...5/08/et-tu-lt/

The realclimate site of course has to be taken with a grain of salt, you can't take any issue as political as this one just on the word of one side or the other, generally you'll do better to listen to both sides, and make your own judgment.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006...ims_global.php

I'm sure you can produce more reputable refutation than my limited/distracted search, girlfriend pounced on my dick mid post... just got back and kinda lost my train of thought.

[Tristam]

http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources...andclimate.htm



Condensation warms the atmosphere, evaporation cools it. Water Vapor itself acts to trap heat in the form of I.R. shielding.



How is warming the atmosphere due to I.R. shielding, AND warming the atmosphere due to precipitative release of latent heat a negative feedback?

If that isn't a negative feedback, how come this positive feedback doesn't induce a runaway effect?

Please, teach me, I am very confused here.



I am a skeptic, denialist is only slightly less stupid sounding than denier (which is actually a unit of fabric measurement), and I was skeptical that the cooling was a permanent change in the climate, which itself is a huge mental fuckup. Climate is a process of change, last I checked.


Technically the models ONLY work if there is a positive forcing effect from CO2 > Water Vapor included, you know this though.





I take offense at being called a small outdated coin!


I was saying the article was stupid, not saying it was proof of anything.



Uh, cognitive dissonance detected:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress....03/hansen4.gif
There was in fact a cooling trend at that time.




I already stated that I agree with you that the cooling thing was stupid, and the climate models work fine in the past, but only manage to match the modern temperature trends when including that positive forcing feedback effect, while having major areas of uncertainty regarding the effect of water vapor at various altitudes, and the effect of clouds in general.

Max, the negative feedback is that water vapor is removed from the atmosphere by rain, in which form it is unable to do IR shielding. Also, rain does cool the planet, that evaporation you spoke of when you were talking about sweat is why sweating cools down our bodies. This effect simply by demonstration is much stronger than your latent heat release effect. Without the cooling effect of evaporation the earth would be over 40 degrees hotter on average, according to wiki of all things. I know you're confused, but seriously man this isn't too tough.

Also, the reason you're not a skeptic is that you're unconvinced by any amount of evidence in whatever form, that's the difference. All your bluster simply serves to make you look more like a crackpot. Your skepticism is also a bit weird, the cooling effect of sulphate aerosols is a real phenomenon, and has a measurable effect on the climate, in fact models take it into account, which you would know if you read the IPCC report. Also, congratulations on using a single dataset from a denialist website. Any other graph of the instrumental temperature record is terribly different. Cherry picking is a great denialist tactic. But your coin reference was terribly cute, have you considered comedy as a profession?

The thing about climate models only fitting the data when you include positive feedback is exactly why the AGW model makes the most sense, indicates that the positive forcings themselves are real and understood to a good degree, and a validation of the model itself. While there may be uncertainty, even major uncertainty, they are calculated and presented as a range of possibilities under specific confidence thresholds. The issue of clouds being an uncertainty is treated in the IPCC report, and just because you can't predict the effect of a single aspect of climate, doesn't invalidate the models atall, it just means they're not as "fine-grained" as you would like. For instance, we don't need to know the effect of butterfly farts on air pressure to know which way a high pressure system will move if we're talking about weather.

edit: I can't say it enough, the both sides argument is not scientifically valid because there is not equal weight of evidence on both sides. Even McIntyre when finally pressed by a reporter to to make a judgment on whether or not governments should enact legislation to modify human activities that are predicted to change the climate said, and this is a direct quote, "Yes".

[Tristam]

Trista, your post was quite awesome. I recently attended a lecture series that was dedicated to green energy at the UW. We were fortunate enough to have some great speakers like David J.C. MacKay, Steven Aumeier and Stephen Mayfield, not to mention some great professors at the school. I don't know if you've had the time to read any of Stephen Mayfield's work, but he works specifically with micro-algae for the production of biofuels, and other products.

That's a great idea for a series of lectures, most of my introduction to the field came from biologists who were doing impact studies on a changing climates effect on particular wildlife. Interesting stuff, but depressing as hell. Biofuels are an enormously more optimistic study right now. I'm not familiar with the work of the people you mentioned, or perhaps I've heard of their work but I can't remember the names, but I'll keep an eye out from now on.

Actually, the most curious thing I've read recently that gives me a good bit of hope is the idea that we could design catalytic platforms that would mimic the photosynthetic reactions of plants to use CO2 to synthesize long chain hydrocarbons. I mean if plants can do it why not us right? Anyways, it would be enormously ironic if CO2 turned out to be a "renewable resource" as it were. I cannot remember who was proposing this idea, may have been one of the guys you saw speak? At any rate, the Dept. of Energy has recently announced a big financial push into biofuels, I'm very encouraged by that.

[Max™]

Max, the negative feedback is that water vapor is removed from the atmosphere by rain, in which form it is unable to do IR shielding. Also, rain does cool the planet, that evaporation you spoke of when you were talking about sweat is why sweating cools down our bodies. This effect simply by demonstration is much stronger than your latent heat release effect. Without the cooling effect of evaporation the earth would be over 40 degrees hotter on average, according to wiki of all things. I know you're confused, but seriously man this isn't too tough.

Rain warms the environment, evaporation cools it, water vapor trapped in the atmosphere warms the environment. I know you're confused, but seriously man, this isn't too tough.

Also, the reason you're not a skeptic is that you're unconvinced by any amount of evidence in whatever form, that's the difference.

Oh really?

I'm unconvinced that computer models showing viability of one hypothesis, while not covering all factors, is the same as falsification of all other explanations.

I'm unconvinced that I can trust anyone who would make the statement: the science is settled, as it goes against everything I have ever heard about what science is. The reason you're not a skeptic is you're convinced by anything presented in an appropriate looking form, that's the difference.

All your bluster simply serves to make you look more like a crackpot. Your skepticism is also a bit weird, the cooling effect of sulphate aerosols is a real phenomenon, and has a measurable effect on the climate, in fact models take it into account, which you would know if you read the IPCC report.

All my bluster has nothing to do with sulphate aerosols, what brought that up? Why would you claim I didn't think models account for it?

Also, congratulations on using a single dataset from a denialist website. Any other graph of the instrumental temperature record is terribly different.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...igure3-1-l.png
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...figure-1-l.png

I'm sorry, do those graphs not show the dip after 1940? Am I mistaken in the difference between up, and down?

Those are from the IPCC reports, for the record, it's well known that there was a cooling from 1940 til the 60's, a brief lull before the 70's, and a dip til the 80's, I mean, the fucking IPCC knows about it, at least. I didn't KNOW that site was a "denialist" website, again, I'm not denying that the climate is changing, I'm denying that it has been proven that we are the sole cause of said change.

For the record, I google-images'D "20th century temperature record", like so: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&s...=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Then grabbed a chart, my bad for not vetting the source to make sure it wouldn't offend you, though the data was the same as the IPCC charts.

Cherry picking is a great denialist tactic. But your coin reference was terribly cute, have you considered comedy as a profession?

I've been told my internet shatner is great, actually, thanks, but I'd just be a Tosh3.0, we've got much the same sense of humor.

The thing about climate models only fitting the data when you include positive feedback is exactly why the AGW model makes the most sense, indicates that the positive forcings themselves are real and understood to a good degree, and a validation of the model itself.

http://donstuff.files.wordpress.com/...reasoning1.jpg

While there may be uncertainty, even major uncertainty, they are calculated and presented as a range of possibilities under specific confidence thresholds. The issue of clouds being an uncertainty is treated in the IPCC report, and just because you can't predict the effect of a single aspect of climate, doesn't invalidate the models atall, it just means they're not as "fine-grained" as you would like. For instance, we don't need to know the effect of butterfly farts on air pressure to know which way a high pressure system will move if we're talking about weather.

Butterfly farts are a LITTLE bit less dramatic an effect than that of clouds, but I digress. It would be a bit odd for a butterfly to actually fart, but they do have an anus, though I thought their respiratory system/diet wasn't of the type that would produce flatulence as we know it.

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/im...-butterfly.jpg

edit: I can't say it enough, the both sides argument is not scientifically valid because there is not equal weight of evidence on both sides. Even McIntyre when finally pressed by a reporter to to make a judgment on whether or not governments should enact legislation to modify human activities that are predicted to change the climate said, and this is a direct quote, "Yes".

Well gee, could it be a good idea to stop tinkering with a system which we depend upon in a dangerous manner? Nah, let's keep doing what we're doing, fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?

See, I actually had to look up who McIntyre was, I'm not a big follower of the "denialist" crowd, it doesn't matter what they say, no one is listening to them.

I like to read up on what the people who are getting governments to pass legislation are saying, and it baffles me when politics passes for science.

I'm well aware that old theories don't get proven wrong, they simply fade away when all the people who support them die, but doing science by consensus, rather than experiment, is an irksome thing in my opinion.


Call me crazy I guess, it seems to be the consensus, after all.

[Tristam]

But rain doesn't warm the environment, you're wrong about that, otherwise the earth's temperature wouldn't make sense. If it didn't rain, the earth would be much hotter, case closed. Moving on yes?

You're wrong about models, they do not need to cover all factors, we can predict the motion of planets w/o the Higgs. Models can do that, you are a denialist with a blind spot to climate. If a model claimed to be perfect, I wouldn't believe it, AGW doesn't claim perfection, it's just the best model there is. The computational model is simply the best predictor based on natural laws and known rates of change of factors that affect climate with predicted forcings again based on natural laws. You don't seem to be distinguising a single computational model from AGW. They're not the same thing, and the model isn't all the evidence. The computational models, by the way, do not in and of themselves falsify all other experimental possibilities. OTHER EXPERIMENTS DID THAT. Hence the fact that a consensus is built. But you're just ignorant of all the other experiments I guess.

You posted the article which proposed that there was a 25 year cooling trend, ok, even if I were to be very generous simply for argument, it's a very, very weak trend. Those blue, red, and yellow lines are there to help you see the real trends. If every little dip was a trend, we'd be making new predictions every year. You don't really get the whole statistics and climate thing do ya? Here's a tip, climate is generally defined over a 30 year sliding window, that's long enough to average out most of the noise in the system. For that trend to exist, you would have to anchor it at the tip of that peak, and only there, and only end the trend at certain points. That's some nice cherrypicking, but it's all besides the point anyways. Either way, the cooling, or reduction in warming, however you want to phrase it, would have been anomalous if sulphate aerosols, which were higher at the time, were not taken into account. But they are, AGW validated again. It's not circular reasoning if a model agrees with data and natual laws, it's just good performance.

As far as science by consensus, yes, after a certain point it's suitable for a consensus to be built. That does not mean the science is done by consensus, but rather an enormous weight of evidence supports certain explanations or theories. AGW is one such theory, and you don't seem to be familiar with much of the evidence. There is a consensus that a single population of a type of organism at one point diverged to be responsible for the diversity of life we see today through a process known as evolution. Are you skeptical of that fact simply because there is a consensus behind it? Or are you just contrarian for the sake of being contrarian?

Finally, I simply don't believe you're not familiar with McIntyre. Anyone who read the climategate emails, even a little bit should be. Furthermore you pulled your first graph from his blog, climateaudit. Sadly, more people are listening to the deniers than the scientists doing the work. If you followed the politics, you would know that no resolution has been proposed that would follow any of the guidelines actually built on facts. Any multinational agreements currently proposed or agreed to are basically nothing. So yes, people are listening to the deniers. And you keep on repeating the same old denialist arguments, which I've heard countless other places.

edit: Do you really think there are no experiments to support AGW? What about satellite measurements of stratospheric temps? That experiment was undertaken specifically to test a prediction of AGW, which is that the upper atmosphere should be cooling if it is insulated to greater extents by lower levels. Since the energy output from the sun hasn't changed dramatically, that turned out to be the case.

editx2: you'll also notice the different y-axis scale on your earlier graph versus the ones you posted later. Especially if you look around 1960, there are some pretty striking differences. Do you have an explanation? They don't seem to be the same datasets. Hence my confusion.

[Max™]

But rain doesn't warm the environment, you're wrong about that, otherwise the earth's temperature wouldn't make sense. If it didn't rain, the earth would be much hotter, case closed. Moving on yes?

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fun...ges/latent.GIF

Psst, check your facts, condensation releases heat into the environment, condensation is what happens when water vapor precipitates out of the atmosphere as rain.

You're wrong about models, they do not need to cover all factors, we can predict the motion of planets w/o the Higgs. Models can do that, you are a denialist with a blind spot to climate. If a model claimed to be perfect, I wouldn't believe it, AGW doesn't claim perfection, it's just the best model there is.

Oh, you've seen other models disproved then? I've looked for them, not much luck. Can you share them with me?

The computational model is simply the best predictor based on natural laws and known rates of change of factors that affect climate with predicted forcings again based on natural laws. You don't seem to be distinguising a single computational model from AGW. They're not the same thing, and the model isn't all the evidence. The computational models, by the way, do not in and of themselves falsify all other experimental possibilities. OTHER EXPERIMENTS DID THAT. Hence the fact that a consensus is built. But you're just ignorant of all the other experiments I guess.

I guess I am, but I still see things which stand out from the model, in need of explanation, and the claim that the null hypothesis: i.e. that this is a natural process, has been falsified is based on "the unprecedented rapidity of the recent warming"... yet the recent warming is over a time scale which the methods we have for measuring past temperatures can not readily match the resolution of, making that a bit questionable of a claim.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/0...nd-ocean-heat/

That's another irksome point, good read there.

You posted the article which proposed that there was a 25 year cooling trend, ok, even if I were to be very generous simply for argument, it's a very, very weak trend. Those blue, red, and yellow lines are there to help you see the real trends.

I posted the article which said there was a trend, and pointed out that it was ridiculous to claim that it was a permanent thing.

Those blue, red, and yellow lines are there to relate temperatures from different end points, and to make an argument appear more convincing.

I can parse a graph well enough to pick out trends already, thanks, I'm pretty sure a monkey could though, to be honest.

If every little dip was a trend, we'd be making new predictions every year. You don't really get the whole statistics and climate thing do ya? Here's a tip, climate is generally defined over a 30 year sliding window, that's long enough to average out most of the noise in the system. For that trend to exist, you would have to anchor it at the tip of that peak, and only there, and only end the trend at certain points. That's some nice cherrypicking, but it's all besides the point anyways.

As I said, they were freaking out when they did exactly what you're talking about, which I do not do.

I recognize that the climate has been warming, see, I would kinda expect that sort of thing during an interglacial period.

Either way, the cooling, or reduction in warming, however you want to phrase it, would have been anomalous if sulphate aerosols, which were higher at the time, were not taken into account. But they are, AGW validated again. It's not circular reasoning if a model agrees with data and natual laws, it's just good performance.

If you're arguing that the since model agrees with observation which means the model is right because it agrees with observations, rather than because no other model agrees with observations, you're missing the point of science, dude.

As far as science by consensus, yes, after a certain point it's suitable for a consensus to be built. That does not mean the science is done by consensus, but rather an enormous weight of evidence supports certain explanations or theories. AGW is one such theory, and you don't seem to be familiar with much of the evidence. There is a consensus that a single population of a type of organism at one point diverged to be responsible for the diversity of life we see today through a process known as evolution. Are you skeptical of that fact simply because there is a consensus behind it? Or are you just contrarian for the sake of being contrarian?

No, I've seen falsification of competing explanations for the development of life, are you being a cunt just for the sake of being a cunt?

Finally, I simply don't believe you're not familiar with McIntyre. Anyone who read the climategate emails, even a little bit should be. Furthermore you pulled your first graph from his blog, climateaudit.

No, I pulled my first graph from google, the name McIntyre didn't ring a bell, I don't pay too much attention to WHO is saying what, rather I pay attention to WHAT is being said, and WHY.

The idea that because Lindzen, for example, is to automatically be ignored because of who he is, when he may very well be pointing out valid objections, is absurd. Science isn't a fucking popularity contest, POLITICS IS!

Sadly, more people are listening to the deniers than the scientists doing the work. If you followed the politics, you would know that no resolution has been proposed that would follow any of the guidelines actually built on facts. Any multinational agreements currently proposed or agreed to are basically nothing. So yes, people are listening to the deniers. And you keep on repeating the same old denialist arguments, which I've heard countless other places.

I do? Do you know what my actual stance is?

edit: Do you really think there are no experiments to support AGW? What about satellite measurements of stratospheric temps? That experiment was undertaken specifically to test a prediction of AGW, which is that the upper atmosphere should be cooling if it is insulated to greater extents by lower levels. Since the energy output from the sun hasn't changed dramatically, that turned out to be the case.

editx2: you'll also notice the different y-axis scale on your earlier graph versus the ones you posted later. Especially if you look around 1960, there are some pretty striking differences. Do you have an explanation? They don't seem to be the same datasets. Hence my confusion.

My explanation for the different scale is that I didn't vet it super critically, I just grabbed a chart showing the 20th century history record that looked like all the rest, the same little squiggle that is so familiar by now.

Since you LOVE to argue that something from a "denier" website can't be valid simply because of the source, I've been more careful about that, making sure to get sources which you've got to agree are good, or at least are neutral, as I didn't realize it made such a big difference if data from source A was the same as that from source B, but you don't like source B, so the data is no good.

[Chun Liroy]

I'm glad max has the patience to form the argument, this is exactly why I didn't want to get in to this sort of thing. It's like the abortion argument, people have their own views and no matter how hell bent you are on proving them wrong, their view won't change.

[kuronosan]

If anyone needs a reminder of how condensation releases heat, just stand behind your air conditioner.

I don't see how the rain itself is releasing heat, though, as it would cause rain to be hot when it falls. Hot air rises, so wouldn't that heat stay in the upper parts of the atmosphere and disperse?

[Max™]

Yes, it does transfer heat that evaporated the water vapor from the ocean to the upper levels of the atmosphere.

[Tristam]

If anyone needs a reminder of how condensation releases heat, just stand behind your air conditioner.

I don't see how the rain itself is releasing heat, though, as it would cause rain to be hot when it falls. Hot air rises, so wouldn't that heat stay in the upper parts of the atmosphere and disperse?

Ok, I think I see where my problem is. I looked back and my original problem with max's statement was that he suggested a runaway CO2/H2O hydrologic cycle. I introduced rain as a negative feedback, and he asked his question about rain and the upper atmosphere.

Here's the thing though, condensation releases heat, but my understanding is that the phase transition back to gas absorbs exactly the same amount of heat. The way I addressed his question, since condensation/evaporation is 1-1 with respect to energy in the climate is to say that while the rain is on the ground, it is not contributing to IR shielding, so the net effect of rain is to decrease temperature. IF that's not correct, hopefully I've clarified my position at least, and I would need clarification on other points. I additionally said that rain carries dissolved gases back to the surface, further reducing IR shielding over the long term. I think you raise a good point about the heat released into the atmosphere being easier to remove from the climate by radiation than heat on the ground, perhaps that figures into the equation of this technicality.

So to you and anyone else I bothered by my confusion on that point, I apologise, I think I implied something incorrect about energy absorbed during gas phase transition being greater than energy released during condensation. That's an outright error on my part.

[lilfoo]

I don't see how the rain itself is releasing heat, though, as it would cause rain to be hot when it falls. Hot air rises, so wouldn't that heat stay in the upper parts of the atmosphere and disperse?

I will use a summer shower as a simple example. Water condenses, forms droplets, and rain falls. This causes a heating in this area, making the ambient temperature slightly higher. This causes the air to no longer be saturated and the rain stops. This is a simplified summer off/on shower most can relate to.

(This is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY simplified and parts are wrong in a sense of how a meteorologist thinks, But, it gets the jist across.)

[Tristam]

Max.

Here are some other models that have been falsified by experiment:

1. The earliest model for climate, known as the "doctrine" of high frequency self regulation, proposed that it climate was a simple naturally oscillating system over a period of a few years, the discovery of ice ages falsified that.

2. The opposite model was that climate was purely chaotic over sufficiently long periods of time, and had no long term oscillations. Also false, by the same data. Or milankovitch cycles, and sunspot cycles. etc.

3. Saturation theory proposed that CO2 was already in such abundance that it could not cause changes in the climate. Ha.

4. Another theory proposes that slow geological changes alter wind patterns that change weather sufficiently enough to change climate. No quantitative data exists for any recorded geologic change with an effect on water distribution that would account for the change in energy balance between incoming light from the sun and outgoing radiation edit: for the modern warming trend, although the positioning of continents IS important over hugely long terms, the position of the antarctic continent is the entire reason we have ice ages.

5. A popular denialist model proposes that the sun is the cause of the anomalous warming. Nope. The energy recieved from the sun can be measured and while it does oscillate, it's not unstable and it is not in phase with current warming trends. Also, if the energy from the sun were increasing, the stratosphere would be getting warmer, not cooler due to insulation from lower levels of the atmosphere (as I already mentioned).

So there's a few falsified models. Here's an excercise for you. Propose an alternative model. We can discuss that. Otherwise all you're doing is saying "nuh uh", which is just an argument from personal incredulity. The null hypothesis was nullified by invalidating other naturally occurring phenomena.

And this is funny:

"If you're arguing that the since model agrees with observation which means the model is right because it agrees with observations, rather than because no other model agrees with observations, you're missing the point of science, dude."

-Said the non-scientist to the postdoc

A model is more valid if it fits the data and is supported by what we know about natural laws, it is less valid if it does not fit the data. If no other model agrees with the data, the model that fits the data is the best model available. If you don't understand this, you're even more of a crackpot than I thought. I, for instance, use kinetic models to explain some of my data. If the model fits the data better, I am happier, and so are the reviewers. If the model does not fit the data, then either my understanding of the process is wrong, or the data is bad, and I work very hard to make sure my data is good. How does this not make sense to you?

Also, data collected in bad faith, or presented incorrectly is meaningless. For instance the y-axis on that graph wasn't even labeled lol. It could have been a graph of ducks in Peru over time. The website you pulled from has a bad habit of not presenting data faithfully in order to cast doubt on the science. That is why I distrust that source, their conclusions are usually falsifiable lol. If you made the error faithfully, then I apologize, even if you did call me a cunt you big meanie Q.Q

Now I don't really care what your actual stance is. I care about your arguments, which are very denialist from this and other threads. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.

Anyhoo, I know I'm super cuntish, but I'd rather be a cunt than a crackpot.