Climategate

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by photon

How much it affects the earth's temperature is pretty straight forward when you're dealing with that level of things... total energy in minus energy reflected / emitted back out, there's nowhere else for it to go.

How it affects the temperature of the atmosphere or the ocean is far more complex because there are many factors that contribute to that.

But there are many papers that support the sun's contribution to current warming being small to minimal:

http://ieg.or.kr/abstractII/G0102523037.PDF
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...901.0515v1.pdf
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009JGRD..11414101B

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ing-again.html

[troutman]

Originally Posted by zuluking

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ing-again.html

http://skepticalscience.com/global-w...ed-in-1998.htm

Myth = It hasn't warmed since 1998

No, it hasn't been cooling since 1998. Even if we ignore long term trends and just look at the record-breakers, that wasn't the hottest year ever. Different reports show that, overall, 2005 was hotter than 1998. What's more, globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.

Though humans love record-breakers, they don't, on their own, tell us a much about trends -- and it's trends that matter when monitoring Climate Change. Trends only appear by looking at all the data, globally, and taking into account other variables -- like the effects of the El Nino ocean current or sunspot activity -- not by cherry-picking single points.

There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can perhaps give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Oceans for instance -- due to their immense size and heat storing capability (called 'thermal mass') -- tend to give a much more 'steady' indication of the warming that is happening. Here records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there's no signs of it slowing any time soon.

The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 - global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino.

To claim global warming stopped in 1998 overlooks one simple physical reality - the land and atmosphere are just a small fraction of the Earth's climate (albeit the part we inhabit). The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth's entire heat content.


BadAstronomer Phil Plait
Apparently, a climate change denier has attempted to refute an argument I made. Shocker: he's wrong
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/20..._misunders.php

The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail independently published highly misleading and blatantly idiotic pieces on climate change.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/20...nfirms_cli.php

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2012/...mate-nonsense/

One of my students asked me about a new article just printed in The Daily Mail, a right-wing newspaper in the U.K. The article’s title is, “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)“. Here’s a rule of thumb for you. If you ever read anything about climate change in The Daily Mail, the odds are excellent that it’s nonsense.

Most people would have no idea that the Daily Mail is quoting a bunch of fringe scientists, and they would have no idea why the views of these scientists are dismissed by the others. It turns out that Svensmark WAS taken seriously, but his hypothesis hasn’t panned out. It turns out that Scafetta’s ideas are little better than curve-fitted astrology, at this point. It turns out that climate models DO account for ocean circulation, but there is no convincing evidence that this does much outside timescales of a few years.

Like I said, this is why I’ve gone militant on these guys. I think they are patently dishonest.

[mikey_the_redneck]

Looks like more scientists have jumped off the bandwagon.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...838421366.html

"Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva."

Bums....

[troutman]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

Looks like more scientists have jumped off the bandwagon.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...838421366.html

"Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva."

Bums....

Indeed.

http://skepticalscience.com/global-w...-consensus.htm

Myth = there is no consensus

That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from 19 countries plus many scientific organizations that study climate science. More specifically, around 95% of active climate researchers actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position.

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2012/...mate-nonsense/

If the scientific consensus doesn’t agree with what you want to hear, the Daily Mail reporter knows that you can always get some D-list fringe scientists to make it all better.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/20..._things_an.php

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

Emphasis added to underscore the fact that this is a group of older and often retired weathermen, engineers, or otherwise not-climate-scientists

Six Of The Scientists Have Been Linked To Fossil Fuel Interests. Roger Cohen and Edward David are both former employees of ExxonMobil. William Happer is the Chairman of the Board for the George C. Marshall Institute, which has received funding from Exxon. Rodney Nichols is also on the boards of the George Marshall Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which has been funded by Exxon and the Koch Foundations. Harrison Schmitt was the Chairman Emeritus of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, which was funded by oil refiners and electric utilities in the 1990s, according to a Wall Street Journal report (via Nexis). Richard Lindzen also served on the Economic Advisory Council of the Center, was funded by ExxonMobil through the 2000s.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/exam...21xDOM.twitter

The signatories of this newest letter are also worth noting for their lack of noteworthiness. Although the climate denialist blogs have labeled them "luminaries" and "prominent scientists", the list is actually quite underwhelming. In fact, it only includes four scientists who have actually published climate research in peer-reviewed journals, and only two who have published climate research in the past three decades. Nearly half of the list (at least 7 of 16) have received fossil fuel industry funding, and the list also includes an economist, a physician, a chemist, an aerospace engineer, and an astronaut/politician. These are apparently the best and brightest the climate denialists can come up with these days?

The fact that only 16 scientists and engineers signed this letter casts serious doubt on this assertion. The fake skeptics were able to get ~100 signatories on a similar letter 5 years ago - this seems more like a small and dwindling number of fake skeptics. It's also worth noting that 255 National Academy of Science members (truly prominent scientists) signed an opposite letter

[mikey_the_redneck]

Originally Posted by troutman

Indeed.

http://skepticalscience.com/global-w...-consensus.htm

Myth = there is no consensus

That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from 19 countries plus many scientific organizations that study climate science. More specifically, around 95% of active climate researchers actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position.

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2012/...mate-nonsense/

If the scientific consensus doesn’t agree with what you want to hear, the Daily Mail reporter knows that you can always get some D-list fringe scientists to make it all better.

The scientists that supported the letter are far from D-list "fringe" scientists.

They're only considered "d-list" because they weren't funded by any of the big foundations or corporations from the pro-AGW movement.

The "consensus" is mostly formed from institutions (eg IPCC), rather than individuals. And when individuals (either a part of those institutions or aside from them) speak out or disagree, they get intimidated or repremanded in some way.

From my article;

"Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job."


"Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them."

So while many have insisted that the anti-AGW is funded by big oil or big something, the same can be said for the pro-AGW. In other words, this is corporate tobacco science at work.

I am still wondering why no other solution aside from cap/trade & carbon tax has been proposed....

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by troutman

Emphasis added to underscore the fact that this is a group of older and often retired weathermen, engineers, or otherwise not-climate-scientists

What, you're saying that people like "Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism" and "Michael Kelly, professor of technology" aren't credible experts on climate change? Next you'll probably be telling us that biologists understand evolution better than engineers and physicists. And if there are 16 scientists on that list, that's gotta be representative of the general consensus.

[photon]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

The scientists that supported the letter are far from D-list "fringe" scientists.

They're also far from climate scientists, most of them anyway.

You take the list of 16 and seem to put authority in them that their opinion is more important.

But then 255 scientists write and sign a letter which refutes what those 16 say, but you choose to disregard them.

Are you picking and choosing based on what you want to think?

And even if they were all outstanding published climatologists, that still doesn't mean they're right. There's scientists that think the earth is 6000 years old, doesn't mean the idea is worth anything.

There is a consensus:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...87107.abstract

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

They're only considered "d-list" because they weren't funded by any of the big foundations or corporations from the pro-AGW movement.

You're just making this up because it supports your position.

Unless you've got a list of all the people funding these 16 and the 255 that signed the response letter and can compare. Please produce such a list so we can see how you came to your decision.

It's also amusing because people from the "anti-AGW" movement funded a study to come up with the REAL data about the earth's climate.. and they came to the same conclusions about the temperature. So much for results being driven by the money.

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

The "consensus" is mostly formed from institutions (eg IPCC), rather than individuals. And when individuals (either a part of those institutions or aside from them) speak out or disagree, they get intimidated or repremanded in some way.

More fabrications. You do understand that the IPCC doesn't do any science right? The IPCC assembles the science from the published science of individual scientists around the world.

And it's demonstrably false because there are papers published that question the consensus or don't explicitly support it; they're mostly just either not very good, aren't compelling enough in enough numbers to disprove the consensus theory.

But it's funny you say this, because if you really believed this you would also have a problem with the WSJ that published the letter signed by the 16, since they refused to publish the response letter that was signed by 255. But that's ok as long as it supports your desired position?

Science (the journal) published it though.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5979/689.full.pdf

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

So while many have insisted that the anti-AGW is funded by big oil or big something, the same can be said for the pro-AGW. In other words, this is corporate tobacco science at work.

It happens in some cases no matter what, but the vast majority of the time the funding for doing science is not tied to the desired conclusion. And you have no proof that it is, you just have some claims in a magazine article that has a proven agenda that you choose to believe because it fits your ideology.

Way back in this thread I produced a list of available grants in the area of studies that could be related to the topic and asked someone to point out where the requirements were for specific conclusions... I haven't seen any yet.

Nor do I see any evidence of all scientists being dishonest and corrupt, which is required for your perception to work.

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

I am still wondering why no other solution aside from cap/trade & carbon tax has been proposed....

The measures to address an issue aren't related to the veracity of the issue itself, this is just more fallacious thinking.

And it's funny, because the same political group that WANTED cap and trade for past issues like this now are against it.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by troutman

http://skepticalscience.com/global-w...ed-in-1998.htm

Myth = It hasn't warmed since 1998

No offense, but skepticalscience has been debunked numerous times itself and it intends (or pretends) to be a legitimate science site.

[photon]

So what, all the papers they refer to in their answers are fake?

Where's all this debunking?

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by zuluking

No offense, but skepticalscience has been debunked numerous times itself and it intends (or pretends) to be a legitimate science site.

Lol!

Says the person that responded to a post with 4 peer reviewed papers with a Daily Mail article.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Lol!

Says the person that responded to a post with 4 peer reviewed papers with a Daily Mail article.

Lol! Relevance?

[Tinordi]

Its relevant because your supporting your argument with irrelevant articles.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Its relevant because your supporting your argument with irrelevant articles.

No, it truly wasn't relevant to the post to which it referenced. Additionally, I posted a link that was relevant to the other links, regardless of your take on the validity of the article I linked. And lastly, I made no argument.

Here's another relevant link to the topic of the sun's relevance to the earth's climate: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php...cle/view/14754

Please try to follow along.

As per your post, "Its" should be "It's" and the first "your" should be "you're". If we've learned nothing from the WRGMG thread, it should be this (and how to behave at a 4-way stop).

[troutman]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/sola...termediate.htm

As supplier of almost all the energy in Earth's climate, the sun has a strong influence on climate. A comparison of sun and climate over the past 1150 years found temperatures closely match solar activity (Usoskin 2005). However, after 1975, temperatures rose while solar activity showed little to no long-term trend. This led the study to conclude, "...during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."

In fact, a number of independent measurements of solar activity indicate the sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1960, over the same period that global temperatures have been warming. Over the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been moving in opposite directions. An analysis of solar trends concluded that the sun has actually contributed a slight cooling influence in recent decades (Lockwood 2008).

[photon]

Originally Posted by zuluking

Here's another relevant link to the topic of the sun's relevance to the earth's climate:

Or will be relevant in a few decades when we can judge the predictions (and his seemingly hand-fitted lines in his graphs), but his views on solar irradiation don't seem to be accepted by other astro-physicists.

EDIT: I knew I remembered reading a thread about this last winter, here's a thread on it for someone who's got some free time lol:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=167550

Originally Posted by zuluking

As per your post, "Its" should be "It's" and the first "your" should be "you're". If we've learned nothing from the WRGMG thread, it should be this (and how to behave at a 4-way stop).

Sometimes people post from phones

[Day Tripper]

Originally Posted by zuluking

No, it truly wasn't relevant to the post to which it referenced. Additionally, I posted a link that was relevant to the other links, regardless of your take on the validity of the article I linked. And lastly, I made no argument.

Here's another relevant link to the topic of the sun's relevance to the earth's climate: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php...cle/view/14754

Please try to follow along.

Nobody's disputing that the sun is an important factor in climate fluctuation. There are other factors too:

- Earth's positioning relative to the sun.
- Particulates in the air (volcanic ash, aerosols, etc.)
- Greenhouse gases

Don't confuse more sun-exclusive arguments (like Abdusamatov's) with widely accepted solar cycles and so on.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by photon

Or will be relevant in a few decades when we can judge the predictions (and his seemingly hand-fitted lines in his graphs), but his views on solar irradiation don't seem to be accepted by other astro-physicists.

EDIT: I knew I remembered reading a thread about this last winter, here's a thread on it for someone who's got some free time lol:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=167550



Sometimes people post from phones

Just like AGW. Some of the disaster scenarios should have played out by now.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by Day Tripper

Nobody's disputing that the sun is an important factor in climate fluctuation. There are other factors too:

- Earth's positioning relative to the sun.
- Particulates in the air (volcanic ash, aerosols, etc.)
- Greenhouse gases

Don't confuse more sun-exclusive arguments (like Abdusamatov's) with widely accepted solar cycles and so on.

"But there are many papers that support the sun's contribution to current warming being small to minimal:" - this was the point I was challenging. Now you say nobody disputes the sun factor. Just look up to the top of the page your post is on.

Who said I was confusing sun-exclusive argument with solar cycles. Did you read the paper? It wasn't inferring sun-exclusivity either. My point here is that the real issue isn't sun-exclusivity arguments on this topic; it is greenhouse gas exclusivity.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by zuluking

Just like AGW. Some of the disaster scenarios should have played out by now.

What scenarios are those?

[Thor]

http://www.livescience.com/18255-sol...e-warming.html

They found that the Earth absorbed 0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter than escaped back into space during the study period from 2005 to 2010, a time when solar activity was low. By comparison, the planet receives 0.25 watts less energy per square meter during a solar minimum, than during a period of maximum activity in the sun's 11-year cycle. (Currently, the sun is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, with activity expected to ramp up toward solar maximum in 2013.)

"The fact we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system," lead researcher James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement. "But it's worth noting, because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming."

However, in an email to LiveScience, Hansen noted that "the sun is a small but not negligible factor," in determining the size of the imbalance. Over the past decade, the imbalance declined slightly due, in part, to the solar minimum, according to Hansen.