Althouse: "When the government is so clearly failing to act on climate change... it's not surprising that the level of doubt about climate change has risen."

September 20, 2013

"When the government is so clearly failing to act on climate change... it's not surprising that the level of doubt about climate change has risen."

A cogent insight — by Green Party leader Natalie Bennett — into a UK poll that shows disbelief in climate change has spiked 400% in the last 8 years.

Obviously, Bennett means to shame the government for failing to act on climate change, but the failure to act is evidence that the people rationally take into account. Failure to act like it's an emergency is circumstantial evidence that there is no emergency, and it can be more persuasive than assertions that there is an emergency.

If someone says that house is on fire but doesn't leave the house, we tend to doubt that the house is on fire and wonder why that person is trying to get us to leave the house. For years, people have looked at the disconnect between Al Gore's lectures about our profligate burning of fossil fuel and seen his extravagant indulgence in power consumption. What going on?

And yet, while Al Gore could institute a rigorous green policy for himself, governments can't do drastic things without strong support from people. There's a terrible bind. The less government does, the more people think that nothing needs to be done. After a while, it's not only the failure to act as evidence of that the alarmist doesn't believe his own alarm. It's also the unfolding of reality without having taken precautions.

57 comments:

Tank said...: For people who are paying attention, it has more to do with this (from the article):

The report comes as climate change scientists working on a landmark UN report on climate change are struggling to explain why global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.

Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist and author of Climate Confusion, argues in his influential blog the UN report shows scientists are being forced to "recognise reality".

He said: "We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations."

And there is this; 9/20/13, 7:59 AM
Matt Sablan said...: I'm hardly a "denier," but the fraud of the hockey stick, models and other issues really hurt my ability to even argue for nominal, non-drastic steps to blunt the worst of it. Honestly, climate change alarmists were their own worst enemy, and frankly, they never acted like it was a crisis. You want me to believe it is a crisis? Handle your conferences via Skype or Google Hangouts (or any number of other services), instead of putting out more pollutants than some undeveloped countries.; 9/20/13, 8:02 AM
Gahrie said...: The truth is, the UK has almost crippled its economy worrying about "climate change". Compare what the British are paying for electricity to what Americans are.

Meanwhile, the United States is still the only country to meet the Kyoto goals, even though we never ratified the treaty.; 9/20/13, 8:16 AM
traditionalguy said...: The public has a good reason for rejecting belief in "Climate Change Theology" that ascribes a coming disaster from warming to a Mythological Greenhouse Gasses Godzilla Dragon.

The Theology through its paid Prophets does not describe reality. Europe has been getting colder and colder while they make up more myths about the missing heat hiding out in deep oceans where all Godzilla Dragons hide.

Brainless Governments meekly dismantling their country's carbon based fuels industries are engaged in a planned mass extermination of the horrible "Surplus People" polluting Gaia's Earth by freezing them to death.

Imposition of Death Panels has become the liberals' ultimate power trip.; 9/20/13, 8:21 AM
MartyH said...: Theme of the day: Bullshit. Next post: "Buy your bullshit detector through our handy Amazon portal. Thanks!"; 9/20/13, 8:21 AM
Jaq said...: To steal from Taranto: "Fox Butterfield, is that you?"; 9/20/13, 8:24 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: "[G]overnments can't do drastic things without strong support from people. There's a terrible bind. The less government does, the more people think that nothing needs to be done. After a while, it's not only the failure to act as evidence of that the alarmist doesn't believe his own alarm."

Sounds like Obama and his Syrian bombing debacle.

And the alarmists fail to acknowledge that a warming earth is generally a good thing for humans. By contrast, ice ages are very bad for human life. Given the certainty that earth will cycle back to an ice age at some point, what's the big deal about a moderate global temperature rise over the course of centuries, which seems long to us only due to our puny sense of perspective, but is a speck in the course of earth time.

Nobody ever promised the coastals that the shoreline was fixed in place for evermore. If your toes get wet, do like humans have always done and adapt.; 9/20/13, 8:29 AM
Peter said...: IF anthropogenic climate change were real and significant, and IF the effect of such change was likely to be dire, it would still make no sense to restrict CO2 emissions from only one country.

The only effect of doing so would be to kneecap one's economy while the rest of the world continues as before. "Let's set an example" makes no sense, as the only example anyone will see is the folly of what you're doing.

IF this was truly an emergency then the only realistic mitigation would be the negotiation of treaties that include most of the world's nations.

(Even ignoring evidence that the current warming trend predates mass industrialization, and that the record of computer climate models to predict observed changes has been dismal.); 9/20/13, 8:30 AM
Big Mike said...: There's another "catch 22" going on here. If government had acted, then Greenies like Bennett would have pointed to this year's expanding Arctic ice caps and the near total absence of Atlantic hurricanes as evidence that their policies are working. But now that the Arctic ice cap has expanded to near record size and now that Atlantic hurricanes nearly disappeared during the hurricane season of 2013 without their policies, then why do we need their policies?

It's not as though Colorado has never had floods before, and so has Mexico. But this year the Mississippi didn't flood, which means that if Mississippi flooding is a bigger concern than Colorado flooding (which it is unless you live specifically in or around Boulder) then why do we even want Bennett's policies?; 9/20/13, 8:31 AM
Illuminati said...: "When the government is so clearly failing to act on climate change... it's not surprising that the level of doubt about climate change has risen."

Ann has one way of interpreting this statement, and it is good, but it is not the only possible interpretation.

Suppose the alarmists are somewhat correct that the CO2 will produce a moderate degree of warming but most of the rest of their apocalyptic proclamations of impending doom are pure fantasy? If the government doesn't follow their prescriptions and the predicted catastrophies don't happen, that provides an experiment which disproves their hypotheses. That is what science is all about - experimentation.

On the other hand, if the government acts as if they were correct without experimental proof, they can claim that their original claims were correct and that the catastrophies didn't happen because the government followed their prescription.

Societies fall into these self reinforcing delusions all the time, they usually call the people warding off the imaginary dooms priests or shamans not scientists. A good historical example of this process is the Aztecs in Mexico who thought they had to offer human sacrifices to keep the sun well fed and healthy. Sure enough, they offered the human sacrifices and just as their priests predicted the sun continued to shine brightly. The difference now is that the scientists have replaced the priests as the keepers of the myths.; 9/20/13, 8:42 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: "Sure enough, they offered the human sacrifices and just as their priests predicted the sun continued to shine brightly."

Don't give ManBearPig any new ideas.; 9/20/13, 9:01 AM
Jaq said...: "Theme of the day: Bullshit. Next post: 'Buy your bullshit detector through our handy Amazon portal. Thanks!'"

This is the level of argument we get from most warmists. I think this is the kind of thing that Mathew Sablan above is saying, that the arguments usually amount to "reject first, ask rhetorical questions later!" That fits the first comment to a 't'.

If you want to have some fun proving Ann's point about alarmists not acting as if it were a real crisis, search on Tahiti in the climategate emails.

Oh, what the hell, I will do it for you:

"[Michael Mann] looking forward to seeing you in Tahiti, we can
>enjoy some nice tropical drinks w/ umbrellas in them.
>
>where are you planning on staying by the way? I
>haven't decided yet. The cheap options sound way
>to spartan to me, but the nicer options are so expensive!"

http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3980.txt

But you see, you may not take such information as above into account because, wait for it, the emails were stolen and it is taken out of context! That is how we decide our future, we do as they say, not as they do!; 9/20/13, 9:03 AM
jimspice said...: Tank: "...global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15..."

At least they didn't say stopped, which so many doubters do, and which is untrue. No one is suggesting that man-reintroduced CO2 is the ONLY factor driving temps. But it's upward influence can be masked by contravening trends, such as solar activity being at a low point during that period.

Matthew Sablan: "I'm hardly a 'denier,' but the fraud of the hockey stick..."

It's difficult to believe you're not a denier, as that talking point is one trotted out ad nauseum by deniers, and soundly debunked by investigative panel after panel.

Peter: "IF anthropogenic climate change were real and significant..."

The word "significant," used in statistical context, means real, and not caused by error. It doesn't mean drastic, or huge or whatnot.

Peter cont.: "... it would still make no sense to restrict CO2 emissions from only one country."

And it would make no sense for only Al Gore to cut his carbon footprint. That free-rider problem in rational choice theory is the reason we COMPEL compliance across people and countries.

Big Mike: "But now that the Arctic ice cap has expanded to near record size..."

I believe you mean antarctic, as I don't think even the staunchest deniers admit northern ice is at or near a multi-millenia low. And in area, yes souther ocean ice has, not unexpectedly, expanded. In depth and density? No. And that's not unexpected. I urge you to look into academic discussiosn of total southern ice using measurement of gravitational pull.; 9/20/13, 9:09 AM
CWJ said...: Big Mike's 8:31 comment reminded me of Y2K; the last of the continuing series of world ending scares of my lifetime.

My company, like nearly all companies, diverted resources, formed the requisite Y2K task forces, and went to great expense to address the "problem."

When nothing happened, our systems gurus were all ready to crow about what a good job they did. That is, until we mentioned that Italy as a whole had done virtually nothing to address Y2K, and nothing happened there as well.

Thank goodness mediterranean indifference provided a control case.; 9/20/13, 9:17 AM
Jaq said...: "At least they didn't say stopped, which so many doubters do, and which is untrue."

He's right, look at the trend for the past fifteen years:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1998/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1998/trend

Definitely warming!

"soundly debunked by investigative panel after panel." Name one "sound debunking" I will happily read it for you and show you the logical errors in your statement.

" I don't think even the staunchest deniers admit northern ice is at or near a multi-millenia low."

And jimspice can tell this from a satellite record that goes back at the earliest, to 1979. Despite clear evidence that the Medieval Warm Period in the Arctic was at least as warm as today, and for a lot longer.

Hey, here's another one:

"So quite a few of us will be in Trieste [Italy]
...April 3-8 there is a PMIP meeting in France, which I might attend. This is a 50-50
proposition at this time.
Don't know of any other conflicts for the dates you've specified, but please continue to
stay away from March 1-4 because there is a meeting of researchers analyzing IPCC model
output that week in Hawaii."

http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4492.txt; 9/20/13, 9:27 AM
William said...: I'm not qualified to judge the merits of the global warming debate, but I can judge the integrity and fairness with which it is conducted. The proponents of global warming have been shrill and opinionated and a lot of their predictions have not panned out......Some of the best educated, best intentioned people believed that Marxism was the science of economics and history. It was also claimed that Freud was a scientist who had discovered the dynamics of the mind. Intellectuals get too worked up about the powers of their magic decoder ring.; 9/20/13, 9:31 AM
Jaq said...: "No one is suggesting that man-reintroduced CO2 is the ONLY factor driving temps"

Not anymore, because it has become to laughable a position even for alarmists to espouse.; 9/20/13, 9:31 AM
Levi Starks said...: Clearly this is a faith based issue, and should be addressed they way nations of the past have dealt with such issues, The government needs to insure that on every Sunday morning the deniers are forced to go spend 2 hours receiving warmist indoctrination at a prescribed location. And it wouldn't hurt to insist that they throw a little money in the plate too.; 9/20/13, 9:34 AM
jimbino said...: The only folks to be affected by climate change are future generations, and those of us who are non-breeders have no interest in sacrificing present pleasures for promise of future gain to the breeders' progeny.

There is no house on fire. There is a possibility that their house may catch fire, and the alarmists have no right to tax me, who has no house, to waste water putting out a non-existent fire.; 9/20/13, 9:41 AM
traditionalguy said...: Deniers of the Big Lie hoax science that uses intentionally fabricated data fed into computers programed with an intentional false assumption that miniscule human additions of miniscule CO2 trace gas creates a heat trapping feed back are the sole truth tellers in this debate.; 9/20/13, 9:43 AM
FullMoon said...: It is time for the Warming Hysterics to take credit for solving the crisis and move on to the next big problem.
Zombies?; 9/20/13, 9:48 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: If you believe in the scientific method, which is based on doubt, skepticism and constant testing of assumptions, you are a "denier," as jimspice points out. That is a term appropriate for those who, for example, pretend the holocaust did not happen. It is wholly inappropriate for a scientific debate about estimates of future conditions.; 9/20/13, 9:48 AM
southcentralpa said...: When former Senator Gore subdivides his house into condos and starts flying commericial (even it's Super Mogul Business Class), I'll be more inclined to listen.

When the people who say there's a crisis start ACTING personally like there's a crisis, I'll be more willing to believe there might be a crisis ...; 9/20/13, 9:56 AM
Tank said...: jimspice said...
Tank: "...global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15..."

At least they didn't say stopped, which so many doubters do, and which is untrue. No one is suggesting that man-reintroduced CO2 is the ONLY factor driving temps. But it's upward influence can be masked by contravening trends, such as solar activity being at a low point during that period.

Another possibility is that the climate change true believers' theories and computer projections were utterly and completely wrong, and thereby, disproved their hypothesis.; 9/20/13, 10:00 AM
Larry J said...: As the InstaPundit puts it so well, "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who claim it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

Instead, you have Al Gore with a huge carbon footprint and you have climate change conferences where they fly in thousands of people to remote luxury resorts at taxpayer expense. If they really believed it was a crisis, they would've held teleconferences and stayed home. No, it's the latest gravy train for them to live large on other people's money.

As the real world continues to ignore their computer model predictions, they'll eventually find another crisis to ride for a decade or two. That's what parasites do.; 9/20/13, 10:14 AM
Michael said...: No warming in 15 years. Sorry. The people are dumb, but not stupid.; 9/20/13, 10:37 AM
Richard Dolan said...: Paying attention to what people do, rather than what they say, is old (and good) advice, especially when talking about politicians.

Another reason for concluding that there is no emergency, even if human activity is a causal factor in climate change over the long haul, is that there is no action that can reasonably be taken to avoid most of the consequences.

All of the various policy proposals focus on reducing the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2. The predicted impact of those proposals show that, while the cost of achieving the reduced rates of CO2 increase are astromonical, the benefit in delaying projected climate impacts are miniscule -- slowing down the rate of climate change by a matter of days or hours over a projected hundred-year span. Where costs are so out of whack with benefits, the proposed policies are economically irrational -- even if everything that the IPCC says about the contribution of human activity to climate change were true.

As many economists have argued time and again, perhaps at some point technology will have advanced sufficiently to permit economically rational policies intended to slow (or reverse) the accumulation of atmospheric CO2. But it doesn't exist today. Adopting irrational policies may offer psychic benefits to die-hard greens (who, like Gore, never seem to bear the burdens of the economically insane policies they nevertheless champion) but for the rest of us, they just offer more pain to add to whatever pain climate change may also bring.; 9/20/13, 10:40 AM
Andy Freeman said...: > No one is suggesting that man-reintroduced CO2 is the ONLY factor driving temps"

Not so fast. They definitely claimed that it swamped every other effect whenever someone asked about solar activity, volcanos, etc.

They were clearly wrong. If you deny that ....; 9/20/13, 11:13 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: Jim,

Alarmist and denier alike should be able to agree that it is unwise to pump water into your house if it is not actually on fire.

And yes, I want to leave the world a warmer place for my issue. For me, it beats the alternative -- a colder place and no kids. To each his own.; 9/20/13, 11:17 AM
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...: Well lets unpack that.

Consequences way in the future, therefore no need to worry/act now to fix, and public therefore not agitated.

Sounds just like the conditions of the deficit spending and profligate money printing situation.

I wonder if the author bemoans both?; 9/20/13, 11:47 AM
AmPowerBlog said...: "If someone says that house is on fire but doesn't leave the house, we tend to doubt that the house is on fire and wonder why that person is trying to get us to leave the house..."

Well said.; 9/20/13, 12:08 PM
cubanbob said...: I'll take the supposed consensus of the climatologists more seriously when the underlying sciences and their disciples- the geophysicists and geochemists along with atmospheric chemists and the mathematicians and computer scientists who understand complex coding are all onboard.

In the meantime considering humans in any form have been at best on the planet one million years and prior to that there have been at least five million centuries of known climate change-change that could not have occurred at all with any human agency forgive me for being a AGW denier. Indeed in the one million years of any form of humanity there has been only twelve thousand years of any form of human civilization and using the base year of 1979- a staggering thirty-four years ago as a baseline for all this doom and gloom is a bit much.; 9/20/13, 12:23 PM
Steven said...: I'll believe global warming is a major crisis when I see a major television campaign by Al Gore supporting nuclear power.

(James Hansen, at least, seems to actually believe. But all the major groups yelling about carbon are opposed to nuclear.); 9/20/13, 12:59 PM
eddie willers said...: Green Party leader Natalie Bennett blamed the Government for the increase in climate change doubters.

She said:

"When the government is so clearly failing to act on climate change, or take seriously its obligations under the Climate Change Act, it's not surprising that the level of doubt about climate change has risen.

Everyone knows you have to really believe and clap your hands if you want fairies to be real.; 9/20/13, 1:03 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: At least they didn't say stopped, which so many doubters do, and which is untrue. No one is suggesting that man-reintroduced CO2 is the ONLY factor driving temps. But it's upward influence can be masked by contravening trends, such as solar activity being at a low point during that period.

The problem is really just the opposite, that the other factors overwhelm any effects of CO2 increase, and it becomes statistically infeasible, if not impossible, to separate out the CO2 effects because they are less than the noise in the other factors.

Basic problem is that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, while H2O is a much more powerful one, and is much more prevalent in the atmosphere. Moreover, the primary driving force is solar radiation levels. Always has been, and likely always will be. And, H2O is critical both as a vapor and as a heat/coolant reservoir. Its role in the climate is not as well understood as it will ultimately be. It is essentially statistically impossible to tease out the relatively small CO2 effects from the effects of these other, much more significant, factors.

What we had was a short period of correlation, where both CO2 levels and temperature were rising together. Everything else is, at this point, little more than smoke and mirrors, with faked data and models and programs designed, intentionally or not, to come to the desired result of CO2 based AGW.

I keep coming back to the ClimateGate disclosures, where we learned a lot of things. First, the data had been cherry picked, and heavily massaged to get desired results. Moreover, the data used could not be reproduced. Secondly, the modelling programs were poorly written, and heavily massaged again, to give desired results. The attempt to rewrite from scratch was apparently a miserable failure. And, thirdly, the main "scientists" in the movement were doing whatever they could, legally or not, ethically or not, to prevent the other side from being heard or treated seriously. This extended to serious manipulation of the peer review process and pressure being placed on journals not to publish competing theories or any debunking of theirs. Nothing has really changed since then, except that the climate warming has mostly disappeared and more of these "scientists" work has been debunked.; 9/20/13, 1:05 PM
Rich Rostrom said...: jimspice said...
Big Mike: "But now that the Arctic ice cap has expanded to near record size..."

I believe you mean antarctic, as I don't think even the staunchest deniers admit northern ice is at or near a multi-millenia low.

1) Antarctic ice is at near record high levels.

2) Arctic ice was at low levels but increased 60% compared to last year - a record amount of growth. The present level is above the historic average.

BTW there is an extraneous negative in your second paragraph. Either "don't" should come out, or "admit" should be "deny".; 9/20/13, 1:08 PM
RonF said...: That's what serves their agenda. Apparently it hasn't occurred to them that the lack of concern about climate change on the part of the public is the cause, not the effect, of a lack of government action.

Because in their world view the proper relationship between the government and the public is for the government to be the driver of the public, not for the public to be the driver of the government.; 9/20/13, 1:15 PM
RonF said...: They want that because it's a lot easier for a small interest group to influence the government than it is for them to influence the public.; 9/20/13, 1:16 PM
lgv said...: Peter said:

IF anthropogenic climate change were real and significant, and IF the effect of such change was likely to be dire, it would still make no sense to restrict CO2 emissions from only one country.

The only effect of doing so would be to kneecap one's economy while the rest of the world continues as before. "Let's set an example" makes no sense, as the only example anyone will see is the folly of what you're doing.

This is the point I usually try to make, only more strongly. If only a portion of the world addresses the "global" problem, CO2 heavy industry will actually move to the developing countries, increasing their carbon output.

The dire consequences are less predictable than the relationship between CO2 and warming. Any change will be gradual to boot. The warming will likely be anything but catastrophic. But, there no money to be made without potential catastrophe.; 9/20/13, 1:20 PM
Gahrie said...: jimspice:

Identify the ways in which "climate change" can be disproved or proven false. Until you do, you are not engaging in science, but religion.; 9/20/13, 1:30 PM
MadisonMan said...: The present level is above the historic average.

False -- if you mean Arctic ice amount (you've tangled your syntax just enough to introduce doubt -- well done).

Link. The present amount is a bit less than two standard deviations below the average.; 9/20/13, 1:38 PM
Andy Freeman said...: > The present amount is a bit less than two standard deviations below the average.

The present amount is not less than minimums that predate AGW, so said amount does not "prove" AGW.; 9/20/13, 2:55 PM
jimspice said...: Gahrie: "Identify the ways in which "climate change" can be disproved or proven false."

At this point, you don't do it in one swell foop. It is well supported by too many results in too many papers from too many disciplines. You'd have to chip away bit by bit, but the underlying message is not likely to change drastically overnight. Remember, these scientists (who yes, I get, you think are scammers) don't get published unless their results reach 95% confidence levels. Sure, there's a 5% chance that any is wrong, but what's the chance they ALL are (hint: .95*.95......i^n).

In the mean time, rather than tear down, why don't the doubters produce a model that explains and predicts better than existing ones, but does NOT include the role of man-reintroduced carbon? They would definitely get the attention of a whole lot of people, myself included. But perhaps I should answer my own question. Why not? Because they can't. Whatever they would produce, the addition of anthropogenic factors would improve it beyond the level of parsimony concerns.; 9/20/13, 2:57 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Jimspice wrote:
It's difficult to believe you're not a denier, as that talking point is one trotted out ad nauseum by deniers, and soundly debunked by investigative panel after panel.

But the world is getting cooler! The idea that it's getting warmer has been debunked by panel after panel!
See I can make claims based on unidentified authority, too!

The russkies used to make claims like this. "It is an undisputed fact that the elderly in America subsist on a diet of pet food and wood chips".; 9/20/13, 3:01 PM
viator said...: Here's a government who did act...

"The Climate Commission has been scrapped and billions of dollars in renewable energy funding effectively frozen as the Abbott government moved swiftly to wind back Australia's climate change response, as promised.

Outgoing chief commissioner Tim Flannery, who was told yesterday morning he had lost his $180,000-a-year, part-time role"

Australia's new conservative government begins to cut alarmists off the government dole.; 9/20/13, 3:45 PM
Original Mike said...: "Basic problem is that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, while H2O is a much more powerful one, and is much more prevalent in the atmosphere."

My understanding of this is that radiation absorption by water is already "saturated". IOW, atmospheric water molecules are at such a concentration that they have already absorbed all of the radiation there is to absorb at water's specific excitation frequencies. If that's the case, you can add as much additional water as you want and there will be no further absorption.; 9/20/13, 3:53 PM
jimspice said...: Just ran across this graphic and thought it was very apropos of Big Mike's contention that "the Arctic ice cap has expanded to near record size..."; 9/20/13, 5:15 PM
jimspice said...: As for Tim in Vermont and Terry and their request for citations on panels and findings in the fabricating data/"hockey stick" issue:

•Pennsylvania State University
•UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
•University of East Anglia International Scientific Assessment Panel
•US Environmental Protection Agency
•US Department of Commerce Inspector General
•National Science Foundation; 9/20/13, 5:26 PM
Andy Freeman said...: > >Gahrie: "Identify the ways in which "climate change" can be disproved or proven false."

> At this point, you don't do it in one swell foop.

You misunderstood Gahrie's point.

S\He isn't asking skeptics to identify such ways. S\He's asking proponents to identify things that, if found, would disprove "climate change". If there are no such things, then CC is not a scientific belief.

It's a reasonable question to ask because CC was blamed for more severe hurricanes, less severe hurricanes, and typical hurricanes. It's been blamed for both hotter and colder (in the same place at the same time of year).

That pattern by CC-folk has led some folks to waggishly blame CC for any bad occurrence, from hangnails to dog poop on the front lawn to late homework.; 9/20/13, 5:40 PM
Andy Freeman said...: If you're going to complain about cherry-picking data, it's poor form to present cherry-picked data.

Data from 1980 to present doesn't tell us much about how arctic ice has changed over time and with different CO2 levels. Yes, the data exists, so the fact that you didn't present it....

We know that the earth has had much higher CO2 levels than today. We also know that it has been warmer with lower CO2 levels than today.; 9/20/13, 6:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Given the claims, I suspect we could just as easily justify sending a bill to the developing countries' farmers for their extended growing seasons and the fertilizer we've graciously delivered "by air."

Freeman Dyson suggests the amount of additional carbon is about the thickness of a credit card added to all lengths of all the roots in the world.. (besides being a vocal critic of those that won't get out from behind their computer screens and go do the necessary field work - getting their hands dirty).; 9/20/13, 8:41 PM
Gahrie said...: why don't the doubters produce a model that explains and predicts better than existing ones, but does NOT include the role of man-reintroduced carbon?

Easy. When that big ball of burning gas in the sky throws off more heat, the solar system warms up. When the ball of burning gas throws off less energy, the solar system cools down. The Earth is part of the solar system.; 9/20/13, 9:08 PM
Gahrie said...: That pattern by CC-folk has led some folks to waggishly blame CC for any bad occurrence, from hangnails to dog poop on the front lawn to late homework.

Exactly. All data somehow supports man made climate change. The very term "climate change" is an example of this. Global warming was abandonded as soon as it was clear that the warming had stopped.; 9/20/13, 9:11 PM
Krumhorn said...: JimSpice, the hockey stick is completely fraudulent. A couple of water-starved bristlecones? Lakebed sediment of dubious value? Selectively chosen data sets from the Yarnel?

Do you remember "hide the decline"?

And you dare to cite that charlatan at Penn State as an authority?

There isn't a larger collection of scoundrels than the climate change con artists unless you also consider the Barney Frank/Chris Dodd wing of the Fanny and Freddie housing bubble scamsters.

Libruls are an evil and destructive bunch and they all have agendas that are all about power and control over the rest of us.

-Krumhorn; 9/21/13, 12:16 AM
Jaq said...: jimspice,
I never said that the data was fabricated. I don't believe that, I don't know of any skeptic who does. Your response can be summarized as "Look! Squirrel!"

What no panel or subsequent paper supports is his claim that it is warmer now than at any time in the past thousand years, which was his central claim. The data was misinterpreted, full stop.; 9/21/13, 6:01 AM
Jaq said...: "95% confidence levels. Sure, there's a 5% chance that any is wrong, but what's the chance they ALL are (hint: .95*.95......i^n)."

Have you ever studied higher math? In high school maybe one does simple calculations like the above, but as the level of math raises, on has to examine the assumptions before making a calculation. One assumption you are implicitly making, that is not supportable, is that all of these papers are independent of each other and not repeating the same mistake. And that the confidence values can be taken at face value and no systematic bias appears there either.

As I recall, the confidence that it would be significantly warmer now than in the year 2000 was about 95% too, yet here we are.

Your thinking overlooks systematic risk, same kind of thinking that led us to the financial crisis; what were the odds that that would happen?; 9/21/13, 6:09 AM
Matt Sablan said...: Things like this make it hard to take seriously. Why 1998? Why 1999? Any proper data set, if we're dealing in centuries, needs to go back to AT LEAST 1800 something to be taken seriously.

Any models on what it might've been like, or might be, that takes a brief snippet of now to extrapolate out is not good.; 9/21/13, 7:16 AM