Althouse: Al Franken: "Climate change? It's not real."

April 2, 2015

Al Franken: "Climate change? It's not real."

174 comments:

tim maguire said...: Of course climate change is real, the climate has always changed and it always will. What is not real is claim that we have substantial evidence that human behavior is causing a dangerous increase in temperatures.; 4/2/15, 9:25 AM
damikesc said...: Yeah, nobody denies climate changes (ice ages end for a reason).

What we're saying is that there is precious little evidence that man is causing unusual warming or that the warming is bad or what the "proper" temperature should be.; 4/2/15, 9:26 AM
Gahrie said...: I will start to believe in man made climate change when:

A) They can explain the Medieval Warm Period

B) Explain why the rest of the solar system is warming up

C)They create a model that works

D) Explain why the satellite record shows no warming for the last 15 years.; 4/2/15, 9:27 AM
damikesc said...: Gahrie, thought it was 18 years now.; 4/2/15, 9:29 AM
ron winkleheimer said...: If your computer model can't be used to model current conditions starting from a known previous state and its predictions concerning future states are consistently wrong then perhaps, just perhaps, you might want to investigate why that is and stop hectoring the rest of us about "SCIENCE!".; 4/2/15, 9:31 AM
campy said...: E) When they start living like they believe it.; 4/2/15, 9:32 AM
Tank said...: Gahrie said...

I will start to believe in man made climate change when:

A) They can explain the Medieval Warm Period

B) Explain why the rest of the solar system is warming up

C)They create a model that works

D) Explain why the satellite record shows no warming for the last 15 years.

E) They stop "adjusting" the numbers to fit their theory.; 4/2/15, 9:32 AM
damikesc said...: E) When they start living like they believe it.

Yeah, Insty provided a really solid idea there. I think Progressivism is dangerous and, therefore, will never vote for a Dem for any office ever again.

If I voted for some here and there, then you'd have wonder how serious I am.; 4/2/15, 9:33 AM
ron winkleheimer said...: Perhaps I'm cynical, but I have always agreed with the sentiment that if politicians could devise a method to tax the air you breath they would do so. Carbon credits would appear to be pretty close to doing just that.; 4/2/15, 9:34 AM
jimbino said...: The greatest contributors to climate change are the breeders. They and their progeny will also be the greatest beneficiaries over time of any improvement.

That truth won't keep Obama and other socialists from using a carbon tax or any other measure primarily as a means for transfer of wealth from the child-free to the breeders and their progeny. Similar to Obamacare, which is primarily a tool for wealth transfer from the healthy, single, young, child-free male to women, the sick, the breeders and older folks.; 4/2/15, 9:43 AM
Jaq said...: It's nice to know that jimbino will never require nursing care in his dotage.; 4/2/15, 9:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Gahrie said...

G) Explain how historically much greater CO2 levels didn't you know, feedback and kill all life.

why has CO2 come down from levels that were 5 times today's?; 4/2/15, 9:49 AM
tds said...: so Earth is floating in space in 0°Kelvin. Why are people not afraid that we'll freeze to death?; 4/2/15, 9:49 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Preaching to the choir, at least so far. Wonder how long it will take the usual liberal loons to show up and try to justify the AGC/AGW/AGCC, etc. panic by scientific consensus, etc.; 4/2/15, 9:51 AM
MadisonMan said...: February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000); 4/2/15, 9:54 AM
AllenS said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/2/15, 9:55 AM
Jaq said...: I think a lot of the arguments against AGW seen around conservative blogs are as bad as the arguments for AGW seen around liberal and warmie blogs.

I said 15 years ago that I would believe it when a central prediction of the theory materialized, that is, that the stratosphere began to cool.

There has been no cooling in the stratosphere for 20 years, a little longer than the pause, and no unambiguous evidence of cooling prior to that in the satellite era. The theory says that the troposphere, where we live is "trapping" heat and preventing it from reaching the stratosphere which would logically cool, but that the heat is being trapped somehow in the ocean, and keeping the stratosphere warm at the same time! It's a new kind of double duty heat that can affect two places at once! To me that is the most incredible discovery of climate "science" to date.; 4/2/15, 9:57 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000)

Funny how the warming is always happening somewhere other than where I live.; 4/2/15, 9:59 AM
traditionalguy said...: The USA is no longer a Constitutional commonwealth with a Legislative branch of Government ruling. We have become an absolute monarchy governed by the commander of the police and military as ratified by the UN.

It's the Kenyan Dream.; 4/2/15, 10:02 AM
Jaq said...: February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000)

Which of course means almost nothing. The satellite era began in 1979. In the US, where the temperature record is the best in the world, the '30s were the warmest. In Siberia, which is perennially a "hot spot" showing "warming" in the thermometer record, during the Soviet Era, diesel fuel and heating oil was rationed based on reported temperatures. So if the person reporting temps lowered the temps by a degree or two, they got more fuel, to either sell on the black market, or keep themselves warmer. This was "scientific socialism."

Assuming that the average Soviet comrade living in remotest northern Asia was not a plaster saint, and so succumbed to this temptation, the temperatures at the time would appear cooler than they actually were, producing the very hot spot that we see persistently today.

The evidence for "global warming" is not nothing, but neither is it the kind of overwhelming slam dunk that warmies claim.; 4/2/15, 10:04 AM
Simon said...: I tend to think that the threshold test for taking climate alarmists seriously is whether they are ready to sign an immediate and massive program to cut one third of our entire carbon output in five to seven years: The immediate and complete replacement of coal-fired powerplants by nuclear.

They say that carbon emissions are the problem. They tell us that we must fix this problem immediately or else apocalyptic consequences will ensue. And yet, even though there is a turnkey solution that would allow us to fix our carbon emissions in less than a decade, that solution is anathema to them. Well: You can't have it both ways. You can be for the Gorethodoxy and for a massive program of building nuclear plants, or you can be skeptical of the Gorethodoxy and oppose a massive program of building nuclear plants, but you have to pick one or the other: If it is truly the urgent,civilization-ending problem that you say that it is, the problems with nuclear power pale by comparison.

But they won't do it. And that's why no one takes the climate left seriously: Because they don't believe it. Not really. Revealed preference impeaches their claims to belief. We all know that even if the problem is real, it's invocation is pretext; it can't be a massive, imminent, do-or-die problem and not warrant extraordinary measures that they don't like. It can't just be a massive, imminent, do-or-die problem that warrants only the very ordinary and entrenched measures that the left has favored for years.

So I don't make even the modest demands made of them by Gahrie: I'll start to believe it when they do.; 4/2/15, 10:05 AM
AllenS said...: That clip should have ended after Franken said "Climate change? It's not real."; 4/2/15, 10:05 AM
Jaq said...: Wierdly, I still think we should keep working on reducing CO2, just out of caution, by replacing coal with Natural Gas, as we are doing, which also gets rid of mercury, there are two ounces of mercury in every ton of coal. And to replace coal with nuclear. But something safer and on a smaller scale that what we are doing now. Something that doesn't have to be located on large sources of water.

But to drastically alter our economy by a kind of green dirigisme is suicidal idiocy.; 4/2/15, 10:09 AM
jimbino said...: Tim in Vermont:

It's nice to know that jimbino will never require nursing care in his dotage.

A young man in his 20s who were to forgo Obamacare entirely and somehow escape FICA taxes, investing the savings in the S&P 500 would enter his "dotage" a millionare many times over and have no need for your socialist benefits. Furthermore, if he were to die at 65 or earlier, the many millions would pass on to his heirs, unlike SS and Obamacare "benefits," which would immediately cease.

Yours is a one of the many ad hominem posts that Ann Althouse for some reason will not censor.; 4/2/15, 10:10 AM
Robert Cook said...: "What we're saying is that there is precious little evidence that man is causing unusual warming or that the warming is bad or what the 'proper' temperature should be."

"We?" Are you expert and learned enough in the applicable sciences and scientific literature to be able to make that determination yourself, or are you just aping what others have said?

There is no such thing as "objectively" bad or "proper" temperature...ever. There is temperature that is conducive to certain types of life and societies and temperature that is not conducive to certain types of life and societies.

Whether it will be soon or not soon, eventually the temperatures on earth will not be conducive to human life and societies as we know it today, and possibly not at all.; 4/2/15, 10:17 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Michael LaBossiere, (2012-07-17). 76 Fallacies (pp. 9-10). Kindle Edition:

Ad Hominem ...Translated from Latin to English, “ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”

An ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.

Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim).

Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting).

This type of “argument” has the following form:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A’s claim is false.

The reason why an ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).; 4/2/15, 10:20 AM
Ann Althouse said...: If I spent my time weeding out logical fallacies in the comments, I wouldn't have time to write the posts that grow them.; 4/2/15, 10:22 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Whether it will be soon or not soon, eventually the temperatures on earth will not be conducive to human life and societies as we know it today, and possibly not at all.

Which may be a bit misleading since not all time frames have equal importance to us as a species. There is a big difference to us, as a species, whether the danger is within the next 100 years, or within the next 10 million years. If it is 10 million years, then the case for panicking now is rather unconvincing. And, there is little reason to change how we do things.; 4/2/15, 10:23 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Besides, if Ann could weed out all of the logical fallacies here, we would have much less fun doing so ourselves.; 4/2/15, 10:24 AM
Tank said...: jimbino's use of ad hominem triggered the exact same response in me as Althouse, but she got there first (and way better LOL).; 4/2/15, 10:26 AM
Jaq said...: So jimbino, who are you going to pay with your millions without younger people around to do the nursing? You know, the spawn of breeders?

I never made the first hint about who should pay for what. First we have to have somebody to pay, then we can argue about how.; 4/2/15, 10:29 AM
Skipper said...: On behalf of all Minnesotans (well, maybe not all), I apologize.; 4/2/15, 10:31 AM
cubanbob said...: tim in vermont said...
It's nice to know that jimbino will never require nursing care in his dotage.

4/2/15, 9:47 AM"

Nevermind that. Its interesting in a sad sort of way that he believes his genes aren't worth passing on.; 4/2/15, 10:32 AM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/2/15, 10:32 AM
Delayna said...: "February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000)"

This is perfectly reasonable--given that temps went up after Feb 1985 for 10-12 years, then leveled off. The real question is, how can you be *sure* that when the temps start moving again, that they will go up?

If you look at some of the charts at wattsupwiththat (ice cores, etc.) it's hard not to conclude that the Holocene was much warmer 8,000 years ago and, with ups and downs along the way, has become steadily colder during the entire current interglacial. Which will someday end.

Colder, BTW, is not good for most species--not just humans.; 4/2/15, 10:33 AM
ron winkleheimer said...: "February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000)"

Why should that be century be declared "normal?" Why not 1915-2015 or 1100-1200? Why just a century? A century is less than a blink of the eye geologically.

"Whether it will be soon or not soon, eventually the temperatures on earth will not be conducive to human life and societies as we know it today, and possibly not at all."

A women attending an astronomy lecture, hearing that the Sun would start to expand in several billion years, destroying all life on earth, began to cry hysterically. The lecturer rushed to the woman and said, "madam, surely you can't be this upset about an event that is going to take place billions of years in the future?" "Billions?" she said. "Thank God, I thought you said millions!"; 4/2/15, 10:35 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Skipper said...

On behalf of all Minnesotans (well, maybe not all), I apologize.

Sorry, it doesn't count unless you take a selfie holding an apology sign; 4/2/15, 10:35 AM
MadisonMan said...: Funny how the warming is always happening somewhere other than where I live.

So you don't live on the West Coast.

NOAA used to have easily-accessible imagery showing monthly stats. But they've redesigned things to improve them.; 4/2/15, 10:36 AM
Fernandinande said...: Is Al Franken real?

Ralph Hyatt said...
Perhaps I'm cynical, but I have always agreed with the sentiment that if politicians could devise a method to tax the air you breath they would do so.

Moving air is interstate commerce, so you should pay for it after it's been regulated.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet; 4/2/15, 10:37 AM
Levi Starks said...: Prior to the industrial revolution, mother earth was positively anorexic in terms of atmospheric CO2.
We're still quite a ways from a full recovery, but increased carbon in the atmosphere is triggering a great deal of additional plant growth worldwide.; 4/2/15, 10:39 AM
jimbino said...: We are a nation led by STEM- and economics- illiterates, in SCOTUS, POTUS and COTUS. At least POTUS and COTUS aren't populated exclusively by Roman Catholics and Jews.

Though most all our presidents have been fully untrained in STEM (as is the entire SCOTUS bench outside of Breyer), there are some "scientists" in COTUS, especially if we consider those trained in medicine, like Rand Paul, to be STEM-trained, though in Francis Collins, appointed director of NIH by Obama (ignorant of STEM), we have a guy who pushes "theistic evolution."

Of course, "climate change" is as good a pretext for socialist wealth-transfer as is Obamacare's "eliminate the uninsured."; 4/2/15, 10:39 AM
Jaq said...: Just another Minnesotan for Global Warming; 4/2/15, 10:40 AM
MadisonMan said...: Why should that be century be declared "normal?" Why not 1915-2015 or 1100-1200? Why just a century? A century is less than a blink of the eye geologically.

Normal for Meteorology is typically defined as 30 years, so normals change every 10 years. Thirty years is (was?) chosen because that's a timeframe for decision-making.

When you are talking about a longer record, the century was chosen to show a longer-term trend. If Climate Normals are always warming, then the signal of increasing warmth as measured by an anomaly is masked. I don't think that a below-normal month has occurred since 1985 as measured against the regular climate normals, but I'm not sure.

A century matches human life-spans too. Normals over geologic time mean nothing to a human.; 4/2/15, 10:41 AM
MadisonMan said...: (below-normal month *globally*, that is); 4/2/15, 10:41 AM
ken in tx said...: I Was first exposed to the concept of 'logical fallacies' and their various forms in Air Command and Staff College, a mid-level officer course. It should be taught in high school.; 4/2/15, 10:48 AM
Jaq said...: STEM majors are the bulwark against the rush to judgement on global warming, that much is certain.

Steve McIntyre, Canadian math prize winner and retired mining engineer noticed, for example, that he was very familiar with the mathematical techniques that Michael Mann used to create the infamous "Hockey Stick." He quickly noticed, not only that the math didn't hold up, but that the scientists who produced it hid data and inconvenient results, which were of course inevitable from the fact that his technique is next to worthless.

That's just one.

I remember my fist day of class in College in Physics 115, when the prof said "Don't believe a word I say, make me prove everything to you." I am sure I am not the only person with STEM training who heard such a speech. That's why we are so problematic and considered anti-intellectual, which apparently means that a person thinks for themselves.; 4/2/15, 10:48 AM
Anonymous said...: Levi Starks said...
Prior to the industrial revolution, mother earth was positively anorexic in terms of atmospheric CO2.

On a human scale, your are correct, but if you start your clock at the last ice age and move back over every bit of the past 500 million years of Earth, the CO2 level has always been higher and at some points 10-15 times higher than the Human epoch.; 4/2/15, 10:51 AM
Gabriel said...: While climate science can certainly be wrong--even gravity can be wrong, and has been--it is a lie to call it a hoax.

The climate "skeptic" movement does virtually no science. (There are exceptions, like Judith Curry.) What they do, is cite papers written by climate scientists.

If climate science were a hoax, these papers would not be published, and the "skeptics" would have nothing to cite.; 4/2/15, 10:52 AM
Robert Cook said...: "There is a big difference to us, as a species, whether the danger is within the next 100 years, or within the next 10 million years. If it is 10 million years, then the case for panicking now is rather unconvincing. And, there is little reason to change how we do things."

Ah, but there is the crux of the matter. There are a preponderance of those in the scientific community who say the danger is within the next 100 years. How can we be so certain they are wrong?; 4/2/15, 10:54 AM
n.n said...: It's real and it's spectacular. However, anthropogenic climate change, the models are not in consensus.

To paraphrase Billy Joel:

We didn't start the chaos. It was always changing. Since the world's been breathing. We didn't start the chaos...; 4/2/15, 10:54 AM
jimbino said...: Thanks for the definition of argumentum ad hominem, a term I didn't use. I said ad hominem posts, which is a more general term that need not have anything to do with formal logic. Cicero was a master of it along the lines of: "I won't contend here that Cataline is the sleasiest scoundrel ever to set foot in Rome."

A suggestion to Ann: seeing you don't have time to check the ad hominem attacks or the lousy logic or grammar, why don't you put up a button we who care about the flow of the actual argument can click on to kill such posts with enough votes?; 4/2/15, 10:55 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Besides, if Ann could weed out all of the logical fallacies here, we would have much less fun doing so ourselves."

Heh. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on in the comments.; 4/2/15, 10:57 AM
Jaq said...: Funny how MadisonMan cherry picked the exact lowest temperature date in the satellite era to do his comparison.

Let me cherry pick the dates and I will have us headed for an ice age. I won't do it, but you can look at the graph yourself and see a few plausible cherries to pick if you wanted to "prove" it was cooling.

Since we are talking about logical fallacies, why not look into the "fallacy of the consequent." If A then B, B, therefore A.

Which is made even weaker by cherry picking your B.; 4/2/15, 10:57 AM
n.n said...: Gabriel:

Climate science is mostly if not exclusively philosophy (e.g. inference, assumptions, speculation), models (i.e. hypotheses), and consensus (i.e. political or social agreement).; 4/2/15, 10:58 AM
CatherineM said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/2/15, 11:01 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: So you don't live on the West Coast.

I don't. But then again, I didn't know that this was a requirement in order to feel the ravages of climate change.; 4/2/15, 11:02 AM
Jaq said...: why don't you put up a button we who care about the flow of the actual argument can click on to kill such posts with enough votes?

Never happy to just have the opportunity to respond, your fetish for authority compels you to demand censorship. Ha ha ha!

You could always get your own blog jimbino. I am sure it will be swarmed with readers breathlessly awaiting your next monomaniacal post on the evils of "breeders" and "lousy grammar."

You still haven't answered where the nurses will come from, or the doctors for that matter.

Maybe Althouse should censor straw man arguments?; 4/2/15, 11:02 AM
MadisonMan said...: Funny how MadisonMan cherry picked the exact lowest temperature date in the satellite era to do his comparison.

What? I reported on the last global month below normal.

Anyway -- exclude that month from your time series. Exclude 1998. What kind of trend do you see?

(I do appreciate the use of the word cherry-picked when showing a plot about trees...all the furniture in my house is cherry).; 4/2/15, 11:08 AM
Jaq said...: US Temperature History starting in 1900, when we were just coming out of the Little Ice Age, if you will remember.; 4/2/15, 11:10 AM
jimbino said...: Tim in Vermont:

You still haven't answered where the nurses will come from, or the doctors for that matter.

The simplest answer is that, here in Brazil, where I am now, in Argentina, where I will be for cheap and great dental care next month, and throughout Mexico, there are millions of folks willing and able to provide care, whether here or in less interesting places like Austin, TX.

You need to get out more.; 4/2/15, 11:11 AM
JAORE said...: I am not an air quality or climate modeler, but I worked with them for years. Models can be very, very useful. But they tend to be less useful if the activity being modeled is complex, especially if the variables interact, some in unknown ways. Models become very less useful if they don't track the real world very well. They become suspicious if the inputs are unknown or can not be replicated.

I am not convinced the science is settled. I am convinced that phrase is the equivalent of "Shut up".; 4/2/15, 11:12 AM
Jaq said...: The trend I see is flat for 20 years or so. Something that as recently as five years ago, climate "scientists" were telling us was highly improbable.

The trend I see in the US, where thermometer coverage has been the best in the world, and considering that we were just coming out of a period of cooling that lasted centuries, is not worrisome.; 4/2/15, 11:13 AM
Jaq said...: So basically you want Europeans to commit ethnic suicide so other ethnicities can have the country.

I just wanted to hear you say it. It was obvious all along.; 4/2/15, 11:15 AM
MadisonMan said...: Tim, Describe that plot to me. I see multi-decadal oscillations. The coldest months occurred before 1930. Filtered values now are larger than they have been.

A more interesting plot would be for Alaska. Let me look around.; 4/2/15, 11:17 AM
MadisonMan said...: Wow, it's like you read my mind!; 4/2/15, 11:17 AM
jimbino said...: Tim in Vermont:

We Hispanics have almost taken back Texas. It will take us longer to take over Vermont, since we don't much like the chill in weather or people there, ditto your ingrained socialism.

Besides getting out more, you need to consider what kind of folks will be taking care of you in your impending dotage.; 4/2/15, 11:19 AM
Todd said...: Ignorance is Bliss said... [hush][hide comment]
Skipper said...

On behalf of all Minnesotans (well, maybe not all), I apologize.

Sorry, it doesn't count unless you take a selfie holding an apology sign

4/2/15, 10:35 AM

Are you saying that it does not have to be a hashtag apology sign to count or was the hashtag implied?; 4/2/15, 11:20 AM
MadisonMan said...: Oh, you were describing my link, not yours.

Time to prep for telecons!; 4/2/15, 11:21 AM
Todd said...: Gabriel said...
While climate science can certainly be wrong--even gravity can be wrong, and has been--it is a lie to call it a hoax.

The climate "skeptic" movement does virtually no science. (There are exceptions, like Judith Curry.) What they do, is cite papers written by climate scientists.

If climate science were a hoax, these papers would not be published, and the "skeptics" would have nothing to cite.

4/2/15, 10:52 AM

That right there is some FUNNY stuff! Have you not read anything on how hard it was/is to get contrary climate papers published? The ACTIVE efforts to quash contrary views and papers? That was part of the scandal, all the anti-science in climate science.

If the pro-climate papers were so rock-solid, why is it so easy to use them to counter argue their claims?; 4/2/15, 11:24 AM
Jaq said...: We Hispanics have almost taken back Texas. It will take us longer to take over Vermont, since we don't much like the chill in weather or people there, ditto your ingrained socialism.

LOL. Tale as old as time. "Why don't you guys all die already." I am sure that the Mexican peasants flooding into the US are all libertarians and they will usher in an Objectivist paradise on Earth. That's why they vote so heavily Democrat.

You are funny jimbino. Utterly transparent, but funny.; 4/2/15, 11:25 AM
jimbino said...: Tim in Vermont:

That's why they vote so heavily Democrat.

You'll eat those words once Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio is your leader.; 4/2/15, 11:28 AM
ron winkleheimer said...: "A century matches human life-spans too. Normals over geologic time mean nothing to a human."

So basically its arbitrary.

Because without knowing what is normal over geological periods we cannot know if the current trend is within normal variations. And, in fact if we do look at norms over geological time spans (as best as we can determine them) we find that variations we currently see are within those norms.

Therefore, claims that CO2 emissions are contributing to global warming and that such warming will lead to catastrophic results must rely on computer models that are, in fact, unreliable when it comes to predicting actual climate changes.; 4/2/15, 11:29 AM
Gabriel said...: @ n. n.Climate science is mostly if not exclusively philosophy (e.g. inference, assumptions, speculation), models (i.e. hypotheses), and consensus (i.e. political or social agreement).

It's not okay to lie. I know you don't agree with their conclusions, or with the policies some people try to justify by their conclusions, but that does not make it morally okay for you to lie about what they do.

Remember the BEST project that agreed with the "consensus" and was immediatley disowned by all the "skeptics" that had been clamoring for it? Yes, you do.

It is not okay for you to lie.

The Stefan-Boltzman law is enough to see why changing the Earth's absorption of solar energy implies a rise in the Earth's average temperature--of course that's not enough to explain how quickly the warming will happen or if there are secondary effects that could offset it.; 4/2/15, 11:30 AM
Gabriel said...: Have you not read anything on how hard it was/is to get contrary climate papers published? The ACTIVE efforts to quash contrary views and papers? That was part of the scandal, all the anti-science in climate science.

The papers that the "skeptics" are citing are not published by contrarians and are not controversial within the climate science community. No one tries to suppress them.

Exhibit A: Satellite trends, which the "skeptics" love to go on about. No one is trying to "suppress" them. They're publishing them and updating them regularly.

There are thousands of people working on this and you've heard of maybe three.; 4/2/15, 11:34 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: You still haven't answered where the nurses will come from

I, for one, welcome our future Japanese, robot-making overlords. Make mine the petite female model with life-like hair and beautiful smile. Just make sure she can speak English and make a good sandwich.

I haven't saved diligently in my 401k all these years just to settle for the low-optioned model.; 4/2/15, 11:34 AM
Gabriel said...: @Ralph Hyatt:Because without knowing what is normal over geological periods we cannot know if the current trend is within normal variations. And, in fact if we do look at norms over geological time spans (as best as we can determine them) we find that variations we currently see are within those norms.

Since people can get lung cancer without smoking, it must be harmless to smoke. That's your argument.

A lifelong smoker has about an 80%chance of not getting lung cancer.; 4/2/15, 11:35 AM
sparrow said...: Gabriel
You're out of date. The Stefan-Boltzman law has been misapplied to climate models, hence the models diverge from reality. Like you said it's not good to lie. Climate modeling is the most dishonest hyperpoliticized Science out there. This would never fly in cancer research at least not for long.; 4/2/15, 11:39 AM
Gabriel said...: I would really encourage people to read the article I linked to about BEST.

Given project leader Muller's well-publicised concerns regarding of the quality of climate change research, other critics anticipated that the Berkeley Earth study would be a vindication of their stance. For example when the study team was announced, blogger Anthony Watts, who popularized several of the issues addressed by the Berkeley Earth group study, stated

"I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. The method isn't the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU. That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we’ve seen yet."

When the initial results were released, and found to support the existing consensus, the study was widely decried by deniers. Watts spoke to the New York Times, which wrote: "Mr. Watts ... contended that the study's methodology was flawed because it examined data over a 60-year period instead of the 30-year-one that was the basis for his research and some other peer-reviewed studies. He also noted that the report had not yet been peer-reviewed and cited spelling errors as proof of sloppiness."[19] Steven Mosher, a co-author of a book critical of climate scientists, also disapproved saying that the study still lacked transparency. He said: "I'm not happy until the code is released and released in a language that people can use freely." (The code and dataset are available from the Berkeley Earth Dataset web page.) Stephen McIntyre, editor of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data, said that "the team deserves credit for going back to the primary data and doing the work" and even though he had not had an opportunity to read the papers in detail, he questioned the analyses of urban heating and weather station quality.

By contrast, the study was well received by Muller's peers in climate science research. James Hansen, a leading climate scientist and head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies commented that he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue. He said "It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming." Phil Jones the director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, said: "I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal." Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, commented that "...they get the same result that everyone else has gotten," and "that said, I think it's at least useful to see that even a critic like Muller, when he takes an honest look, finds that climate science is robust." Peter Thorne, from the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: "This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways." A scientist writing at RealClimate.org noted that it was unsurprising that Berkeley Earth's results matched previous results so well. "Any of various simple statistical analyses of the freely available data ...show... that it was very very unlikely that the results would change," they wrote.; 4/2/15, 11:40 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Gabriel,
Do you remember back in the 70's when many scientists were predicting there would be an ice age by now?; 4/2/15, 11:43 AM
Gabriel said...: @sparrow:You're out of date. The Stefan-Boltzman law has been misapplied to climate models, hence the models diverge from reality.

I have a Ph. D. in physics. Do explain in what way it was "misapplied" and how it is in "the models", I will be able to understaand it.

Contrary to what "skeptics" have been repeating for years, the code for these models is available. I'll wait patiently for you to show the me the relevant piece of code that incorporates the law and you can show me the error.

The Stefan-Boltzman law is completely independent of any models. It simply tells you what will happen given enough time. That warming might take longer than the age of the universe to show up, the SB law can't say. All it does is imply from basic thermodynamics that more absorption eventually implies higher temperature.; 4/2/15, 11:45 AM
Rusty said...: MadisonMan said...
February 1985 was the last month that, globally, was below normal (Normal defined as 1901-2000)

How would they know that, globally? Since prior to WW2 there were vast tracts of this planet that had now way of monitoring local temperature.; 4/2/15, 11:49 AM
Gabriel said...: @exhelodrv1:Do you remember back in the 70's when many scientists were predicting there would be an ice age by now?

I remember oat bran and saturated fats and the "Population Bomb" too. What you are talking about is what journalists chose to hype in the 70s. Other scientists, to whom those jounralists did not listen, said other things.

The "skeptic" movement conveniently fails to distinguish between journalists, activists, politicians, and scientists, and lumps then all in as "climate scientists" are saying this or that.

Now there are a lot of activists and politicians who'd like you to think they are scientists, and lots of activist scientists, I can't deny that.; 4/2/15, 11:50 AM
Gabriel said...: @Rusty:How would they know that, globally? Since prior to WW2 there were vast tracts of this planet that had now way of monitoring local temperature.

Sampling. Same way polling works. Polls aren't 100% right either, but they are not 100% wrong.; 4/2/15, 11:51 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: "What you are talking about is what journalists chose to hype in the 70s."

And what you are talking about is what "journalists" choose to hype in the 2010s.; 4/2/15, 11:55 AM
Gabriel said...: @Rusty: Even if every square meter of surface had a theremmoter on it, there would still be "skeptics" who would say that's not good enough, either because you're not sampling often enough, or because there's still gaps in the coverage.

If we measure no temperatures anywhere, we know nothing. If we could measure all temperature everywhere continuously, we would know everything. But falling short of knowing everything is not knowing nothing.

In everyday life we make decisions on limited information all the time. This is common sense, but "skeptics" throw it out the window and say absolute certainty is the only thing they'll accept.

The fact that there are areas without temperature monitoring does not mean we know "nothing" about the temperature. It means we know something less well than we would like, which is where we always are.; 4/2/15, 11:56 AM
Gabriel said...: @exhelodrvr:And what you are talking about is what "journalists" choose to hype in the 2010s.

Looks like you're getting it.

The hype is not the fault of the scientists in general, though a few are participating. Eventually the journalists will go on to something else.; 4/2/15, 11:58 AM
MadisonMan said...: So basically its arbitrary.

As arbitrary as your life span, I guess. Why don't we live for centuries?

Maintaining that a temperature variation is within Geologic Norms and therefore nothing to see here-ish ignores the maybe important fact that Homo sapiens has not been around for the entirety of Geologic time.

Do you remember back in the 70's when many scientists were predicting there would be an ice age by now?

Yes, except it was not many and it was a source of great debate.; 4/2/15, 11:58 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: " . . . but "skeptics" throw it out the window and say absolute certainty is the only thing they'll accept."
Oh, bullshit. It is the AGW hysterics who claim they have absolute proof.; 4/2/15, 11:58 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "Yes, except it was not many and it was a source of great debate."
Climatologists were nearly unanimous in pushing the "new ice age" theory in the 70s.; 4/2/15, 12:01 PM
Bilwick said...: I know approximately as much about science as "garage mahal," say, knows about economics and logic. But a key thing to keep in mind is that the leading pushers of the climate change theory are members of the "liberal" Hive (and by "liberal" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State-fellator"). That is, people whose essential politico-economic credo is legalized looting; and whose attitude toward truth is "There is no Truth but the Hive's Truth." These are people I should trust about anything?; 4/2/15, 12:04 PM
Gabriel said...: @Terry:Climatologists were nearly unanimous in pushing the "new ice age" theory in the 70s

Does it bother you that the "skeptics" lie to you? Or do you figure that since everyone lies it's ok coming from your team?

This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature, i.e., a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.; 4/2/15, 12:06 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Dear God, Gabriel. Wikipedia?
You are not a serious person.
And what makes you think my source for my claim was climate skeptics?; 4/2/15, 12:10 PM
Gabriel said...: @William Chadwick: people whose essential politico-economic credo is legalized looting; and whose attitude toward truth is "There is no Truth but the Hive's Truth." These are people I should trust about anything?

If they tell you the sun rises in the east, you'll act as though it's false?

This is just ad hominem. True things are true regardless of who says them.

And the big "skeptic names", like Steven Hayward, accept that global warming is real and that humans are likely responsible. He rarely puts it that clearly, but he advised Mitt Romney to say it.

the earth has clearly warmed since the end of the “Little Ice Age” roughly 200 years ago, by a little less than 1 degree Celsius. I accept the opinion of the large number of scientists who conclude that human activity has helped cause the warming we’ve experienced so far. The question for scientists is how much further warming might occur, and for policy makers the question is what should be done about it. Both scientists and the environmental community have done a poor job on both questions...

too many of the visible signs of a warmer world, such as retreating arctic glaciers, shrinking arctic sea ice mass, and permafrost melting earlier in the spring, are apparent to deny that warming has taken place. This view has been affirmed by no less a certified non-RINO than Sarah Palin.
Can these changes be attributed to natural climatic changes, such as long-wave ocean current and temperature oscillations, solar activity, and the end of a long-wave climate cycle that gave us the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? Yes, but the research on these potential explanations is incomplete, often purposely so (that is, the mainstream climate science community suppresses or ignores inquiries into these factors), to be sure. Moreover, the warming effect of changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can be demonstrated in a laboratory, though that is just the beginning of the matter. The effect of current and projected levels of greenhouse gases alone is quite modest–a doubling of carbon dioxide would give you about a 1.1 degree rise in temperature. That’s about it. Not much to write home about. Most of the so-called climate “skeptics,” such as Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels, agree with this much of the so-called “consensus.”; 4/2/15, 12:10 PM
Gabriel said...: @Terry:And what makes you think my source for my claim was climate skeptics?

Oh, was it your own survey of the peer-reviewed climate literature in the 1970s? Did you use Scitation? Can you post your search results broken down by pro-cooling and anti-cooling?

The Wikipedia article has sources. Can you impeach them?; 4/2/15, 12:12 PM
Jaq said...: Does it bother you that the "skeptics" lie to you? Or do you figure that since everyone lies it's ok coming from your team?

Well, I am sure that Wikipedia is an unbiased arbiter of Truth with a capital 'T.' Just not sure which kind of truth.

If you get all of your facts from sites edited by lefty activists, it is little wonder that you have such a small understanding of the facts.; 4/2/15, 12:14 PM
Gabriel said...: @Terry: The survey of the literature that is used as a source by the Wikipedia article is
here.

Can you explain where it is wrong or incomplete? Or are you not a serious person?; 4/2/15, 12:15 PM
SteveR said...: Solar cycles are the answer folks; 4/2/15, 12:15 PM
Anonymous said...: There are a preponderance of those in the scientific community who say the danger is within the next 100 years. How can we be so certain they are wrong?

Because they've made models and predictions that are supposed to be happening right now. And they were wrong.

In other words, we can be certain they are wrong because they've been wrong and continue to be wrong.; 4/2/15, 12:16 PM
Gabriel said...: @tim in Vermont: Same goes for you, ad hominem boy.

Can you give the results of your own survey, or explain why the one I linked to is incomplete and how that affects the results?; 4/2/15, 12:16 PM
Gabriel said...: @eric:In other words, we can be certain they are wrong because they've been wrong and continue to be wrong.

They are not wrong about everything. That's the problem. Ask Steven Hayward.

If the only standard of rightness is never to be wrong, then nobody can be right, because nobody is 100% right.

Again, it's the "skeptic" view that less than aboslute certainty is worthless.; 4/2/15, 12:19 PM
Jaq said...: Gabriel, for a "PhD in Physics" you sure depend a lot on Wikipedia for your sources.

Why do you think the stratosphere is not cooling this past 20 years? How is the heat getting to it if it is trapped in the oceans, as has been widely claimed?

How is the same energy heating two places?; 4/2/15, 12:19 PM
Robert Cook said...: Eric,

That's not a sufficient basis to dismiss them out of hand. Do we assume meteorologists are making shit up because their predictions are sometimes wrong?; 4/2/15, 12:20 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Did you bother to read your source, Gabriel?
"By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly
understood."

Jesus.; 4/2/15, 12:22 PM
John Scott said...: We had some of my daughter's friends and their parents over for dinner awhile back and one of the dads decides to go on about global warming. That if you took an average of all the weather models the earth is going warm X amount of degrees by Y many years. I'm a hang glider pilot; before flying I look at at least 4 different weather models to see what kind of day it's going to be. Rarely do the models agree with one anotther and taking an average won't predict the day.

One model has a tendency to predict a stronger lapse rate (the rate of temp cooling as altitude increases) than the actual conditions. Another one has a tendency to undercall the lapse rate. A third model always calls for stronger winds than what actually happens. One model is great at predicting inversion layers; the others aren't. Sometimes the models can't a agree on the wind direction. Here is Southern California, because of our relatively cold ocean temps, the difference between a SE wind vs a SW wind can mean a difference of 30 degree air temps. It's either going to be 70 degrees or 100. It's no going to be 85.; 4/2/15, 12:24 PM
JZ said...: Everything that Al Franken said was a lie. Not in the sense that it was false, but in the sense that he didn't believe it.; 4/2/15, 12:24 PM
Jaq said...: their predictions are sometimes wrong?

Well, weather forecasts do meet a standard that climate models do not, in that they are right often enough to be useful.; 4/2/15, 12:26 PM
retired said...: Second "funniest" thing Franken did was put "respect" in a sentence describing the intern abusing aduterous Letterman.; 4/2/15, 12:31 PM
Gabriel said...: @tim in vermont:Gabriel, for a "PhD in Physics" you sure depend a lot on Wikipedia for your sources.

Why I suppose I could put a few hundred hours into learning how to build and run some climate models you would ignore, doing some original research and writing some papers you would ignore, because someone is wrong on the internet.

Or I could cite other things NOT collected by Wikipedia--which I have, and you have ignored.

Go tell Steven Hayward he's wrong about the climate.

You're already ignoring what the qualified Ph Ds have to say, it doesn't make much difference that you ignore me, who has the sense to know he's not more qualified to talk about climate than someone who studies it for a living.; 4/2/15, 12:32 PM
Anonymous said...: That's not a sufficient basis to dismiss them out of hand. Do we assume meteorologists are making shit up because their predictions are sometimes wrong?

Meteorologists are people. Sometimes people are right, sometimes people are wrong.

But if you build a model that is supposed to predict the future, and the future comes and the model was wrong, then you have no reason to trust that model.

If the only standard of rightness is never to be wrong, then nobody can be right, because nobody is 100% right.

True. But if you build a model to predict the future and that model is shown to be wrong, then you've got a lot of work to do in order to come back and show us how you can be right.

Imagine a model that predicted super bowl winners and it's wrong, repeatedly.

Why in God's name would you make any bets on future super bowls based off of future models created by the same people?

First build me a model that accurately predicts the future. Then do it a few more times. Then you'll have earned some trust and we can listen to you and your models.

But if you're building models that are wrong?

I don't want excuses for why you're wrong. I can build a wrong model tomorrow.

Science is supposed to be helpful because it makes predictions. Accurate predictions. If you do X then Y.

If your predictions are wrong, then you need to go back and recheck your science.; 4/2/15, 12:33 PM
Gabriel said...: @tim in vermont:Well, weather forecasts do meet a standard that climate models do not, in that they are right often enough to be useful.

About 75% of the time. Assuming tomorrow's weather to be identical to today's is right about 45% of the time.

Of course it's apples and oranges--economic models don't predict your bank balance either, and they are not intended to.; 4/2/15, 12:35 PM
Robert Cook said...: Tim,

Climate models cannot predict day to day conditions, so to assert that "weather forecasts do meet a standard that climate models do not, in that they are right often enough to be useful" is meaningless, a non-sequitur.; 4/2/15, 12:35 PM
Jaq said...: Terry, I will make you a bet that if you change Wikipedia to include your correct observation, it will be edited back within minutes. Observations like yours are not "helpful to the cause."

Most of the criticism of skeptical climate science, like Richard Lindzen's, for example, are based on their being "unhelpful" not on their being false.

For instance, even the IPCC recognizes that they basically make up the values for clouds and that they are not based on physics. Climate scientists also agree that a 1% variation in cloud cover has the same effect as the raw doubling of CO2.

But don't expect Gabriel to address this issue honestly.

Dr Soon just recently published a paper showing that cloud cover in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres defied the climate models. He used publicly available data and published his methods to show this. Was his paper attacked on the math or the science? No. An "ad hominem" attack was orchestrated in the media.

Of course the global temperature doesn't seem to follow the models any better than the clouds do.

Sorry, there are too many problems with the science still. Politically charged rhetoric and appeals to authority are not going to fix them.; 4/2/15, 12:35 PM
Gabriel said...: @eric:Imagine a model that predicted super bowl winners and it's wrong, repeatedly.

What if it always predicted the two teams correctly, but got the winner wrong? Would you be unable to win any sports bets with that model? Would it be just as good as no model at all? Really?

You work with incomplete, wrong models of everything all the time, and somehow you get through life and get stuff done.; 4/2/15, 12:37 PM
Jaq said...: How's about this Robert, instead of asking me to prove a negative, why don't you bring me the climate model that has gotten the past 20 years right?

And since they seem to disagree so widely, why don't you explain to me which of them uses correct physics?; 4/2/15, 12:37 PM
MadisonMan said...: Climatologists were nearly unanimous in pushing the "new ice age" theory in the 70s.

I'm curious how you know this.; 4/2/15, 12:38 PM
Todd said...: Gabriel said...

The "skeptic" movement conveniently fails to distinguish between journalists, activists, politicians, and scientists, and lumps then all in as "climate scientists" are saying this or that.

4/2/15, 11:50 AM

In part because they all were pushing the same flawed "consensus" science. Again, don't you remember all of the Manning emails that were finally released showing the efforts to crush decent? It was NOT science then and much of it still is not today. The issue is not climate it is man affected climate and "shut up" is not a rebuttal to critics but that is what the response was/is to critics since this all started.; 4/2/15, 12:39 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I am a climate change agnostic. The AGW hysterics have no idea how poor the predictive power of their models are, or how the politics of enforced scarcity will work. I'll bet it will result in the the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,though.
Here is a fascinating overview of climate science itself, from its inception through about 2006, written by a physicist who is a believer in AGW:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm; 4/2/15, 12:39 PM
damikesc said...: Why should that be century be declared "normal?" Why not 1915-2015 or 1100-1200? Why just a century? A century is less than a blink of the eye geologically.

Hell, we've never had a below normal quarter in terms of unemployment (normal being 1932-1936).

This is a great game to play, no?

If climate science were a hoax, these papers would not be published, and the "skeptics" would have nothing to cite.

Yes. Because eugenics and phrenology didn't have any "scientific legitimacy" in their day, either.

Scientists can be quite enamored with non-scientific theories.

A lifelong smoker has about an 80%chance of not getting lung cancer.

Which is why you can safely ignore anybody who claims smoking "causes" cancer when it is simply a contributing factor.

Doubly so anybody whining about second-hand smoke.

Ask Steven Hayward.

...why should we? Recommending a Republican cowtow to a media that hates him?

Yeah, great plan.

I'll note Romney didn't win.

Again, it's the "skeptic" view that less than aboslute certainty is worthless.

Nothing that the models climate science is based upon largely are terrible and inaccurate and that "scientists" have a nice history of "adjusting" temperatures (always upwards, oddly enough) is not a demand for absolute certainty.

It's a request that somebody CREDIBLE try something because the monkeys throwing shit on a wall now have failed.; 4/2/15, 12:41 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: How many AGW hysterics have said that it is certain that climate change is happening and it is the result of human activity?
Well, it is not certain that it is happening, and it is not certain that if it is happening, it is the result of human activity. Police your own house, Gabriel. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.; 4/2/15, 12:41 PM
Gabriel said...: @tim in vermont:For instance, even the IPCC recognizes that they basically make up the values for clouds and that they are not based on physics. Climate scientists also agree that a 1% variation in cloud cover has the same effect as the raw doubling of CO2.

Both of these acknowledged admissions testify to the fundamental honesty of the enterprise. Theywould concela this if it were a "hoax".

He used publicly available data and published his methods to show this. Was his paper attacked on the math or the science?

So you acknowledge that his paper passed peer review and was published, not supressed.

An "ad hominem" attack was orchestrated in the media.

"Media" <> "scientific community".

Still waiting for your survey of the climate literature from the 70s.; 4/2/15, 12:42 PM
Gabriel said...: @Terry:Well, it is not certain that it is happening, and it is not certain that if it is happening, it is the result of human activity.

Steven Hayward says you're wrong. So do the "skeptics" in the BEST project. I linked to both above.

Which everyone just keeps ignoring. The "skeptics" demanded their audit, and got it, and now pretend it never happened.; 4/2/15, 12:44 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: You got it, damiksec. When someone claims that we've broken a weather record that goes back to 1850, the scientific response is not "my God we've got to impose a carbon tax!", but "Why did you put a lower limit at 1850?"; 4/2/15, 12:44 PM
Gabriel said...: @eric:that "scientists" have a nice history of "adjusting" temperatures (always upwards, oddly enough) is not a demand for absolute certainty.

You keep ignoring that climate audit the "skeptics" demanded and got.

You keep right on pretending that never happened.; 4/2/15, 12:45 PM
robother said...: Jimbino uses an expression of gay contempt for straight women I haven't heard anyone use since the 80s ("breeders"), and then appeals to Ann to delete posts he deems ad hominem. (Ah, to be young and shameless again.)

Wonder what happens to the rate of return on his invested savings that he assumes in a negative population growth economy? Take a look at ROI yields in the Eurozone over the last 10 years for a clue.
If you eliminate these damn "breeders" and all their progeny, where does the return on equity or repayment of P and I on your bonds come from?; 4/2/15, 12:48 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I have no idea who this Hayward person is. By your weird logic, you guess you need to respond to every bizarre claim made by Al Gore.
Or is your position that every claim made by the AGW hysterics is true, and every claim made by climate skeptics is false?
You are the one predicting the future will climate will be very different than present and past climate, it is up to you to prove your are right, not up to me (or climate skeptics) to prove that you are wrong.; 4/2/15, 12:48 PM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Gabriel uses he term "skeptic" like a pejorative, when what we need is more people who approach ALL scientific reports with a skeptical mindset. You want to use a position of authority as a cudgel and at the same time tar those who are not convinced of AGW with the brush of anti-science skepticism. My contention is that without skepticism you don't have science, you have consensus, a meaningless oligarchy where only approved opinions matter to the elite.

Got news for you: Al Gore isn't a scientist either! And he's done more to "popularize" the AGW theory than anyone and his Oscar-winning mockumentary relied a great deal on "approved science" like the models that several commenters here have mentioned. About which I have a question for you.

Why did the models used to prepare the IPCC reports predict continued warming throughout the 1990's and 2000's, warming that did not happen? And if the model is wrong what does that say about the inputs and adjustments made to the model?

One does not need a PHD to see the fallacy in citing the model's predictions as authoritative and not at least making some equally public (like Al Gore's performances) explanation of the limits of the models as built and used?

Given the above contradictions, and your sneering tone about "skeptics" -- not even "deniers" as AGW co-coreligionists love to say, just "skeptics" willing to evaluate ideas with more proof -- I adamantly refuse to bow to your self-declared authority on the subject. I'm old enough to have learned about the warm pre-human Earth with giant plants and dinosaurs roaming the land; and the ice ages in which large areas of North America were covered in glaciers; and how Greenland got it's name. So one doesn't have to be much more than sentient and publicly educated to have the mental tools needed to evaluate the wild claims of AGW "consensus" and, to use Althouse's term, call Bullshit on it.

Have you ever heard a good explanation for the MWP? Can you explain how cloud formation and solar activity are accounted for in the IPCC models? These are things that thinking people have real questions about. Appeals to authority only go so far when we see serious scientists like Willie Soon subjected to the same attacks as the rest of us "skeptics" for just slightly deviating from the "consensus approved" viewpoint.

Why are "climate scientists" so afraid of open debate on these issues? The actions of Hansen and Mann and the way they conspire to keep ideas they don't approve of marginalized are one reason people like me refuse to believe their Chicken Little-like pronouncements.

The scientific method is a simple concept that we all (used to) learn in grade school. Only people ignorant of this process or more invested in outcomes can accept what we're being sold as "science" at all. Smells like propaganda to me!; 4/2/15, 12:52 PM
MadisonMan said...: For example, if you read Gates' paper on Climate Dynamics from the 1976 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, not much is said about entering an ice age. The cooling of the 1940s-1970s is mentioned, attributed to aerosols, and then he notes that warming is on the ascendant.

If Climatologists were unanimous about pushing the Ice Age theory in the 1970s, why is that not mentioned in a paper in the Membership Journal of the American Meteorological Society?; 4/2/15, 12:53 PM
Tank said...: Gabriel said...

****

Go tell Steven Hayward he's wrong about the climate.

Name that fallacy !; 4/2/15, 12:57 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "If Climatologists were unanimous about pushing the Ice Age theory in the 1970s"
And there we have the lie.
Here is the quote from the paper Gabriel though proved his point:
"By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood."
Widely accepted is not unanimous.; 4/2/15, 1:00 PM
MadisonMan said...: Terry, your words:

Climatologists were nearly unanimous in pushing the "new ice age" theory in the 70s.

So you're backing down from nearly unanimous to widely accepted?

By the mid-1970s, global cooling was attributed to aerosol forcing.; 4/2/15, 1:05 PM
Jaq said...: Gabriel, I never said it was a hoax. I don't even have an opinion on what climate scientists said in the '70s. What I am saying is that the climate models have not shown any skill at predicting the future and presented a couple of probable reasons for why that is.

The climate models have not got the troposphere right, they have not got the stratosphere right, yet certain "climate scientists" are demanding the right to dictate how we live.

Every year that goes by without warming of any significance is another piece of evidence that it is likely not as bad as "scientists" thought.

Ten years ago CO2 was considered the primary driver of the climate in the modern era. Now suddenly natural variability is back to explain why the models are wrong. Here is a free hint: If the climate scientists hadn't trusted the Hockey Stick, they wouldn't have underestimated natural variability.; 4/2/15, 1:05 PM
Jaq said...: If Climatologists were unanimous about pushing the Ice Age theory

And we have either a goal post move or a straw man!; 4/2/15, 1:09 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: nearly unanimous is not unanimous, MadisonMan.; 4/2/15, 1:09 PM
Delayna said...: It might be useful to remember Earth has been both much colder and much warmer than the present, and the climate did not spiral out of control with both CO2 and temps much higher than today--but we once had "snowball Earth"

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100304-snowball-earth-ice-global-warming/

Earth corrected itself back to the mean without Human interference. Modern conditions are neither unique nor catastrophic.; 4/2/15, 1:16 PM
MadisonMan said...: Terry, you're picking nits.

The article from the mid-1970s, right in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, talking about Climate Dynamics, does not talk about a little Ice Age being imminent. Nothing in there about a "New Ice Age Theory"

Why not, if climatologists were nearly unanimous in pushing it? If it was widely accepted?; 4/2/15, 1:18 PM
Todd said...: Todd said... [hush][hide comment]
Gabriel said...

The "skeptic" movement conveniently fails to distinguish between journalists, activists, politicians, and scientists, and lumps then all in as "climate scientists" are saying this or that.

4/2/15, 11:50 AM

In part because they all were pushing the same flawed "consensus" science. Again, don't you remember all of the Manning emails that were finally released showing the efforts to crush decent? It was NOT science then and much of it still is not today. The issue is not climate it is man affected climate and "shut up" is not a rebuttal to critics but that is what the response was/is to critics since this all started.

4/2/15, 12:39 PM

Sorry, meant Mann not Manning...

Should probably have included Jones, Briffa, Osborn, and Hulme as well.; 4/2/15, 1:19 PM
jimbino said...: Robother:

Jimbino uses an expression of gay contempt for straight women I haven't heard anyone use since the 80s ("breeders"), and then appeals to Ann to delete posts he deems ad hominem. (Ah, to be young and shameless again.)

You must have missed Ann's post on ad hominem, which has nothing to do with criticizing or bad-mouthing third parties when relevant to the topic at hand--certainly not when, as you say, it's a term commonly used and not even pejorative when applied to cattle, horses, pigeons and dogs.

Of course, I can't be responsible for all those things that you "haven't heard since the 80s," nor do I cede to gays any copyright on any term.

I contrast the "child-free" who pay through the nose to support free food and education for the progeny of "the breeders" who are both major contributors to the problem at hand and at the same time the major beneficiaries of all the proposed "solutions."; 4/2/15, 1:20 PM
Robert Cook said...: "How's about this Robert, instead of asking me to prove a negative...."

I'm not asking you to prove anything. I just asked how we can be so sure so many in the scientific community are wrong? You were the one who presumed to assert an answer of certainty.

Now, we can't know they're right, necessarily, but it's foolish to simply disregard them out of hand, simply because a counter argument to them is being pushed so assiduously by those whose interests are served by our continuing with our present behavior, (i.e., the oil interests).; 4/2/15, 1:21 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Delayna, the snowball Earth evidence isn't great and it happened a very long time ago. There are all kinds of things that modern day climatologists can't explain about the Earth's paleoclimate. Why did we only start getting ice ages beginning a few million years ago, for example.; 4/2/15, 1:21 PM
Robert Cook said...: "It might be useful to remember Earth has been both much colder and much warmer than the present, and the climate did not spiral out of control with both CO2 and temps much higher than today--but we once had "snowball Earth"

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100304-snowball-earth-ice-global-warming/

"Earth corrected itself back to the mean without Human interference. Modern conditions are neither unique nor catastrophic."

They are unique and possibly catastrophic given that human society exists in numbers and in a technological state such as has never existed previously, and it is the effect dramatic climate change will have on us that is alarming.; 4/2/15, 1:24 PM
Big Mike said...: @Gabriel, go back and reread Feynman's famous Cal Tech commencement address. The climate models have made predictions. These predictions have not materialized. Would you still believe the General Theory of Relativity had Eddington's experiment not shown that light does, indeed, bend when it passes close to the sun? And precisely as much as Einstein's equations predicted? So why believe the climate models when their predictions do not come to pass? Could it be that the models are seriously flawed? Do I know how they're flawed? I'm a mathematician so perhaps when I retire I'll dig into it. But I really don't care; the observed results are a very poor fit for the predicted results ergo the model is invalidated.

I'll make a prediction of my own. I predict that after anthropogenic global warming finally makes its inevitable way to the dumpster where it belongs, that we'll discover the "fierce urgency of global climate change" was based on a combination of Democrats realizing their long-held wet dream of taxing the very air we breathe coupled with obscenely wealthy donors to the Democrat party standing to get even more obscenely wealthy from the implementation and/or operation of Cap and Trade.; 4/2/15, 1:36 PM
Big Mike said...: @Cookie (1:21), go read my first paragraph. How do we know "so many in the scientific community are wrong"? Because the observations do not match the predictions.

@Terry, I see you and I are on the same wavelength. I don't know who, precisely stands to go from obscenely rich to even more obscenely rich from Cap and Trade, but I can predict that there's someone (more likely multiple someones acting in concert) who contribute buckets of money to mostly Progressive politicians and expect to be well-reimbursed for it by Cap and Trade's implementation.; 4/2/15, 1:43 PM
Delayna said...: There's more than one theory about the origin of the ice ages--I have heard it was either volcanic activity closing the Isthmus of Panama, or Antarctic moving to the southern pole and having a permanent ice cap. I don't know if anybody knows whether either (or both together) were the cause.; 4/2/15, 1:44 PM
Delayna said...: "They are unique and possibly catastrophic given that human society exists in numbers and in a technological state such as has never existed previously, and it is the effect dramatic climate change will have on us that is alarming."

Are you more upset about ~1 degree C of higher temperatures, or that so many people exist? The temperature increase is really not that unusual. Unless you have spent your entire life sealed in a controlled climate you probably "suffered" 10x as much temperature change just going from your car to the office this morning. And every plant and animal within a hundred miles of you somehow survived too.

If it's the number of people living on Earth that upsets you, sorry, I'm not willing to alleviate that.; 4/2/15, 1:50 PM
Jaq said...: , simply because a counter argument to them is being pushed so assiduously by those whose interests are served by our continuing with our present behavior, (i.e., the oil interests).

And we have Big Oil! Do I hear Koch Bros? Oh, they funded BEST, which Gabriel is currently flogging in his pro-warming arguments.

Isn't it possible that people who are interested in science and always want to know how stuff works, and to understand the science behind stuff just can find these flaws themselves without being led by the nose by some external force?

I will answer that for you, YES! If "Big Oil" is pushing false arguments somehow through "dark money," then it should be a simple matter to show these arguments to be false.

Yet nobody does.

Sure there are nut-job arguments on both sides, that the Quantum Electrodynamics of the Greenhouse Effect have been erroneously applied, is one famous laugher, but you can be sure that these arguments are not being pushed by big oil.

You show me how one of my assertions on this thread is not true. Just one. If you can't do that, I have no interest in your rants about *BIG OIL* beyond the odd way the existence of an industry that keeps the country moving, feeds, clothes and houses us all, keeps all the jets in the air, trucks and cars on the road, trains, subways, what have you, not to mention millions of homes warm, bothers you.; 4/2/15, 2:12 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Current atmospheric CO2 is about 400 PPM. How much will global temperature increase if atmospheric CO2 increases to 500 PPM? And what effect will that increase have on human life and economy?
This is what we need to know. This is what the climate sicntists can not tell us. They may give you a set of temperature within a probability range, hedged like crazy.
But if we are to effectively respond to climate change due to man-caused increases in atmospheric CO2 we need to know what the consequences are for whatever action we take.
This is politics, not science. Science has been around since Francis Bacon in the 16th century. Politics has been around since prehistory. If you think that science will trump politics, you're crazy.; 4/2/15, 2:23 PM
Jaq said...: I bet the fact that the troposphere hasn't warmed in 18 years, and the stratosphere hasn't cooled, is all part of a conspiracy funded by dark money from ***BIG OIL***!

If Robert Cook had his way, these unhelpful facts would not be known. That's how Marxists rule, they deny the ruled information, treat 'em like mushrooms, as the old saying goes.; 4/2/15, 2:37 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: The problem with looking at the oil interests, the Koch brothers, etc., is that they are small fish here. The pro-AGW, etc. is being much more heavily funded by governments. Why? Because they are the ones with the most to gain. Just look at the prescriptions that we are supposed to adopt - and they inevitably require more government. Often much more government. Doesn't matter whether it is anthropogenic global warming, cooling, climate change, weirding, etc., the prescription is essentially the same - more government control.

I get into this discussion on occasion with my kid, who is finishing their second year in a STEM PhD program in one of the hot beds of climate research and activism. They are at the point where they are starting to apply for grants, and their (fairly young) advisor tells them that anti-AGW research would get funded before more pro-AGW research because that is how science is funded. Except, that those funding sources are inevitably government agencies and the like. And, as I just pointed out above, that isn't what is happening, and it isn't happening because the biggest beneficiaries of AGC/AGW/AGCC hysteria are first world governments, such as the one funding almost all of the research.; 4/2/15, 2:49 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I think that the AGW research is starting to just get silly. Last month, it was a paper that essentially said that we can have confidence in the climate models by averaging their results. But, then the agitators over at a skeptic site graphed them against reality, and it turned out that > 95% exceeded reality, in the form of actual temperature recordings (which are arguably high to start with, due to how the cells are interpolated, how urban heat is handled, etc.) The results of roughly 100 models were compared to both Hadley CRU and satellite data. The referees should have just told the authors that GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), and averaging GIGO data just gives more stinky stuff (esp. since the 100 or so models were not statistically independent).

Then, a couple of days ago, the infamous Michael Mann resurfaced with a paper predicting that the Gulf Stream was slowing down, based on highly cherry picked proxy data (Michael Mann and Stefan Rahmstorf claim the Gulf Stream is slowing due to Greenland ice melt, except reality says otherwise). Their excuse was that no one had done this with real data - except that it had been done with satellite data a couple years before. And, no surprise, the Gulf Stream probably wasn't slowing down.; 4/2/15, 3:18 PM
Simon said...: Terry said...
"I am a climate change agnostic."

Something that's interesting about the left these days is that you're not allowed to not have an opinion. You're not allowed to be indifferent. It's not enough to love Big Brother—you have to also hate Goldstein. I have no opinion on AGW, but that's inconceivable, so I must be a closeted denier. Or think of that poor guy on the train in St. Louis: He had no opinion on Michael Brown, but that's impermissible, so he must be a racist and should be beaten savagely. Something is deeply amiss.; 4/2/15, 3:23 PM
MadisonMan said...: @Bruce, Mann's claim was that the AMOC was slowing. The Gulf Stream is part of the AMOC but not all of it.

As far as I can tell -- cursory reading -- Rossby's paper wasn't addressing any claim in Mann's at all (Mann barely mentioned the Gulf Stream), but of other papers that directly talked about the GS.

Rossby has some really cool data sets; I especially like the RAFOS floats he used ca. 1990. Great for showing Lagrangian motion.; 4/2/15, 3:37 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Simon, I could go to any AGW skeptic page and argue the opposite case. All causes are correlations, but not all correlations are causes.
What I couldn't do is argue that spending more for energy, all things being equal, will increase rather than decrease aggregate wealth. That defies reality, and as such can be a position only held by certain politicians and leftists.; 4/2/15, 3:37 PM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/2/15, 3:46 PM
damikesc said...: Now, we can't know they're right, necessarily, but it's foolish to simply disregard them out of hand, simply because a counter argument to them is being pushed so assiduously by those whose interests are served by our continuing with our present behavior, (i.e., the oil interests).

Where does this insane belief that government money is somehow "clean"? Governments have infinitely more to gain in this hysteria (power) than "Big Oil" does (some money)

Also, "Big Oil" donates plenty to "green" groups. Way more than you seem to realize.; 4/2/15, 4:48 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I do technical for non-profit, academic research outfit. When you get to the level of tenured scientist, your career is driven by the amount of grant money you return to your institution. More grant money = more science. That's why, where twenty years ago you might see a paper titled "One Hundred Years of Butterfly Migration in the American Southwest", you now see papers titled "Climate Change and One Hundred Years of Butterfly Migration in the American Southwest."; 4/2/15, 5:10 PM
Matt said...: Robert Cook said...

"I'm not asking you to prove anything. I just asked how we can be so sure so many in the scientific community are wrong?"

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/; 4/2/15, 5:35 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Tags: Al Franken, comedy, global warming, Letterman

What makes for comedy is when Ann Althouse, a blogger who couldn't differentiate between weather an climate, chimes in on climate change.; 4/2/15, 6:18 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Something that's interesting about the left these days is that you're not allowed to not have an opinion.

Something that's interesting about the right these days is the way their opinions have become their own form of science.; 4/2/15, 6:21 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Science has been around since Francis Bacon in the 16th century.

Make sure that Archimedes gets the talking points memo on that one.; 4/2/15, 6:23 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: I am a climate change agnostic.

I am agnostic on how much polar ice we've melted away. Some say it's pretty extensive. Some say not as much. Me, I look at the photos and think martians might have put reflecting pools on extending regions of the north pole, just to fuck with us. And further, they brought fresh snow from the Andromeda Galaxy to pile on top of the existing ice. See? It's so much easier to believe things once you allow for all the possibilities we can't rule out beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Some call me skeptical about the role of CO2 in climate but you can see that, really, I'm just more open-minded. Only doctrinaire liberal consensus-seekiers would reject out of hand the Alien Phony Polar Melting hypothesis. But it's catching on. Not necessarily in doctrinaire places like universities, but in open-minded, non-agenda driven foundations - such as think tanks funded by CO2-producing industries. You should see the amount of intellectual dissent those places allow for.; 4/2/15, 6:30 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: The atmosphere plays no role in regulating the earth's climate. That's why the moon, with no atmosphere at all, is so cold.; 4/2/15, 6:34 PM
Jaq said...: Well Rhythm and Balls recites the talking points catechism without once addressing a single argument and then creates an absurd straw man argument to the effect that skeptics don't believe that the atmosphere retains heat.

Any more talking points that we can get anywhere on the internet in utter surfeit that you would like to impart? Be cool if you answered a single difficult question, just one.; 4/2/15, 7:48 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: R&B demonstrates that he knows even less about the history of science than he does about religion.; 4/2/15, 9:30 PM
Michael K said...: "The atmosphere plays no role in regulating the earth's climate."

Wow! I didn't have to read the whole thread to get the essence of it.

Thanks, big guy.; 4/2/15, 9:31 PM
Paul said...: Liberals say the 'science' is settled only when it fits their views, otherwise more study is needed till it does fit their views.; 4/2/15, 11:02 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Gabriel,

"Sampling. Same way polling works. "

I begin to doubt your asserted scientific credentials. Genuine polling goes to great length to get a representative sample of the entire population.

Rusty's objection, put in more detail, is that certain regions of the planet were vastly oversampled, and others undersampled.; 4/3/15, 2:20 AM
David said...: Of course there is climate change. Always has been, always will be. And man affects climate. How can we not? We have since we harassed fire and invented agriculture. The Mediterranean is a good example. Thousands of years of deforestation have had an effect on wind and moisture patterns.

The question is how much human activity is presently affecting climate and what the consequences of the combined natural and man made changes are likely to be. I think the state of that debate is best described as confused. We are trying to predict a very complex system with limited and poorly understood inputs, especially with respect to the past and future effects of human activity.

The BEST study expressly recognizes this. According to Dr. Mueller, "much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I've analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn't changed.; 4/3/15, 7:40 AM
Laura said...: "If it's the number of people living on Earth that upsets you, sorry, I'm not willing to alleviate that."

But think of all the water we could reclaim if we just processed people "correctly."; 4/3/15, 11:00 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: The atmosphere plays no role in regulating the earth's climate. That's why the moon, with no atmosphere at all, is so cold.

Of course the atmosphere plays a big part in regulating the Earth's climate, etc. The question is how does it work, and that is still very much unknown. Models are necessary, since actual solutions are going to be computationally infeasible for probably the next century, at least. Millennium? But, the models that are supposed to model reality don't do so very well. Which means that they really don't tell us all that much about the effects of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

The basic problem is that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, and there is an increasing amount of that gas in our atmosphere, though still in little more than trace amounts. What being a greenhouse gas means is that it somewhat works to keep solar energy from being released back into space. At a high level then, increasing CO2 could lead to an increase in average temperatures. Except that the direct effect is not that great, and, even if it were, it doesn't operate in a vacuum. Rather, it is turning out that CO2 levels are a small part of the entire, very complex, climatic system. What happens to the climate when CO2 levels increase? We don't really know. There are models that predict certain feedback between CO2 and temperature, but those models, at least so far, don't predict reality all that well, which means that their simplifying assumptions are not accurate, predicting much more warming than we have seen over the last two decades. Or, likely more accurately, they simplify too much.

So, maybe simplifying the skeptics position, AGW (etc) is based on models that represent theories on how an increase in CO2 translates into an increase in global temperatures. But these models greatly overpredict the amount of warming that we have seen over the last couple decades, which indicates that they need more work, and that they cannot, yet, be relied upon to make public policy.; 4/4/15, 5:21 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Well Rhythm and Balls recites the talking points catechism without once addressing a single argument and then creates an absurd straw man argument to the effect that skeptics don't believe that the atmosphere retains heat.

I find this interesting, given the time of the year right now - a time of year of significant impact to both Christianity and Judaism. It is becoming more and more evident that Anthropogenic Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change (etc) is more and more a religion. Its catechisms are mindlessly repeated in ever more ridiculous situations, to justify this and that progressive/statist solution.

What was disconcerting a couple years ago was being on the government relations council of a large engineering society. It seemed like a large number of policy statements, etc. had to make reference to AGW (etc.) It was almost how Christians spoke a millennium ago, and how religious Muslims even today invoke their prophet and his god in normal speech on a regular basis.

Maybe compounding this in my mind is that many of those at the top who use these AGW catechisms are close to scientifically illiterate. AlGore? Kerry? Obama? Etc. You have to wonder if those medieval kings ruling by divine providence actually believed themselves when they so routinely invoked Christ to justify what they did.; 4/4/15, 5:41 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: "I'm not asking you to prove anything. I just asked how we can be so sure so many in the scientific community are wrong?"

Because it is both political and religious. Political because it is used as justification for growing government, which is convenient, since those very same governments are the ones funding most of the research. Religious because climate worship has taken the place of Christianity in the elites in much of the first world. We aren't, yet, to the point of burning climate change skeptics at the stake, but similar solutions are being voiced more and more by the adherents of this religion, intimidating and silencing those skeptics, in the same way that the Inquisition did half a millennium ago.; 4/4/15, 5:49 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: "I'm not asking you to prove anything. I just asked how we can be so sure so many in the scientific community are wrong?"

There are a lot of problems there. One of the big ones is that we live in an era of scientific specialization. And, most of those involved in climate research deal with only a small piece of the puzzle. They trust the other scientists, and their peer review process (which we know from ClimateGate emails was perverted and subverted long ago).

I think that it was instructive how that infamous 97% was determined. It defined climate scientists as belonging to a set number of specialties, many of which many of us would consider, at best, peripheral. Tree ring counters were in, but physicists and mechanical engineers who could understand the dynamics of the climate were out. A more interdisciplinary science is being taught, but those coming out with a broader background in this area are still a minority, and still at the bottom of the heap, professionally.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the research follows the funding, and the funding follows the needs of the funders - which in climate research are almost completely first world governments. And, their need is more government, which translates into funding research that is more likely to grow government, than to shrink it, which means funding pro-AGW research almost exclusively, as contrasted to anti-AGE research.; 4/4/15, 6:07 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Maybe this is part of why the AGC/AGW/AGCC, etc. forces are seemingly so apoplectic these days: Lawrence Solomon: Global warming doomsayers take note: Earth’s 19th Little Ice Age has begun. The article first points out that when Americans are nailed down about their environmental fears, their fear of global warming is close to de minimis. And, second, a Russian scientist is positing that we are entering the 19th Little Ice Age, and it will be most of a century until we get back to where we are now. Not surprising that the Ruskies aren't with the AGW program, given that their primary export commodities are oil, gas, ec.; 4/4/15, 10:33 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Can't believe that - my last post disappeared. Here goes again.

I wonder whether some of the craziness coming out of the AGC/AGW/AGCC camp these days is a result of the science breaking down, and most everyone outside DC, NYC, and nearby Boulder, CO, knowing it. Interesting article today: Lawrence Solomon: Global warming doomsayers take note: Earth’s 19th Little Ice Age has begun. It first points out that fear of AGW as dropped to almost nothing in this country, as so many dug themselves out of the recent blizzards. And, second, a Russian scientist is suggesting that we are entering a (19th) Little Ice Age, and to not expect the climate to get back to where it is now for the next century or so. Not surprising from a Ruskie, given their dependence on fossil fuels for foreign currency.; 4/4/15, 10:37 AM