Climate Change Deniers Are Inventing a New Scandal

Politicians need to butt out and leave the science to scientists.

Pork barrel science at its best in practice here along with horse trading.

The issue is not climate change but, rather, the explanations and 'the-sky-is-falling' political posturing whether the 1% of C02 produced by human activity has any significant influence.

The CO2 concentration, and temperature, 320000 years ago was far higher than today and even then the planet headed straight into a steep drop in temperatures, and a new Ice Age, just as where we're headed now.

Sure, fine, it still makes sense to try be more energy efficient, reduce polution, etc., but there's no dire need to do so at the expense of NASA's precarious budget. We also have agencies such as NOAA, and the Dept. of Energy, that can take care of that.

Like some of us have been warning, raising the stakes so strongly on 'climate science' has risks even for its proponents. Once the novelty wears out it could even leave funding for NASA science in a far worse position than it was in 2008.

NASA Source (for the temperature/concentration stuff:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BorealMigration/Images/vostok_co2_temp_rt.gif

What kind of news report starts with "Not everyone is sipping the global warming Kool-Aid."?

"The CO2 concentration, and temperature, 320000 years ago was far higher than today and even then the planet headed straight into a steep drop in temperatures, and a new Ice Age, just as where we're headed now."

Sure - the issue isn't that this is the warmest Earth's ever been, it's that civilization is optimized for current climate. The more you change it, the more you cause expensive and painful dislocations. Climate has also naturally changed quite quickly in the past (century scale), like at the end of the last glacial - the point is that you wouldn't have wanted to live through it, especially with a rigid, expensive infrastructure. And yeah, on the millennium time scales we're going to head back into another ice age - but that's irrelevant for what we're doing on the century timescale.

Where do you get 1% from? Check out the abundance charts - it's more like 20% increase since the late 1870.

"What kind of news report starts with "Not everyone is sipping the global warming Kool-Aid."?"

One from Faux News.

NASA has no business studying "Climate Change" anyway. We have Congress to thank for changing NASA's original charter so that we have to put up with this navel gazing distraction that should be rightfully tasked to the NOAA.

By the way, how many flakes of global warming did you have to shovel this past winter?

It's high time we cleansed the agency of this nonsense. I, for one, am tired of the ‘common voice of NASA’ being high jacked and used as a mouthpiece by a small number of GW zealots who draw their curves first and then select data points to fit. Sure, the faithful will always follow their religious doctrine, but let them do it somewhere else where objectivity is neither expected nor valued. NASA has enough problems without senselessly throwing away credibility by picking sides in the GW jihad.

Am I the only one completely and utterly exasperated with climate change talk of any kind whatsoever? I remember all the way back to 5th grade having the importance of Earth Day crammed down my throat and being told that because I'm alive and breathing, I was obligated to plant a tree (which I did) to make up for my CO2 production. Apparently your carbon footprint is the environmental version of original sin...

I don't doubt that most don't realize the climate change movement for the altruistic, anti-anthropomorphic endeavor that it is, but how many kids got sapped it to the movement before they even had the reasoning or capability to know what hit them and then never returned. Of course, if James Cameron can make over $1B on a human-deriding climate storyline, then the number has to be terrifyingly large.

But isn't it a matter of simple husbandry?
To date, this is the only rock that supports life within 30 light-years. 180 trillion miles.
Granted, if the Sieberian Traps open up again we are all doomed. But wouldn't it be a shame if we fouled our own nest to the point we couldn't live in it.

We have been given a very special gift, and the knowledge to be aware of it. We should strive not to make it any worse because we are here.

Just my thoughts, I'll go back to hugging the maple in the backyard.

Since most critics of climate change don't even believe that the universe is older than 10,000 years old, its difficult to take anything that they say seriously.

But the polar caps are melting and sea levels are rising. That's just the facts!

Marcel F. Williams

Question:

What kind of news report starts with "Not everyone is sipping the global warming Kool-Aid."?

Answer:

The same kind that starts with...

"Climate Change Deniers Are Inventing a New Scandal"

Debate pro and con on the topic of "climate change"
Is pointless--but will be continued nonetheless--
Because not even the judges, in their wisdom,
Can the validity of either position properly assess.

Well then... if you people insist upon branding people who demand veridical evidence to support claims as "deniers", then we who obey the scientific method to a "T" have no choice but to call all of you "AGW Alarmists."

If any of you "Alarmists" are actually interested in having a real, scientific debate on the facts, then let's agree to one thing first: We need to clearly separate the idea of natural climate cycles from human-induced forcing, OK? No blurring the lines or using strawman arguments by trying to claim I am "denying" climate change without specifying it is the HUMAN-INDUCED part of climate change I am denying. Fair enough? Because I give you that the climate has changed for thousands and millions of years on its own, with no "forcing" from mankind. No, we are ONLY debating the "human-induced" conclusion.

If we agree to that, then I would politely ask you "Alarmists" to provide me with some veridical evidence (computer models of highly nonlinear systems are not evidence) for mankind's "primary role" in forcing global warming (which is what Mann et. al. issued their scientific predictions for). Please cite the evidence which shows it is human-induced, and not "the glaciers are melting" which can easily be down to natural climate cycling.

Also: If there is such a "consensus" (as if science is based on "consensus" rather than veridical evidence), then pray tell why the band of climate scientists felt the need to hide their data and methods, and constantly stonewall FOIA requests? That is not how science works...and all of you "Alarmists" that are trained in science know it. So how about you admit Jones et. al. were not following scientific protocol by withholding raw data and their methods for "adjusting" temps?

Finally, I would suggest you read the following writeup by Willis Eschenbach. It is not caustic. It does not poke fun at you and your beliefs, or try to call you heretics. It is merely answering questions such that we can have a civil debate, which I am all for.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/31/18010/

Just because it is on WUWT, don't immediately say "I am not going to read anything from that site." Open your mind to a real debate. I promise you this article will not insult you.

Let the debate begin.

Just like the degeneration of NASA, AGW policy represents the degeneration of science. It's all about the money these days.

Marcel:

But the polar caps are melting and sea levels are rising. That's just the facts!

With all due respect, these are not evidence for human-induced global warming. Please read my last post. If we can agree to clearly separate natural from human-induced, and you can present veridical evidence for the latter, then I would love a civil debate. Thanks.

Also: The southern polar cap is most decidedly NOT melting. There is no evidence to support that claim. And have you looked at the ice recovery in the arctic lately?

Excellent post. Thanks Ray.

Wrong

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
and to bring it back on topic
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/polar_thin.html

Oh and btw how do you respond to the latest peer reviewed debunking of the McLean paper:

"McLean et al 2009 grossly overstates the influence of ENSO, primarily by filtering out any long-term trends." Doh!

The debate is over apart from a few diehards and those aligning themselves with vested interests... As Lovelock so recently states: "Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change."

Finally If there is no problem, why Cryosat-2?
(ESA video)

Some corrections needed, please leave your polities at the door...

Lowly Contractor… states Myth 1: “The CO2 concentration, and temperature, 320000 years ago was far higher than today”

Science / evidence / facts support …
Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11213-greenhouse-gases-hit-new-high.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638

~
~

Lowly Contractor… states Myth 2 : “.. 1% of C02 produced by human activity has any significant influence.”

Science / evidence / facts support …
“Human emissions of CO2 are now estimated to be 26.4 Gt per year, up from 23.5 Gt in the 1990s” Note: 27Gt = 3.6% of total 800Gt released a year. 2Gt per year now accumulates in the atmosphere equating to 2ppm CO2 rise per year, the rest 99.75% is absorbed into CO2 sinks/ photosynthesis, acting very like compound interest on a loan.

“Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

“nature is actually compensating in part for our emissions, because only about half of the CO2 we are emitting is staying in the air. Nevertheless, since we began burning fossil fuels in earnest over 150 years ago, the atmospheric concentration that was relatively stable for the previous several thousand years has now risen by over 35%. So whatever the total amounts going in and out on their own, humans have clearly upset the pre-existing balance and altered significantly an important part of the climate system.”
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/natural-emissions-dwarf-humans.php

Ray state “The southern polar cap is most decidedly NOT melting. There is no evidence to support that claim”, Myth #3

“With the longer time series, a statistically significant trend now emerges. Not only is Antarctica losing land ice, the ice loss is accelerating at a rate of 26 Gigatonnes/yr2. It turns out that since 2006, East Antarctica has no longer been in mass balance but is in fact, losing ice mass”(Chen 2009).
Facts supported by – GRACE Nasa sat.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

It's important to distinguish between Antarctic land ice and sea ice which are two separate phenomena. Land ice is decreasing, and sea ice increasing in the Antarctic region. Sea ice increase is due to (a)temporary ozone hole, (b)warm ocean circulation increasing snowfall, less salty water in upper layers.

The perspective of space is why NASA is involved in climate studies. Check out the NASA-DLR Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment satellite data from Greenland, Alaska, Patagonia, and Antarctica. Ice mass is being lost from all these locations year after year since these measurements started in 2003. NASA's satellites are fundamental to understanding if conditions are changing on the Earth, where they are changing, and why they are changing. Knowledge is power but ignorance is bliss.

You're mixing in the relative increase of C02 caused by human action with the percent of overall global production of greenhourse gases due to the burning of fossil fuels. I'm referring to the latter.

You get far more greenhouse gases (especially methane, which is some 22 times more of a greenhouse gas than C02) from the decomposition of organic matter than humans burning fossil fuels.

What is the margin of error in the tree ring and ice core measurements?

Well Duh! The inability(or more likely, unwillingness) of GW/CC pundits to monitor local and short-term climate patterns & variations accurately, has REALLY helped here; postulation and predictions being consistantly presented as facts etc.
For example i discovered that there has ALWAYS been a North-west passage; but not long enough to be used as a shipping lane. Similarly photos showing the apparent precipitous retreat of Ice in the Arctic have been touted but the pundits forgot to deal with the dates: the earliest photograph showed 75% of Arctic Ice having retreated. The previous photo was actualiy dated 5 days later; it showed 90% of that loss had returned: this was in Feb '08. There are other examples, but the news of the U of E.A emails admitting to fraud is par for the course IMO.

This was followed by band-wagon jumpers using first "global warming" and then when evidence TTC surfaced, the slightly more accurate "climate change", as an excuse to legitimately legislate away our individual freedoms. They run in tandem with the "Terrorism" currently in vogue with the closet fascists are wont(I'm talking about left as well as right-wing fascism!).

I've lived with the latter since 1969, first in "old europe" and then in "the land of nowhere near as free as we used to be" since '93. But still the curtailment of our freedoms has done little to curb the problems: as expected IMO.
If 70 years ago - when the severest winters since the early 1800's occurred - pundits had screamed "new ice age coming because of human depredations etc etc" would we be in the same level of governmental and NGO panic stations as now I wonder?

Probably not: the greatest war in history was under way. Other things to think about and idle minds had something worthwhile to do other than cook facts to fit the fantasy, a'la Schneider et al.

"By the way, how many flakes of global warming did you have to shovel this past winter?"
I heard Rush Limbaugh use that argument on the radio too. It was cold one day in Florida and suddenly climate change was proven false! wooohoo!

brobof:

Wrong

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

When you simply state "wrong" without providing a quote from me to identify where you think I am wrong, that reflects more poorly on you than me. Could you please point out to me where, exactly, you believe I am "wrong" with regard to the resurgence of ARCTIC ice? Even in the plot on the URL that you provide, you can clearly see the trend line for current season ice extent (2009-2010) ABOVE the minimum extent for 2006-2007. That means the ice in the ARCTIC is no longer in retreat. It is in recovery. And again looking at that same plot you can see that the current ice extent line is just about to penetrate the 1979-2000 average ice extent line. So again...please show me exactly where I am wrong. Thanks.

As to the ANTARCTIC comment, if you only look at the average ice thickness (which I think you are referring to), without also looking at the standard deviation you are not looking at the whole story. I recall seeing a graphic where NASA's half-the-story data only showing the average ice thickness was correctly augmented by showing the standard deviations. When you look at the "sigmas" you realize that their interpretations of the averages which lead to decreasing ice thickness were (every single data point) well within the standard deviation. That means when you factor in standard deviation, one could "interpret" the results as any one of the following: ice thickness increase, ice thickness decrease, or no statistical change in thickness. Proper science says we should select the latter given the standard deviations stated. I will have to find that graphic, as it is very telling. Cannot find it for now, but here is a link to another one that shows an increasing ice trend in the Antarctic, but admittedly the rate is shallow:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/ant-sea-ice_fig.JPG

But EVEN IF I give you all the benefit of the doubt, and just say "I agree that both poles ice extents are shrinking" (which clearly at least one is NOT), I must also point out what I wrote in an earlier post: This IS NOT evidence for MANKIND-INDUCED forcing of Global Warming. That is a fact. It is not evidence of this.

So again, I would ask the "Climate Alarmists" if you are willing to have a fair and honest debate by separating NATURAL warming from MANKIND-FORCED? If not, that is fine I can stop. But if you insist on continuing to blur the lines between natural and man-made, I will call you on it every time.

Because, quite honestly, I would like to get to a discussion of climate sensitivity. For that is where the presumption of MANKIND-INDUCED global warming is clearly falsified. The claims of highly positive feedback for the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 simply are not supported by data. And in this regard, I should let you know I am a controls engineer who well understands feedback sensitivity. Dr. Roy Kellogg has addressed this, and his understanding of natural feedback and sensitivity is spot-on.

Sorry if you didn't understand my reply Ray April 1, 2010 9:17 AM and Ray April 1, 2010 9:54 AM
"Well...
[The same tired argument put forward demanding scientific proof of AGW when the scientific proof for the Contrarian argument is profound in its absence, wasting valuable energy and hard disk space to perpetuate the myth that the Contrarians have anything valuable to say. And also incidentally inciting off topic discussion on NASA being attacked for not having accurate Data! See below.]
Let the debate begin."
WRONG!!!
The debate is OVER!
(Aside: And you will be glad to know Keith that
this will be my last post on this thread!)
Ray try this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm
or this:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html
...or any number of debunkings of the myth that its not OUR fault!

"The southern polar cap is most decidedly NOT melting." (Ray)
WRONG!!!
My thanks to Peter O Brien April 1, 2010 12:05 PM for a supporting link. Try reading that or this:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7266/full/nature08471.html

"And have you looked at the ice recovery in the arctic lately? (Ray)
WRONG!!!
"please show me exactly where I am wrong. Thanks."
REALLY? YOU DON'T KNOW? Did you read the Analysis AT ALL?

"Overview of conditions
Arctic sea ice extent averaged for February 2010 was 14.58 million square kilometers (5.63 million square miles). This was 1.06 million square kilometers (409,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for February, but 220,000 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which occurred in February 2005. "

Rather than just cherry pick the raw data plotted on a daily basis try reading some of the text or the other graphs showing the DOWNWARD trend.

Thank you for your supporting link:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/ant-sea-ice_fig.JPG
Oooh a Blog, how rigorous! NOT!
Lets look under the bonnet. (hood)
"World Climate Report (WCR) is a blog published by New Hope Environmental Services, "an advocacy science consulting firm"[1] run by global warming skeptic, Patrick J. Michaels."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=World_Climate_Report

*Oh Oh*

"The following is one of several reasons why numerous people refer to Pat Michaels as a "fraud, and simple".
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/patMichaels.html

*It's not looking good!*

"The Cato Institute's Generous Funding of Patrick Michaels"
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8382
*Ah now we are getting somewhere.*
"Michaels' firm does not disclose who its clients are, but leaked documents have revealed that several were power utilities which operate coal power stations. On a 2007 academic CV, Michaels disclosed that prior to creating his firm he had received funding from the Edison Electric Institute and the Western Fuels Association. He has also been a frequent speaker with leading coal and energy companies as well as coal and other industry lobby groups"
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_J._Michaels
*BINGO*
"Pat Michaels, Virginia “State Climatologist”? A critical perspective on the issues"
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/pat-michaels/
*WHOOPS*
I suppose I could look for a peer reviewed paper by Mr Michaels but what would be the point?

To return to the topic.
[Keith breathes a sigh of relief!]
I would assume that the discrepancy would have been helped if NASA had received the necessary funding and support from the previous Administration to prove or disprove the hypothesis. One understands that to the contrary: there may have even been some political pressures brought to bear. Shocking! Fortunately under this Administration

"a political commitment to get better advising in science untainted by ideology"
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/obamas_speech_to_the_national.php
...we are starting to see results:
http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/
and the launch of GoreSat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory
and ICESAT II
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/icesat-ii

One hopes that Messrs John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and David Vitter (R-La.) will be pounding the table for more funding to advance these missions :)

A tour of doomful data

brobof:

demanding scientific proof of AGW when the scientific proof for the Contrarian argument is profound in its absence

With a statement like that, it becomes all too clear that you do not understand how science works. Let me educate you: You "Climate Alarmists" are making a claim that mankind is primarily responsible for the warming. The burden is on you to provide evidence which can stand-up to any falsification. There is absolutely no burden on "Deniers" to provide any scientific proof that humans are NOT causing warming. Our job is merely to falsify your argument. Got it?

The belief that melting ice is "proof" of your alarmists claims is falsified by the historic climate record. Which is why I have encouraged you to leave this "the ice caps are melting" behind as an argument. It is dead. It does not in any way prove mankind is the forcing function, and in no way prove claims of an oversensitive climate.

The debate is OVER!

Because you, who does not understand the scientific method for claims, says so? Just how arrogant can you "alarmists" be in believing you have the final say in science? Amazing. There can be no debate when you do not understand that scientific predictions of warming were made (by Mann) and they have been falsified... by hard data of temperatures. Do you understand that? He predicted a runaway warming profile, and the data shows it has not happened as predicted.

Ray try this:
(snip)
...or any number of debunkings of the myth that its not OUR fault!

So you think science works by "debunking" one or two falsifications, and that solidifies your claim? Not so, bucko. You really need to bone up on science. Any new data can falsify a past claim. Understand that? It means that even Relativity is still tentative, if someone can come up with data to falsify it. And if you would just have a look at the assumptions of the Global Climate Models about the sensitivity of temperature to CO2, you will see that this assumption has been falsified. Had the "high climate sensitivity" assumption been true, the earth would have zoomed-off into "heat death" long, long ago when CO2 levels rose in the past.

CO2 and temperature oscillate with one another. There is still no substantially veridical data that can show that temperature lags CO2. In fact, the majority of the data shows the phase relationship is opposite. There are no existing facts in evidence at all that demonstrate a dynamic instability in this relationship. None. All you can point to are models, and those models assume a net positive "feedback gain" to begin with. So they assume something that there is no evidence to support, but quite a bit of evidence to falsify. And that evidence will continue to come in as the earth does NOT follow a runaway warming path in the next 10 years, just as the data has falsified the runaway warming predictions of the last 10 years.

You are so intent upon claiming the high ground and stating "the debate is over" that you refuse to understand that more and more data is demonstrating the AGW claims are invalid. For you, the debate may be over. But the debate that is over is that you have any modicum of knowledge about how scientific claims are vetted or disposed of.

Ray,
is this the type of empirical evidence acceptable you require?
"
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology"
by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/instrumental-record/

sorry wrong prior link ..

If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold? http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/

These deniers are doing nothing new nor particularly interesting. Quote mining is an old tactic of the creationists.