Man Based Global Warming....

As does Pielke's website.

 

Oh - Wikipedia! That's reliable. It is known that the AGW crowd has manipulated that website for quite some time and won't let a contrary opinion see the light of day.

People with their own agendas have already infiltrated and controlled aspects of craigslist and Wikipedia, unfortunately. On Wikipedia, for example, a group pushing the global-warming agenda prevents almost any post with contrary data or opinions, no matter how minor the point.

 

Well, the first paper listed on Pielke's site today concludes the warming has stopped (Cazenave et al, 2008):

While global mean ocean heat content (hence thermal expansion)
rose regularly since at least the early 1990s as evidenced from in situ ocean temperature data (Guinehut et al., 2004; Willis et al., 2004; Antonov et al., 2005; Levitus et al., 2005; Ishii et al., 2006), new in situ hydrographic observations from the recently deployed Argo system (Roemmich and Owens, 2000) indicate that ocean heat content had a break since 2003 (Willis et al., 2008). If real, this means that, during the last 5 yr, ocean thermal expansion has not contributed to sea level rise, unlike during the previous 10-year periodwhere about 50% of the rate of sea level rise could be attributed to ocean thermal expansion (Bindoff et al., 2007).

 

Can you point to the part it says that warming stopped? All I see is an explanation of sea level rise as due to increased ocean mass and glacier melting. How do you go from there to "warming has stopped".

 

TIMBIKES, alright fine. I'll go to each individual website of the 40+ organizations and see if they really do support the idea of AGW. I'll let you know if I find the wikipedia article to be misrepresenting any of these organizations. It could take a while.

But even If I find that some organizations do not really support the global warming hypothesis, (doubtful) I'll still happily support aggressive reductions in fossil fuel pollution. As darreldd said there would be a lot of significant benefits.

Another point: It will hurt some industries (coal and oil) to remove carbon from the economy but it will be strongly beneficial to overall growth and prosperity, especially in the long term. That's certainly clear to anyone paying attention. The old idea that it's either the economy or the environment has long been discredited. The status quo seekers need to get out of the way, and let new technologies and services generate wealth.

Plus, every time the economy picks up a head of steam the high price of oil sends it crashing back down. Economic growth easily gets choked off by the inevitable rise past $100+ oil. Oil dependance is just dumb.

Lastly your paragraph link took me to something called "Google Must Die". Despite the misplaced and unsupported reference to wikipedia you quoted.... I don't think this link supports your argument that wikipedia breaks it own rules when it comes to AGW articles.

 

No need to! This page contains all the organizations with references.

Now to disagree with so many thousands of scientists: That's what I call arrogant!

Logicalscience.com - The Consensus On Global Warming/Climate Change: From Science to Industry & Religion

I liked these quotes:

Stephen H. Schneider Ph.D. - Professor at Stanford University
A handful of "contrarian" scientists and public figures who are not scientists have challenged mainstream climatologists' conclusions that the warming of the last few decades has been extraordinary and that at least part of this warming has been anthropogenically induced. What must be emphasized here is that, despite the length of this section, there are truly only a handful of climatologist contrarians relative to the number of mainstream climatologists out there. - Contrarians

Dr. James Baker - NOAA
"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics". -Deltoid, ECOS Letter

 

To me a handful is five. Is he saying that there are five or less that are not on the man-made global warming band-wagon? Less than five?

 

I'll have to interject a little bit of reality into your fantasy. You must have missed the second paragraph:

"This article documents scientific opinion as given by synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists. It does not document the views of individual scientists, individual universities or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions"

Scientific opinion on climate change - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To claim that just because the leaders of a organization agree with a statement then all their members agree is foolish.

Do all employees of the EPA agree with the policy positions as outlined by their current leadership?

Do all doctors that are members of the AMA agree with the all the AMA's policy positions?

 

That sounds about right. With actual published work to back what they say: zero.

 

It is a consensus with the majority agreeing on a course of action. There will always be people that disagree with anything. That does not mean the consensus is incorrect.

 

But to compare economic impacts of doing things the dirty way (let's say burning coal) vs doing it the clean way (let's say PV) we have to put prices on things like Mountaintop removal. Sterile lakes and rivers. Flooding. Loss of species. Illness. Death. That sort of thing. If we don't put monetary value on any of the damage we're doing the dirty way, then how can we compare the economics of doing the right thing?

In general it will be cheaper in the long run to clean up our act. How could it be cheaper to destroy ourselves?

(addid... just as Fibb says here: "The old idea that it's either the economy or the environment has long been discredited. The status quo seekers need to get out of the way, and let new technologies and services generate wealth.")

It has certainly long been discredited... yet we still have people asking for proof that it won't cost them more to stop killing themselves.

We cannot afford to continue doing many of the cheap things we've enjoyed for the past 100 years. That party is over. And that party being over doesn't have to have ANYTHING to do with climate change... or how much it costs, etc.

 

I know the definition of consensus. Your claim is something very different. You claim thousands of climate scientist support the IPCC report because 45 organizations agree with the IPCC. You are saying because the organization supports a policy position then the members of the organization agree with that policy position.

That is not my experience with national and professional organizations. In my experience, the Board of Directors or committees make policy positions. These are not put the membership for a vote. As an individual member you have very little effect on the organization's policy.

The wikipedia page also notes surveys of climate scientists as proof of consensus. However, the best they can do is a survey of "489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union." In this survey "74% agreed that currently available scientific evidence substantiates the occurrence of human-induced greenhouse warming". Now that is a consensus.

This makes me wonder about the membership requirements for the American Meteorological Society?

"Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, professors, students, and weather enthusiasts."

Weather enthusiasts!?!? These are the "Climate Experts" that we are to trust world climate policy too? So if I pay my membership dues then I too can be a "Climate Scientist". :rockon:

That is the best they can do. The rest of the surveys are non-scientific (online surveys with no verification of credentials or means to prevent multiple submissions) or older and don't support their position. (1997 Survey of US State Climatologists: 61% said that historical data does not indicate "that fluctuations in global temperatures are attributable to human influences such as burning fossil fuels.")

 

According to you there could never be a consensus about anything. If the organization's statements were contrary to a large number of members another separate statement would be made or the organization would be obliged to retract it.

It is not only 45 organizations. Did you see the number of organizations, individual scientists, nobel laureates, think tanks, city mayors and others that have published statements in agreement with the IPCC?

Admit it. You are just being a contrarian that will not accept most qualified individuals and organizations conclude that global warming is real and should be addressed. You have the right to disagree but don't expect to be right.

 

Who said the leaders decided what the organization as a whole would support? How do you know it wasn't put to a vote? More than likely, dissenters were few.

I believe the statement "It does not document the views of individual scientists, individual universities or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions" boosts the cred of the sentiment, not detracts from it. A list of individuals has less clout than multiple organizations.

 

I am obviously not a scientist, but what does consensus have to do with science? Isn't consensus inherently a political term? Isn't science based on theories and proof and facts? How many scientific theories over the years has science had a "consensus" on that the "consensus" has later been proven false? I would say any scientific consensus could be proven wrong by just one scientist. Am i wrong?

 

Theories, including the theory of relativity are still accepted by consensus until proven wrong or supplanted. (That doesn't mean all observations necessarily conform to the accepted theory, just that it doesn't fail the more rigorous/exact and confirmable challenges.) There is usually a period of testing and debate before arriving at a consensus. There is usually dissent and that is healthy. Consensus is not irreversible.

What is not healthy is ignoring the scientific consensus as it coalesces and instead relying on wishful thinking and political ideology to guide policy. See the past 8 years as an example of how well that has worked out. As Lewis Black said, "President Bush said that he now believes there’s global warming. As a result, I’m not sure anymore."

 

What about Gores movie? In my mind that brought man-made global warming to the forefront. How scientific is the movie? How come the graphs are not overlayed? What about the hockey stick? Even the IPCC report says that the images of a flooded manhattan are grossly exagerated. Mt Kilimanjaro, polar bears, antarctica, the list goes on and on about the half-truths and misleading statements and images. Is ANY means to achieve the end acceptable? Does the science not present a strong enough case to the average citizen?

I have to admit I was all worried for a few weeks until I started to investigate the merits of his images and words. I was watching the discovery channel and they had a program on about the antarctic installations and how every few years they have to rebuild because the old buildings are buried in snow and ice. On a purely common sensical level it made me wonder, obviously that in itself means nothing but it was the trigger for me to check out Gore's claims.

 

What about it? Gore's movie although accurate, is not a peer reviewed publication.

The problem is that after you saw the movie you looked for contrary evidence and fell on the google trap of contrarian blogs.

The only piece of information you should use is peer reviewed articles. No movies, no blogs.

 

Sure you can have consensus. For example if you wanted to know where the membership of the American Meteorological Society stands on the IPCC report you could poll their 14,000 members. If that is too much you could do a randomized sample. If you wanted to make sure the results matched your position you could poll individuals that you know support your position plus enough to make it look legitimate.

I require that your claim matches reality. You can claim you have a consensus of organizations if you do. However, you can't claim that you have consensus of the membership without polling the membership.

Does Obama have a consensus of the American public for an individual policy simply because he was elected by a majority of voters? No, he does not.

Of your list the only one that matters to me are the scientists and I'm not really interested in their opinion. Instead I'm interested in their data.

City mayors? You're not serious are you? City mayors have no more credibility on the topic of global warming than the city dog catcher.

No, I'm someone that is not swayed by public pressure. Show me the data that shows global temperature is directly correlated to CO2 level. I would prefer this data for the last 2000 years. I've already asked for this information in this thread. I've seen data for the last 100 years and for the the last 100,000 years. I would like to see if the 2,000 year pattern matches the pattern for the last 100 years.

I'm a reasonable person and a big supporter of renewable energy. However, as I said before I need real reasons to get behind policy.

For example take CAFE:

If you tell me that we need to increase CAFE on automobiles because the US only has 3% of the world's oil reserves and consume 25% of the world's supply. This imbalance puts our society and risk and makes us dependent on unfriendly nations for the basis of our economy. That is a good argument and one that I can get behind.

Now if you say we need to increase CAFE on automobiles because fuel economy is directly related to CO2 and an increase in CO2 is warming the globe which will lead to the collapse of civilization. To that I say, prove it. First the connection of CO2 to temperature and then that an increase in temperature will destroy civilization.

 

I agree about movies and blogs, but what in Gore's movie is accurate, or at least the way it is presented. Without Gore's movie, man-made global warming would be a back-burner issue at best.