Global warming or just nature?

[DynamicSpirit]

Sadly this happens in virtually every walk of life that is high profile - it does nothing to diminsh the argument that climate change is having a major impact on peoples' lifes around the world.

Indeed. It is appalling that some people descend to the level of death threats, and I would certainly like to see those who issue them, in the name of whatever cause, tracked down by the police and prosecuted.

In the context of 21C101's post, it is also worth pointing out that many scientists working in climate change themselves routinely receive death threats from people who deny the reality of climate change. I'm not aware of any compiled statistics on how often people on different sides of this debate receive death threats, but there do seem to be many more reports of death threats received by scientists than there are of death threats received by those who argue against the science. 21C101 appears to have taken a very one-sided stand by choosing to highlight death threats received by one anti-climate-science person, while apparently ignoring those death threats received on the other side of the debate.

The only issue I can see that is not resolved is the degree to which climate change is being accellerated by human behaviour.

Actually, if you look at the stuff that is written by scientists, as opposed to the stuff that's written by activists, you'd find the extent to which climate change is accelerated by human behaviour is in fact reasonably well resolved. Unfortunately there seems to be quite a big cottage industry of activists seeking to discredit the science, which has unfortunately convinced a lot of people that there is more controversy in this area than there actually is.

 

[table38]

Actually, if you look at the stuff that is written by scientists, as opposed to the stuff that's written by activists, you'd find the extent to which climate change is accelerated by human behaviour is in fact reasonably well resolved. Unfortunately there seems to be quite a big cottage industry of activists seeking to discredit the science, which has unfortunately convinced a lot of people that there is more controversy in this area than there actually is.

Again you are making the rookie mistake of conflating scientists and the global warming industry, and, again, condescendingly dismissing any dissent as "activists" or "a cottage industry".

There is plenty of legitimate concern, and it's obvious which side starts calling people names because they don't want a serious debate about what may, or may not be going on.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Again you are making the rookie mistake of conflating scientists and the global warming industry, and, again, condescendingly dismissing any dissent as "activists" or "a cottage industry".

No I'm not. The difference between a trained research scientist working in the field of climate science, and an activist who is campaigning to influence Government policy or public attitudes, and who may or may not have any scientific training, is very obvious. I'm simply describing scientists as scientists and activists as activists. Nothing remotely condescending about that (As it happens, I believe activists play a very important role in any democracy).

I asserted that

if you look at the stuff that is written by scientists, as opposed to the stuff that's written by activists, you'd find the extent to which climate change is accelerated by human behaviour is in fact reasonably well resolved

Let's back that up a bit. Nasa has provided a long list of scientific societies that take that view (It links to nearly 200 of them in fact).

The conclusions of This paper, which compares the views of different groups and is published in Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, are notable:

It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.

But if you think I'm wrong then here's a challenge for you: A while back in this thread I posted links to articles by the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences and the Australian Academy of Sciences, all explaining the science and evidence behind global warming, and all concluding that global warming is predominantly a man-made phenomenon. Why don't you try and find a major scientific organization that takes the opposing view? (And by scientific organization, I mean a group that represents a large number of scientists, and is primarily focused on progressing science or disseminating results of research, not an organization that is primarily focused on political campaigning). I'm pretty confident you won't find one, precisely because the opposition to the scientific consensus largely comes from activists, not scientists. But here's your chance to prove me wrong... Try and find one.

 

[table38]

But why should I? It's not my theory. It's not my job to disprove it.

That's how real science works; but isn't how this "pseudo science" of global warming works. It's become a belief system, and the elephant in the room, the "emperor's new clothes" or "inconvenient truth" if you like is that it isn't actually getting any warmer. So the warmists whose livelihood depends on this fiction twist and turn and try to redefine warming and rewrite history to pretend they expected the hiatus all along, and cherry pick evidence that supports their discredited view, and won't engage intelligently with the debate.

And trying to detach the so-called "scientists" from the activists is frankly just naïve. We saw exactly that back in 2006 when the BBC decided that (in spite of it's charter of impartiality) it would not give the same air time to the sceptics. They cited meetings with so called climate experts (or "trained research scientists working in the field of climate science" as you put it, who does the training I'm not exactly sure) but then curiously refused to publish the names of the people at those meetings, and then spent £20,000 of licence-payers money defending a FOI request to find out.

What could they possibly have to hide? Unsuprisingly when the list of "climate experts" was uncovered on a "way back" website (which also showed the BBC must have removed the list from it's own site), many of the attendees were not scientists at all; some were activists and one "scientist" was IIRC the Head of Comedy at the BBC.

 

[WessexEclectic]

You may not like this but... When this thread came up, one of the first things I did was talk to a friend of mine who works as a researcher - not in climate science but in a field related enough to have a lot of contact with the research in that area. His immediate response was to tell me to go check out the IPCC reports because, contrary to how much of the media portrays them, they do very accurately represent the scientific consensus.

If you look carefuly, the science basically hasn't changed since the Charney report in America in 1979. Makes you wonder why the IPCC keeps bothering, 'cos it ain't about the science anymore...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

If you look carefuly, the science basically hasn't changed since the Charney report in America in 1979. Makes you wonder why the IPCC keeps bothering, 'cos it ain't about the science anymore...

Well the fact that the basic conclusion from the Charney report hasn't been invalidated presumably reflects that, after over 3 decades of research, no significant evidence has emerged to contradict the basic science, and lots of evidence has emerged to confirm it. That of course does not mean the science is standing still - but rather that the ongoing scientific research serves to deepen our understanding of the details of what is going on. In some ways that shouldn't be too surprising since the basic physics behind global warming (although perhaps not so much for climate change) has been well understood for a very long time .

In that regard, that's not really any different from - for example, that there has been no substantial change in the known rules on how electrical circuits behave, or the basic physics of how the combustion engine works for - oh, I'm guessing, probably a century or so. Of course loads of physics has been done during that time, but the effect of that physics has rather been to massively improve our understanding of the details of what's going on (especially for example, on the nature of the electrons).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

But why should I? It's not my theory. It's not my job to disprove it.

Why should you? Well, just possibly, it might lead other people to take your posts a bit more seriously if you were willing to provide even a small bit of evidence to support your claims, rather then, as you have apparently chosen to do: Decline to provide any evidence at all, and then instead resort to the kind of name-calling against scientists that you do in your following paragraph.

And trying to detach the so-called "scientists" from the activists is frankly just naïve.

Nope. Not naïve at all. It's basic common sense that if you want to find out what science says about something, the people to ask are - umm - the scientists!

If you want someone to repair your boiler, who would you ask? A qualified gas engineer, or a bloke down the pub who has no qualifications but reckons he understands boilers?

If you want someone to tutor your son in maths, who would you ask? A qualified maths teacher, or some bloke down the pub who managed just to pass his 'O' level 20 years ago so he reckons he can do it.

If you're ill and you want medical help, who would you go to? A qualified GP, or some bloke down the pub who reckons all medicine is bunkum and he's set up a website to tell everyone?

Similarly, if you want to know what the science around climate change says... well, hopefully you can figure that one out...

(Of course, that says nothing about what we should do about climate change, once you've understood what the science says - that one is a matter for politicians, hopefully working with engineers, scientists, economists, etc. to figure out what the best solutions are).

 

[table38]

Similarly, if you want to know what the science around climate change says... well, hopefully you can figure that one out...

But the only qualification for a "climate change scientists" seems to be spending time with other climate change scientists. Comparing that to a qualified Gas Safe engineer who has an apprenticeship, structured training and passed an industry-standard exam is just frankly another of your ridiculous claims.

Like I said, Climate Change has little to do with science any more and has become a belief system for all the reasons given in my previous post. And I say that as a qualified scientist.

I do not need to disprove it any more than I need to disprove Scientology.

 

[21C101]

Seems that new allegations of er..editing the fugures by the warmist scientists are surfacing:

Puzzled by those “2014 hottest ever” claims, which were led by the most quoted of all the five official global temperature records – Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) – Homewood examined a place in the world where Giss was showing temperatures to have risen faster than almost anywhere else: a large chunk of South America stretching from Brazil to Paraguay.

Noting that weather stations there were thin on the ground, he decided to focus on three rural stations covering a huge area of Paraguay. Giss showed it as having recorded, between 1950 and 2014, a particularly steep temperature rise of more than 1.5C: twice the accepted global increase for the whole of the 20th century.

But when Homewood was then able to check Giss’s figures against the original data from which they were derived, he found that they had been altered. Far from the new graph showing any rise, it showed temperatures in fact having declined over those 65 years by a full degree. When he did the same for the other two stations, he found the same. In each case, the original data showed not a rise but a decline.

Homewood had in fact uncovered yet another example of the thousands of pieces of evidence coming to light in recent years that show that something very odd has been going on with the temperature data relied on by the world's scientists.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...icked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Seems that new allegations of er..editing the fugures by the warmist scientists are surfacing:




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...icked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html

I doubt there's anything significant here. Yes, the claims sound pretty dramatic. I had a quick look through it and the blog - enough to see that I'm not really qualified to judge the details of the data.

However, one thing immediately stands out. If this guy really has found strong evidence of tampering, or of inaccuracies in the data that would impact climate change models, then frankly, there are dozens of peer-reviewed scientific journals that would be delighted to get their hands on a paper by him showing his reasoning - it'd be the kind of stuff that would get him a lot of prestige and get his name known amongst scientists - provided, of course, that his research is rigorous and properly conducted. The fact that he's chosen instead to just stick it on his blog - and, apparently, go to the press, thereby avoiding any peer review - and therefore any inspection of his methodologies, assumptions, or the statistics involved in his analysis, is a pretty good indication of research that is probably flawed, and would not stand up to a review of his methodologies etc.

Bottom line: All you've got is the word of someone who claims to have found flaws, but is apparently unwilling to submit his work to scientific review, which means basically that you have nothing more than his word. Hardly the kind of thing that ought to merit a newspaper article. And certainly not the way that good scientific research normally gets done.