Happycamper's House of Denial brought to you by ExxonMobil

[Happycamper]

Rayski you are so blinkered. Lots of scientists have at some point worked on something or connected with something that has had some money come directly or indirectly from an energy company.

It does not change my view on their work. What about John Christy? Is he a fossil fuel bitch? He seems to be up there in the credible stakes.

Look at some of the main players in your camp. James Hanson, well I suspect it may be the anti christ there, the Rapture and all that . He is a deeply involved, environmental, political protester. He's getting himself arrested at protests. Do not try to tell me his work is unbiased. Scientists are supposed to skeptical! He is the one saying about tipping points, and because he's connected with NASA (as John Christy is) it get's reported as 'NASA says we are at a tipping point'. What a load of bollocks.


Edit: answered it here for you:
On December 9, John Christy (University of Alabama-Huntsville) and Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) appeared on CNN. Wolf Blitzer asked Christy if he takes money from oil companies.

Christy:

I do not take any money from oil companies, energy companies or any of those.

 

[Happycamper]

Reece It's seems ok to call sceptical people 'deniers', which has obvious Nazi Holocaust Denier connotations. I hear it all the time.

If that is the connotation then it isn't ok. I have never thought of it that way, though. The word denier is certainly apt for some in the skeptic camp. Some deny there is climate change. Some deny that man has any effect on the environment (see some posts by the thread starter). In my mind, I have never associated opponents of climate change with holocaust deniers. I think it is a bit of a stretch to base this on the use of the word denier. It is debatable. However, I do not doubt there are some who do equate the two. They are wrong.



But so what if some equate skeptics with Holocaust deniers? Two wrongs don't make a right. If you want to be taken seriously, by serious people, the "they did it" defense is no defense at all.

The words you used were "modern day Hitler youth." No ambiguity there. The link you provided mentioned "Obama youth." No doubting the comparison there. You say they are "brainwashed." I guess I am brainwashed also. You pretty much said so many posts ago. Why? Because I don't agree with you. Certainly there are issues we agree on. Who is brainwashed in those cases?

Anytime ANYONE compares anything to Hitler or the Holocaust that person immediately loses all credibility. Why? Because Hitler was Hitler. Not Obama, not George W. Bush. No one since Hitler compares to Hitler. And if someone really believes these comparisons, they'll believe anything. And their opinion is not one to be taken seriously. Especially when they say, "They did it!"

Reece double standards are always wrong, the more i read that the more it's like 'so what if they call you a denier because of the holocaust deniers, get over it''. .The thing is most people do not actually deny it, they just don't think our impact is that bad and that we can even make much difference to try to lower the temperature. The amount of money that is going to be wasted on this is disgusting when people still don't have clean water to drink. Lets try and stop the clouds from going across the sky, because thats similar to what we are trying to do here.

And about the children, they are clearly brainwashed, regardless of if they are right or wrong. They have absolutely no interest in any other point of view at all. I've seen many videos they are in. There is another one where the 'Leader' of the youth group at copenhagen tells Monckton that the debate was over 20 years ago (as long as 'the leader' has been alive). Why would he say that, 20 years ago this was just an idea? He is even almost confused/bemused that there is any other possibilty (brainwashing).

It's because he has been brought up to think from day one man is causing global warming, without question, and thats why he can say it was decided 20 years ago. This is what is happening in the schools and i'm sorry if it offends you but it's brainwashing.

 

[reece]

I didn't say "get over it." I said it was wrong. I also said someone else doing something wrong is not a valid reason for you to do something wrong. That's what the "so what" was about. Not, 'so what...get over it." Your continued defense of the indefensible and trying to make it seem as if I am a hypocrite further damages any sliver of credibility you may have had.

I'm not offended. You can compare anyone to Hitler. Just don't expect anyone but loonies to take you seriously. And expect serious people to think you are a loon.

You are either being intellectually dishonest, or you sincerely believe these Hitler comparisons. I don't see any good options.

On this subject, I am writing off everything you say. You have proven that you can't be taken seriously. Anything you have said that was thought provoking is now suspect. And your opinion on other matters, until proven otherwise, should be taken with a grain of salt, considering.

 

[wthanna]

the "hitler youth" comment was not his. It was said by a lawmaker, publicly. I will try to find the link and post it here.

 

[Happycamper]

Wthanna, It's on the link i provided when i said Modern days hitler youth. It is clear lord monckton coins the term as you would have realised if you watched my link....


Reece I am not calling you specifically a Hypocrite, you said you didnt realise the connection. But i see this double standards issue comes up a lot in the global warming camp.

Anyway when you've wound your neck back in, put the Hitler thing behind you, come back and we can carry on the debate

*hopes the comparison of Hanson to the Anti-Christ goes un noticed

 

[Happycamper]

Wthanna did you mean not my comment or not Lord Monckton's? I might have misunderstood what you meant. If someone else said it previously to Lord Monckton would be interesting to see who.

I also always feel on the defensive side here, always defending when quite often someone only ever bothers posting to point out a mistake i've made or something to pull apart. Not everyone posts like that, but it does feel like that sometimes. And somethiing really important like the Greenland Borehole data people won't talk about. So sometimes I get the wrong meaning of things. I dont ever mean to actually personally offend anyone.

 

[wthanna]

Happy Camper - sorry for the confusion. Actually I thought I was somewhat coming to your defense. It seems you were being attacked for the 'Hitler Youth' comment, and I was simply attempting to point out that you were not the one who made the original comment. You are correct about its origin.

 

[Happycamper]

Al Gores speakers contract specifies not only his $300,000 fee but also on top of that he won't take any unscripted questions. His staff have to clear the media, and the only one's they clear are so dumb and sicafantic that they will only ask questions that he can answer. Which isnt very many of them, like 'what's your name'. Beyond that he's well and truely foxed. So of course he won't debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMrxC-qEHb8

Several million degrees 2 km below the surface?

 

[Happycamper]

Did anyone else realise that the IPCC Hockey Stick Diagram, (you know the one where suddenly there is no medievil warm period) was just of Average Northern Hemisphere Temperatures? The Average Southern Hemisphere temperatures are not included.

 

[Happycamper]

It was the issue of false IPCC claims about increasing hurricane activity that led to the resignation from the IPCC of hurricane expert Dr Chris Landsea. Landsea had been an author on the IPCC's 2nd and 3rd reports, but resigned in 2005, saying that the IPCC had become politicized. He objected to lead author Kevin Trenberth giving a press conference saying that global warming would lead to more intense hurricanes. Landsea wrote: "All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. ... It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming

A leading Russian think-tank claims the British meteorological office has been misrepresenting Russian weather data to manupulate the results and suggest rising temperature trends. The Moscow Institute of Economic Analysis alleges the Hadley Center for Climate Change used only a quarter of the data provided by Russia. Analysts for the agency imply that climate experts selectively used incomplete reporting that emphasized a warming effect.

Also upto %40 of Russia's Territory is not represented at all. The claims are a lot of the data has been selectively taken from Urban areas, which are warmer due to urban heat island effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRytr58-3wI&feature=rec-r2-2r-3-HM

IEAs [Institute of Economic Analysis] Andrei Illarionov said the think tanks analysis found that temperature data in Russia used by Hadley-CRU was limited to 25 percent of Russias stations and left out almost half of the countrys land mass.

(The report) is an analysis of what stations have been used, what stations have not been used and, based on this analysis, it looks like the real actual temperature dynamics ... in Russia, that is the increase in warming, have been artificially increased by 0.64 degrees Celsius, Illarionov told IBD

 

[rayski]

It was the issue of false IPCC claims about increasing hurricane activity that led to the resignation from the IPCC of hurricane expert Dr Chris Landsea. Landsea had been an author on the IPCC's 2nd and 3rd reports, but resigned in 2005, saying that the IPCC had become politicized. He objected to lead author Kevin Trenberth giving a press conference saying that global warming would lead to more intense hurricanes. Landsea wrote: "All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. ... It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming

Wow! Landsea was upset with what the Oservations chapter Lead Author - Dr. Kevin Trenberth - said at a press conference in 2005.

A leading Russian think-tank claims the British meteorological office has been misrepresenting Russian weather data to manupulate the results and suggest rising temperature trends. The Moscow Institute of Economic Analysis alleges the Hadley Center for Climate Change used only a quarter of the data provided by Russia. Analysts for the agency imply that climate experts selectively used incomplete reporting that emphasized a warming effect.

Also upto %40 of Russia's Territory is not represented at all. The claims are a lot of the data has been selectively taken from Urban areas, which are warmer due to urban heat island effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRytr58-3wI&feature=rec-r2-2r-3-HM

IEAs [Institute of Economic Analysis] Andrei Illarionov said the think tanks analysis found that temperature data in Russia used by Hadley-CRU was limited to 25 percent of Russias stations and left out almost half of the countrys land mass.

(The report) is an analysis of what stations have been used, what stations have not been used and, based on this analysis, it looks like the real actual temperature dynamics ... in Russia, that is the increase in warming, have been artificially increased by 0.64 degrees Celsius, Illarionov told IBD

The IEA should stick to economics.
From the Met Office:

The World Meteorological Organisation chooses the set of stations designated as essential climate stations that have been released by the Met Office. These are evenly distributed across the globe and provide a fair representation of changes in global average temperature over land. We do not choose these stations and therefore it is impossible for the Met Office to fix the data.

The global temperatures record, HadCRUT has been shown to underestimate the rise in global average temperatures over the past 30 years when compared against a fuller analysis of global temperatures. This analysis includes information from a wide range of sources such as satellites, radiosondes, and sea surface temperature data, but does not include surface observations used in HadCRUT, so is fully independent.

The analysis shows that HadCRUT under-estimates the warming in the Russian region, in particular, because of the limited availability of Northern Hemisphere high latitude observations. The Met Office is keen to publish all underpinning station data as it becomes available. We are already in the process of seeking agreement to release the underpinning data from its owners.

The IPCC made a mistake by not including the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets when forecasting the increases in global sea level:
Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'
How High Will Seas Rise? Get Ready for Seven Feet

Now that the more potent greenhouse gas methane is escaping into the atmosphere global warming could accelerate:
Arctic greenhouse gas emissions jump 30pc

 

[Happycamper]

Rayski you don't seem bothered even when it's proved the IPCC put out misleading and incorrect information. Well thankfully when other people hear about these examples they can take the blinkers off and they do care.

In the news. (and it's great because these stories are slowly but sure;y appearing in newspapers that you would never have dreamed of saying a work against anthopogenic climate change).

The unelected head of the IPCC is making millilons.

Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri
The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

Published: 8:30AM GMT 20 Dec 2009


The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies. Photo: EPA No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as the worlds top climate scientist), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/684...climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html

He will be the first carbon billionaire. Gore is nothing compared to what this guy has got lined up.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCCs policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in carbon trading and sustainable technologies, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international climate industry

 

[Happycamper]

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the worlds top climate-change official.

In 2007, for instance, he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in sustainable technologies, where he was expected to provide the Fund with access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level,

In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of 4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise 100 billion.

In the same year he became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europes largest electricity firms, to promote bio-energy. This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a strategic adviser, and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM trading, whose CEO warned that failure to agree a treaty at Copenhagen would lead to a collapse of the carbon market.

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale Universitys Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, Frances state-owned railway company.

Meanwhile, back home in India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has somehow found time in his busy life to publish 22 books.

Dr Pachauri never shrinks from giving the world frank advice on all matters relating to the menace of global warming. The latest edition of TERI News quotes him as telling the US Environmental Protection Agency that it must go ahead with regulating US carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to pass its cap and trade bill.

It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make concrete commitments to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

As a vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri repeated his call for the world to eat less meat to cut down on methane emissions (as usual he made no mention of what was to be done about Indias 400 million sacred cows). He further called for a ban on serving ice in restaurants and for meters to be fitted to all hotel rooms, so that guests could be charged a carbon tax on their use of heating and air-conditioning. One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

As for TERI itself, Dr Pachauris main job for nearly 30 years, it is so coy about money that it does not even publish its accounts the financial statement amounts to two income and expenditure pie charts which contain no detailed figures.

I think this might be a typo. Must mean developed.

It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make concrete commitments to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

 

[Happycamper]

The IPCC made a mistake by not including the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets when forecasting the increases in global sea level:
Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'
How High Will Seas Rise? Get Ready for Seven Feet

LOL okies Rayski, let me know if the sea level rise gets faster than the inch per decade (which that is even debatable if it's as much), because we are all waiting, but year after year it's just the same. I won't be holding my breath.

Taken from your alarmist article:
A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study Panic over! (The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers)

(As for the other article They are the authors of The Rising Sea, published by Island Press. Wow they wrote a book and that looks like promotion to me.)

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mrner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mrner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mrner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".
When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

I know this rising water level scare is one of the things they have really tried to get people to believe, they have really worked hard with their models. But i think Rayski you should give it up.

In an interview in June, 2007, Mrner described research he had done in the Maldives that had been reported in the documentary Doomsday Called Off. Specifically, he mentioned a tree he had discovered growing close to the shoreline as evidence to support his claim that sea level had actually fallen rather than risen. He also reported that the tree had been deliberately destroyed by a group of Australian researchers who were promoting the IPCC view that sea level was rising

again from Dr Morner

Chapter 11 on "Sea Level Changes" was written by 33 persons; none of which represents actual sea level research. I have now finished a 7 pages review report. It is a most shocking reading; lots of modeler wishes but very little hard facts based on real observational data by true sea level specialists. It seems that the authors involved in this chapter were chosen not because of their deep knowledge in the subject, but rather because they should say what the climate model had predicted. This chapter has a low and unacceptable standard. It should be completely rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the group of true sea level specialists

Doomsday called off: (the documentary metioned above)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5O1HsTVgA

 

[Happycamper]

Even the leader of Greenpeace admits they were giving out wrong information regarding melting of the Artic by 2030 (as greenpeace announced in2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyB_k5turY

Complete scaremongering.

Classic video of Greenpeace at work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3idQKi5EqM

 

[rayski]

Rayski you don't seem bothered even when it's proved the IPCC put out misleading and incorrect information. Well thankfully when other people hear about these examples they can take the blinkers off and they do care.

Yeah, it bothers me when the IPCC is wrong. That's why I'm concerned about the sea level mistake. As for Landsea, he didn't criticize the IPPC's report.

The unelected head of the IPCC is making millilons.

He's accused of making too much money. That's a crime? The article doesn't even offer any figures for his compensation. Where do you come up with millions. They say a fortune. This article is more innuendo than fact.

(The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers)

So what. Do you think Dr. Morner has a model of glacier changes that is complete. No. But he does agree with you. If Morner didn't agree with you, you'd see him for the kook he is.
A letter from John J. Clague, President of INQUA to Yuri Osipov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, shows Morner lied about his professional position.

Dear Dr. Osipov:

It has come to my attention that Dr. Nils-Axel Mrner gave presentations at the seminar on climate change organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences at the request of President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. Dr. Mrner attacked the science ofclimate change, while claiming that he is President of the Commission on Sea Level Change of INQUA.

I am writing to inform you that Dr. Mrner has misrepresented his position with INQUA. Dr. Mrner was President of the Commission onSea Level Change until July 2003, but the commission was terminated at that time during a reorganization of the commission structure of INQUA. Dr. Mrner currently has no formal position in INQUA, and I am distressed that he continues to represent himself in his former capacity. Further, INQUA, which is an umbrella organization for hundreds of researchers knowledgeable about past climate, does not subscribe to Mrners position onclimate change . Nearly all of these researchers agree that humans are modifying Earths climate, a position diametrically opposed to Dr. Mrners point of view.

Sincerely,
John J. Clague
President, INQUA

You accept anything your experts say, even when they venture away from their area of expertise, misrepresent their credentials or benefit financially from entities that want to stop or stall legislation. But if a scientist's views differ from yours, you can easily find a reason to keep a closed mind.
Your experts are about obfuscation. Just like you tried to obfuscate the report on a melting glacier by pointing to the limitations that were acknowledged by the researchers.

 

[vtac]

Since we're talking conspiracies...

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. As this report documents, the two disinformation campaigns are strikingly similar. ExxonMobil has drawn upon the tactics and even some of the organizations and actors involved in the callous disinformation campaign the tobacco industry waged for 40 years. Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:

Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence.
Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.
Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.
Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for "sound science."
Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

Every single scientist referenced here as an expert who disagrees with the science behind AGCC can be linked back to big oil. More than one doesn't believe in evolution, either.

Happycamper, I will re-post this for you. Please read it carefully and respond with your test for falsifiability. If you post in this thread again without doing so I will rename the thread and you won't like it.

Falsifiability is an idea in science that establishes whether a claim someone makes is even worth examining. Heres how it works. Lets say I claim aliens existsthe truth being out there and alland you claim they dont. Its not even worth your time to try to convince me that Im wrong, because no matter what your evidence or reasoning, I can always counter with Well, we just havent looked hard enough.

In fact, with this claim, theres no way even in principle for you to prove me wrongeven if you are correctbecause you could have all the star drives you want and search every rock and gas ball in the universe, and come back to me with that, and I could still sayYou missed a spot. Or They moved when you werent looking. Or Theyre invisible.

Unless I can provide you ahead of time with a test and a hypothetical result that I would accept as disproof of my claim, theres no use arguing with me, because my claim is not falsifiable.

Thats why conspiracy theories arent worth arguing about. They will always be around, because they are not falsifiable. Which is to say: even if theyre not true, that fact cannot even in principle be demonstrated. If you ask the conspiracy theorist: Well, wheres your evidence? they can always claim Its being suppressed. And if you try the other direction and say: Well heres evidence against your claim, they can say It was fabricated. Or biased. Or just faulty.

Please note: Im not saying that the means the conspiracy is wrong. Or that its right. Im just saying if the claim is not falsifiable, then theres no way to ever know, and so its just a lot of wasted effort to even debate it.

I often find myself thinking of this when Im debating hard-line climate skeptics whose claim is anthropogenic global warming is a hoax. No matter what the evidence I provide, they claim its biased, or just plain wrong.

So before we go further, stop and answer the question: What would convincing evidence look like to you?

How about a bunch of really smart people who are experts in the field working with supercomputers and a worldwide network of data sensors for 30 years? Weve got that. Maybe a public statement from the largest, most well-respected scientific body in the world, calling for action? Weve got that [AAAS]. A statement from an honorary scientific body, comprised of the most credentialed and respected scientists in the country, one-in-ten of which have a Nobel Prize? Weve got that [NAS].

Statements from the national science academies of other major countries? Weve got those [Google joint academies climate change]. A statement from a collection of businesses with vested interests in the fossil fuels themselves? Weve got that [USCAP]. Still not good enough? How about if the biggest, most notorious corporate holdout around finally publicly admitted that climate change is a threat, and it finally stopped funding climate skeptic think tanks? Weve got that [Google Rex Tillerson prudent].

Still not enough? How about a statement from the US military, not known so much for its environmental advocacy, but for its bottom line interest in preserving national security above all other concerns? Weve got that [Google Pentagon climate change].

Perhaps it would take unanimous support from anyone remotely connected to the issue, so that no journalist could dig up a single scientist, author, or think tank analyst who is ever willing to say that AGW might be bunk. Well, as youve seen in my video How It All Ends: Nature of Science, well never have that on ANY issue, simply due to the inherently uncertain nature of all science. So wouldnt that make your claim unfalsifiable?

Oh, and my test for falsifiability? My claim is based on very thorough and broadly-based research, and so would need similarly thorough and broadly-based disproof. The main lynchpin would need to be an answer to the question: How could the most trusted and established scientific organizations in the world get it so wrong?

I would need to see persistent and thorough evidence along multiple lines that the both the scientific processes of AAAS and NAS as organizations and the careers of a significant number of their most trusted and established individuals had been corrupted or brilliantly mislead by a tremendously well-organized covert campaign of manipulation. The reporting of the evidence would need to be picked up by the major news networks and hold up under scrutiny for a long period of timesay at least a year.

It would need to be an expose of significantly greater caliber, extent, and expense than any other in history, because the conspiracy would have included more individuals by an order of magnitude than any other cover-up or conspiracy, ever. Remember that AAAS has 144,000 members, and the NAS has been around since 1863. In effect, it would need to be of significant enough import to damage the credibility of the human endeavor of science itself for 100 yearsessentially a paradigm shift away from the trust we place in science by using so much modern technology.

The claim of incompetence or corruption on the part of these organizations and the majority of the individuals comprising them is extraordinary enough, that I would need extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary cover-up. Thats an extraordinary number of extraordinaries. But it isin principlepossible. Which makes my claim falsifiable, and therefore, not dismissable.

How about yours?

 

[Purple-Days]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTUuckNHgc&feature=player_embedded#
Recent data...

 

[billybigpotatoes]

I'm always amazed at the time the press will give to global warming, when surely a more obvious (and immediate) threat to the planet is the growth of the earth's population. In the wise words of George Carlin, the planets fine, its the people who are fucked! If the planets temperature does shift by 2 or even 3 degrees, humanity will not extinct, and will continue to breed until there is no more space. We need alternatives to fossil fuels not to save the climate, which has always fluctuated, but to save ourselves.

Our focus should be to look for alternatives to fossil fuels, that could perhaps take us to other habitable worlds both inside and beyond our solar system. This may sound a bit far out, but its humanity's natural instint (man is naturally nomadic) and also our only hope. We also need better ways of governing ourselves and educating our children - and we certainly need to quit spending on guns and spend on food water education and energy research instead. The question is, will these changes occur before its too late.

At least thats my two cents anyway. Take it easy people!

 

[Purple-Days]

This is way off track Billy, but I read that we (the solar system), is traveling through an ion cloud at the moment (like for the next few 10,000 years or so) and the cloud is about 6000 degrees C. The solar wind keeps it outside the solar system. But talk about warming things up... So interstellar travel is grounded for a while.

Yes, population is the really big problem. But you know how it is... can't tell folks not to breed. They have important genetics to pass on. I mean look around you.

 

[Happycamper]

Since we're talking conspiracies...

I already said there are conspiracy stories for both sides....(in a post to directly to you previously).

Every single scientist referenced here as an expert who disagrees with the science behind AGCC can be linked back to big oil. More than one doesn't believe in evolution, either.

I think you are clearly misunderstanding the main point I am trying to make. There are very few scientists who deny the science behind AGW. In fact, Im having trouble thinking of one scientist who denies the science.

Co2 is a greenhouse gas, put enough of it into the atmosphere and it is more likely to increase global temperatures, than lower it. See, no denial.....


In terms of the evolution thing, i came across one scientist once who thought the world was 5000 years old or something (not someone I would look for information from), but there are a few 'crackpots' on both sides. Look at James Hansen, he's a running joke these days. I dont think it's commonplace for me to drag up scientists who do not believe in evolution as you're making out. If I have it has been an over sight, but please let me know who.

The other point to make is not all my scientists are linked back to oil companies. Dr Pachauri, the head of the IPCC seems to have the strongest ties (if you want to make a point of it), with the oil and energy companies. He is becoming ever increasingly known as Pachauri Piehands.

John Christy does not recieve money from oil companies. Even if you manage to drag up some connection from years ago he had (which I don't think he has) with some company, it still really does not suddenly 'rubbish' all his work.

Happycamper, I will re-post this for you. Please read it carefully and respond with your test for falsifiability. If you post in this thread again without doing so I will rename the thread and you won't like it.

Falsifiability is an idea in science that establishes whether a claim someone makes is even worth examining. Heres how it works. Lets say I claim aliens existsthe truth being out there and alland you claim they dont. Its not even worth your time to try to convince me that Im wrong, because no matter what your evidence or reasoning, I can always counter with Well, we just havent looked hard enough.

In fact, with this claim, theres no way even in principle for you to prove me wrongeven if you are correctbecause you could have all the star drives you want and search every rock and gas ball in the universe, and come back to me with that, and I could still sayYou missed a spot. Or They moved when you werent looking. Or Theyre invisible.

Unless I can provide you ahead of time with a test and a hypothetical result that I would accept as disproof of my claim, theres no use arguing with me, because my claim is not falsifiable.

Thats why conspiracy theories arent worth arguing about. They will always be around, because they are not falsifiable. Which is to say: even if theyre not true, that fact cannot even in principle be demonstrated. If you ask the conspiracy theorist: Well, wheres your evidence? they can always claim Its being suppressed. And if you try the other direction and say: Well heres evidence against your claim, they can say It was fabricated. Or biased. Or just faulty.

Please note: Im not saying that the means the conspiracy is wrong. Or that its right. Im just saying if the claim is not falsifiable, then theres no way to ever know, and so its just a lot of wasted effort to even debate it.

I often find myself thinking of this when Im debating hard-line climate skeptics whose claim is anthropogenic global warming is a hoax. No matter what the evidence I provide, they claim its biased, or just plain wrong.

So before we go further, stop and answer the question: What would convincing evidence look like to you?

How about a bunch of really smart people who are experts in the field working with supercomputers and a worldwide network of data sensors for 30 years? Weve got that. Maybe a public statement from the largest, most well-respected scientific body in the world, calling for action? Weve got that [AAAS]. A statement from an honorary scientific body, comprised of the most credentialed and respected scientists in the country, one-in-ten of which have a Nobel Prize? Weve got that [NAS].

Statements from the national science academies of other major countries? Weve got those [Google joint academies climate change]. A statement from a collection of businesses with vested interests in the fossil fuels themselves? Weve got that [USCAP]. Still not good enough? How about if the biggest, most notorious corporate holdout around finally publicly admitted that climate change is a threat, and it finally stopped funding climate skeptic think tanks? Weve got that [Google Rex Tillerson prudent].

Still not enough? How about a statement from the US military, not known so much for its environmental advocacy, but for its bottom line interest in preserving national security above all other concerns? Weve got that [Google Pentagon climate change].

Perhaps it would take unanimous support from anyone remotely connected to the issue, so that no journalist could dig up a single scientist, author, or think tank analyst who is ever willing to say that AGW might be bunk. Well, as youve seen in my video How It All Ends: Nature of Science, well never have that on ANY issue, simply due to the inherently uncertain nature of all science. So wouldnt that make your claim unfalsifiable?

Oh, and my test for falsifiability? My claim is based on very thorough and broadly-based research, and so would need similarly thorough and broadly-based disproof. The main lynchpin would need to be an answer to the question: How could the most trusted and established scientific organizations in the world get it so wrong?

I would need to see persistent and thorough evidence along multiple lines that the both the scientific processes of AAAS and NAS as organizations and the careers of a significant number of their most trusted and established individuals had been corrupted or brilliantly mislead by a tremendously well-organized covert campaign of manipulation. The reporting of the evidence would need to be picked up by the major news networks and hold up under scrutiny for a long period of timesay at least a year.

It would need to be an expose of significantly greater caliber, extent, and expense than any other in history, because the conspiracy would have included more individuals by an order of magnitude than any other cover-up or conspiracy, ever. Remember that AAAS has 144,000 members, and the NAS has been around since 1863. In effect, it would need to be of significant enough import to damage the credibility of the human endeavor of science itself for 100 yearsessentially a paradigm shift away from the trust we place in science by using so much modern technology.

The claim of incompetence or corruption on the part of these organizations and the majority of the individuals comprising them is extraordinary enough, that I would need extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary cover-up. Thats an extraordinary number of extraordinaries. But it isin principlepossible. Which makes my claim falsifiable, and therefore, not dismissable.

How about yours?

I dont see why your claim is falsifiable. Certainly not in the short or even medium term perspective. The action that we are been spurred on to take NOW is largely based around computer model predictions. The scientists creating these models usually do not work from their own data sets. John Christy is one of the few who actually has created his data sets from scratch.

The very nature of using models to predict the future climate as 'possibilities' certainly from the shorter term perspective makes your claim unfalsifiable, as they are 'a possibility. By the time we get to the end of the century, everyone will have forgotten about these predictions and will be on with the next lot.

large computer climate models are unable to even simulate major features of past
climate such as the 100 thousand year cycles of ice ages that have dominated climate for
the past 700 thousand years, and the very warm climates of the Miocene, Eocene, and
Cretaceous. Neither do they do well at accounting for shorter period and less dramatic
phenomena like El Nios, quasi-biennial oscillations, or intraseasonal oscillations all of
which are well documented in the data.

temperature increases observed thus far are less than what models have suggested
should have occurred even if they were totally due to increasing greenhouse emissions.
The invocation of very uncertain (and unmeasured) aerosol effects is frequently used to
disguise this. Such an invocation makes it impossible to check models. Rather, one is
reduced to the claim that it is possible that models are correct

Research suggests the presence of a major negative feedback involving clouds and water
vapor, where models have completely failed to simulate observations (to the point of getting the
sign wrong for crucial dependences). If we are right, then models are greatly exaggerating
sensitivity to increasing CO2. Even if we are not right (which is always possible in science; for
example, IPCC estimates of warming trends for the past twenty years were almost immediately
acknowledged to be wrong ), the failure of models to
simulate observations makes it even less likely that models are a reliable tool for predicting
climate

From the perspective of the
precautionary principle, it suffices to
believe that the existence of a computer prediction of an adverse situation means that such an
outcome is possible rather than correct in order to take action. The burden of proof has shifted
to proving that the computer prediction is wrong. Such an approach effectively deprives society
of sciences capacity to solve problems and answer questions. Unfortunately, the incentive
structure in todays scientific enterprise contributes to this impasse. Scientists associate public
recognition of the relevance of their subject with support, and relevance has come to be
identified with alarming the public. It is only human for scientists to wish for support and
recognition, and the broad agreement among scientists that climate change is a serious issue
must be viewed from this human perspective. Indeed, public perceptions have significantly
influenced the science itself. Meteorologists, oceanographers, hydrologists and others at MIT
have all been redesignated climate scientists indicating the degree to which scientists have
hitched their futures to this issue.

This point about if something is or isn't falsifiable seems to be another example getting thrown about which is along the lines of 'the debate is over'.
Anyway, to put it briefly: The debate is not over.

 

[Happycamper]

Vtac: Now that i have tried to answer your question please answer mine.

What is your opinion regarding the fact that temperatures (using ice core data) have been significantly warmer in the Artic on a number of occasions in the past yet the ice cap did not melt?(in fact it could be said that looking back at the past 10,000 years, it is a 'cooler period' at the moment in the Artic).

Do you think that Mann's hockey stick diagram is accurate?


http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif

one more question, (because your question was a bit of a head scratcher), Why are flawed models used as a basis for incredibly expensive policy decisions?

edit to change a question.

 

[Happycamper]

removed post as it was about a UN programme and a little off topic.

 

[rayski]

Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

 

[vtac]

Vtac: Now that i have tried to answer your question...

Sorry, I don't see where you even came close to it. The question was "What would convincing evidence look like to you?" Title changed until you answer this directly.

James Hansen, he's a running joke these days.

Really? Please explain.

The other point to make is not all my scientists are linked back to oil companies.

Name one.

John Christy does not recieve money from oil companies.

First page google results:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=903
http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/22/should-you-believe-anything-john-christy-or-roy-spencer-say/
"I don't see danger. I see, in some cases, adaptation, and in others something like restrained glee, at the thought of longer growing seasons, warmer winters, and a more fertile atmosphere."

Dr Pachauri, the head of the IPCC seems to have the strongest ties (if you want to make a point of it), with the oil and energy companies. He is becoming ever increasingly known as Pachauri Piehands.

Looks like a pretty intelligent fellow to me, Nobel prize and all, but that's besides the point. The IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself.

Wouldn't his working for an oil company in the past mean that if anything he's contradicting his bias? I don't understand your logic here. No google results for "Pachauri Piehands".

This is way off track Billy, but I read that we (the solar system), is traveling through an ion cloud at the moment (like for the next few 10,000 years or so) and the cloud is about 6000 degrees C. The solar wind keeps it outside the solar system. But talk about warming things up... So interstellar travel is grounded for a while.

Yep, any significant metor or comet impact would make things pretty unpleasant in a hurry, just ask the dinosaurs. Even if it landed in the deepest part of the Atlantic it could result in a 5km high wave.

If we wanted to find out if a potentially deadly object was going to collide with us in the future, who would we turn to? The biggest and most respected scientific organizations in the world, or a handful of scientists from unrelated fields who have questionable backgrounds?