Sigh… we need to educate more people about how technology works, not just that it does.

It’s interesting in general that most people could understand and agree with an episode of CSI whereby they figure out the composition of some piece of tape and compare it with the roll it came from, and say, “they match”. And yet, can’t seem to figure out that we can do the same with isotopes in the atmosphere with ones from underground.

Easily explained:

First, the CSI scientists are sexy TV scientists, so they are instantly more credible than real-life scientists.

Second, the CSI scientists don’t require that people make any effort to save energy or to be less wasteful in general. So, accepting what they say requires no sacrifice (for instance, you don’t have to limit your use of aircon, or buy a refrigerator that is smaller than a house in England (honestly, what do you USAians keep in those monsters?), or drive a car with an engine smaller than 4 litres, and so on).

AGW scientists have still failed to prove that CO2 is responsible for the moderate rise in temperatures,

No-one is claiming that CO2 is solely responsible, but it is a major factor. Earth’s IR emissions show this.

What has been proven beyond reasonable doubt is that a collection of human activities that increase the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are the most likely causes – and the only plausible causes – of the recent rapid warming. Natural causes have been sought and none has been found that can account for the rapid warming that we observe.

Therefore, the only plausible conclusion (based on the best data we have available) is that human activities are responsible for GW. Ergo, AGW is real.

Your semantic argument is trivial and seems designed to waste people’s time.

Stop arguing about it and get on with doing something about it.

nor have they proven their hypothesis that the rise is irreversible,

Whoever claimed this? Where and when?

Of course the change is reversible – all we have to do is to stop burning fossil carbon, and to stop turning limestone into calcium oxide (the first step in the production of cement). Of course, the timescale over which the ensuing reversal may then happen could vary dramatically, depending on the significance of various positive feedbacks, and on whether or not we have reached a tipping point. For example, if deep ocean methane clathrates are thawing and releasing their methane into the atmosphere, then the warming will be substantially more and will last longer than would otherwise have been the case.

or even bad.

So, what part of the several metres’ rise in sea level is not “bad”? The best-case scenarios anticipate about a 2-metre rise in mean sea level, which will be a serious problem for low-lying nations such as Bangladesh, the Netherlands and the Maldives, and for coastal cities such as London and New Orleans. We should expect, by around 2100, the rise in sea level to have been more than 2 metres from the 1970 mean.

Or, which part of the alterations of rainfall patterns is not “bad”?

It’s interesting in general that most people could understand and agree with an episode of CSI whereby they figure out the composition of some piece of tape and compare it with the roll it came from, and say, “they match”. And yet, can’t seem to figure out that we can do the same with isotopes in the atmosphere with ones from underground.

‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’ …
‘Of course this isn’t the end of scepticism,’ she said. ‘To say that is the biggest mistake he [Prof Muller] has made. When I saw he was saying that I just thought, “Oh my God”.’
In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously. They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.

Prof Muller insisted that neither his claims that there has not been a standstill, nor the graph, were misleading because the project had made its raw data available on its website, enabling others to draw their own graphs.

However, he admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view, this might not be ‘statistically significant’, although, he added, it was equally possible that it was – a statement which left other scientists mystified.

‘I am baffled as to what he’s trying to do,’ Prof Curry said.

AGW scientists have still failed to prove that CO2 is responsible for the moderate rise in temperatures, nor have they proven their hypothesis that the rise is irreversible, or even bad.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with your car crash analogy. While it is clear enough to make the point that action – even if that action is late in coming – is worthwhile, it implies that HIRGO is catastrophic for all of us if left unchecked. And I’m not yet convinced of this. Yes, the impact of HIRGO will be substantial, and it will be detrimental, and it seems likely today that there will be – sooner or later – widespread famine resulting from HIRGO-induced rainfall shifts, but I also think that there will be some regions that don’t suffer so very much.

As I noted before, we’re (metaphorically) in a car that’s off track and going to hit a wall. Apply the brakes (IOW, act to mitigate HIRGO now) and we hit that wall at thirty or forty miles per hour. We’re hurt but not too badly. Refuse to brake and we hit that wall at a hundred miles an hour and are probably killed or very seriously injured.

The debate, to call it that, is why has the Earth warmed, and, is the warming really a problem??

Settled about 10 – 15 years ago.

A) Caused mostly by human activity.
B) Yes, it will most certainly be a problem*.

* Unless we do something about it.

- In case you missed it, “Deniers” do NOT deny that that Earth has warmed.

In case you missed it, until very recently (the last year or two), a lot of them did. There are a few who still do (IIUC), although I don’t recall who and don’t have time to look it up just now.

If you trust NASA’s rocket engineers to make rockets – and their medical staff to ensure the astronuats are medically fit to fly in them, why then wouldn’t you trust NASA’s climatologists to tell us what the climate is doing?

Also seconds (once again) most of what TheBlackCat, Chris Winter & ND have said above here.

@192. 1berto Says:

Why dont show the pre 50s changes? Would be funny to watch the ‘explanations’ of the bigger increments in temperature in a time we dont have 10% of today’s emissions. And yes there are data from that years…

Which is very well known, pretty well understood and can be found recorded in things like the Hockey Stick(s) diagram(s) that climatologists have presented already. Yes, there’s lots of historical and pre-historical data
and, yes, it says what we’re experiencing now is unprecedented and indicates HIRGO is real and of grave concern right now.

If the warning is caused by men im not certain…

Why not? If you’re doctor told you you were overweight because you were eating teh wrong unhelathy foods for example would you deny that too? Or if your dentists said you’d being eating too much sugar and that was causing you cavities? Sometimes it does pay to listen to the experts and take prevenative or corrective measures.

But im certain that if it is the governments couldnt save us…

Not alone no. It’ll take science and industry and *us* people acting together a lot more. Additionally, because of thermal inertia – the climate time lag effect – we’re going to be facing some pretty serious climate change problems whatever we do today or tomorrow.

But its better to hit the brakes and crash into the wall at thirty miles an hour rather than NOT hit the brakes and slam into the wall at a hundred miles per hour instead. Isn’t it? Do you really not see the analogy here?

@184. Joseph G : “This video (indeed, just the title) explains the DBAD principle.”

Thanks.

“It comes down to a matter of who you trust. So, until such time as this subject is moved out of the political arena and strictly into the scientific, I will not be able to take any study, from either slant, seriously. This subject should have never been politicized to begin with. Now it will take time to remake it into something that the public will judge as being legit.

Hi Mike,
That really is what it comes down to for me, too: whom do I trust besides myself, my family, and my cat? On matters of climate science, I trust the climate scientists – not to be infallible, of course, but to do a competent and scrupulous job. I don’t really look to the media, the politicians, etc., for any kind of clarity on scientific issues. Half of those guys probably sat in the back of their science classes and hated them.

But a lot of studies have been done on various aspects of climate change. For instance, the IPCC studies involved hundreds of scientists. The claim that the scientists involved were just trying to protect their grant money does not accord with my own introspection – I really enjoy doing the best job I can, and my experiences with other people indicate that many of them feel the same way.

“The Berkley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) results are “news” because????…- In case you missed it, “Deniers” do NOT deny that that Earth has warmed.”

Ah, but genuine skeptics are often more scrutinous than what are often referred to by the somewhat condescending term “deniers.” Dr. Muller and some others had sincere doubts about how the data in some previous studies were collected and/or processed. The result is interesting to many members of the scientific community although perhaps not to you. It is the Berkeley Group’s effort to provide a more rigorous analysis.

On a completely different level, I am reminded of a line from the movie “Dirty Dancing” (OK, maybe it’s not exactly Shakespeare). Baby’s father, as part of an apology to another character, says, “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”

Ok, now that I have reminded myself of Shakespeare, how about, “This above all else, to thine own self be true.”

This study is not “peer reviewed”

1. It is in review. That means it was submitted to a journal and is being reviewed. They released the initial findings upon submission, as is common in physics (the leader of the study has a physics background) in order to get wider critiques of the methodology. In other words, the whole point of discussing the study is to get additional peer review.

2. The authors are long-standing criticis of climatology and the methodology they used to conclude global warming was happening. They started this study under the impression they would refute it or at least show significant problems with the methodology used before. They were quite surprised that they essentially validated earlier results (or in fact exceeded most of them). Note that denialists were thrilled when they first heard about the study because they thought these people, due to their biases, would refute global warming.

the use of non-peer-reviewed studies has been one of the “Believer’s” most emphatic argument’s of “refuting” sight-unseen studies by “Deniers.”

You obviously didn’t read the OP, since Phil states quite clearly that the study cannot be fully trusted because it has not been peer reviewed yet at least twice. This is opposed to denialists who take results that will never be submitted for peer review as the unquestionable gospel truth.

This could hardly be considered a “sight-unseen” study, the full papers submitted to the journals (all 4 of them) and all of the raw data and code are readily available online for critique. If there is such a big flaw with the methodology than feel free to point it out to the researchers, I suspect they would be thrilled.

So, in this case, why pounce on such a non-peer-reviewed study? Obviously becuase it gives the answer desired.

As I explained, the important thing isn’t the answer so much as who was asking the question. These are not strong supporters of global warming, quite the contrary.

But what of that answer…they found the Earth is warming–or at least ony about 2/3′s of the land mass…conceding that about 1/3 the land mass is cooling!!! That’s actually a better answer for “Deniers” as they never doubted or debated the Earth has warmed.

Ah, I see. You obviously do not know what an “average” is. That explains a lot. Come back when you have passed 3rd-grade math, then we can talk.

Further, the BEST study leave out the vast majority of the planet–a whopping 70 percent or so, the area covered by the oceans, was NOT addressed.

You obviously didn’t bother to check the website either, or you would know they plan on doing the oceans next. They are working through various temperature records and validating them one at a time. This one was done first since the land surface record is the most informative (if you don’t know why, re-take 4th grade science and learn what “heat capacity” is).

In case you missed it, “Deniers” do NOT deny that that Earth has warmed.

You obviously haven’t read this discussion, since many people here have done exactly that. Also, if you don’t disagree with the results of the study, why are you so intent on refuting it? At worst it is a pointless waste of time.

BEST did not address WHY only some 20 percent of the Earth’s surface warmed–they only noted what every knows & concedes is that it has warmed a bit (that “some 20 percent” is the roughly 2/3′s of the land mass observed to be warming AND actually studied out of the whole of the planet’s surface)

They didn’t address why anything happened. In fact that specifically avoided analyze anything related to causes. The purpose of this study was to do one thing and one thing only: check whether the methodology used to develop the land temperature record was working.

NOT ADDRESSED: WHY has about 2/3′s of the 3/3′s of the land mass warmed? CO2 & other human activity, something else, etc?????

Yes, that was not the purpose of this study.

IN OTHER WORDS, NO NEW NEWS FROM THAT REPORT.

Uh, yeah, Phil said the exact same thing. You really didn’t read a word of the OP, did you?

Why dont show the pre 50s changes?

You obviously didn’t bother to even glance at the paper, since they explain that they consider the data from that period to be unreliable. Of course they do show those figures, they just don’t put much weight on them because of this.

Note that the research are long-standing critics of global warming who set out with the expectation that this study would refute it, so it would be grossly dishonest to claim that they are cherry-picking .

Would be funny to watch the ‘explanations’ of the bigger increments in temperature in a time we dont have 10% of today’s emissions.

If you had looked at their paper yo would see that they actually show a slower rate of temperature increase prior to 1950, although with larger uncertainties.

If the warning is caused by men im not certain… But im certain that if it is the governments couldnt save us…

I am sure you have detailed refutations for all the evidence we have provided that humans are primarily causing it. I won’t hold my breath waiting, though…