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Originally Posted by LordFu Well, it was peer-reviewed, then, which is more than can be said for the IPCC report. |
The IPCC was the largest peer-reviewed study in the history of science. The fact that your other study was peer-reviewed, and found to be FALSE in the scientific academy, says that the graph is wrong, not that because it was peer-reviewed it's somehow correct.
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There is no "scientific consensus". Over half of all scientists do not believe global warming is caused by human activity.
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To claim that there isn't a consensus is to ignore the basic facts. It's ironic because the type of consensus we are talking about here is very large. More scientists agree with anthropogenic global warming than just about any other area of science. Short of the physical sciences, global warming has the support of the scientific community along the same order of magnitude as evolution, and they are making themselves unequivocally clear just like they do with the evolution controversy. The problem? Nobody listens. Whenever a scientists speaks out about global warming it gets amplified by everyone else. The phenomenon is known something as the "air horn" phenomenon -- when a scientists ever disagrees with a scientific consensus he ends up getting all the attention from the media, or creationists, or global warming deniers, or whoever else.
Naomi Oreskes found after examining 928 papers published between 1993 and 2003 absolutely no articles whatsoever published in any science journal that contradicted the scientific consensus on global warming. According to Oreskes, scientific research against global warming must then be "vanishingly small" (though not non-existent).
Science editor-in-cheif Donald Kennedy even observed, "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science." ("An unfortunate U-turn on carbon,"
Science, vol. 291, p. 2515.)
The IPCC has released a couple summaries of current climate research and they concluded that the Earth is warming very rapidly and that the cause for this is rising greenhouse gases from human activity.
These statements have been endorsed by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK). (
http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 )
"The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world?s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change, doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider such doubts justified.
There will always be some uncertainty surrounding the prediction of changes in such a complex system as the world?s climate. Nevertheless, we support the IPCC?s conclusion that it is at least 90% certain that temperatures will continue to rise, with average global surface temperature projected to increase by between 1.4 and 5.8oC above 1990 levels by 2100 1. This increase will be accompanied by rising sea levels, more intense precipitation events in some countries, increased risk of drought in others, and adverse effects on agriculture, health and water resources." (this is slightly outdated)
A further source explicitly endorsing the IPCC signed by many of the same people, including the Untied States, can be found here:
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
On top of the IPCC, many other institutions have published the same conclusions. These include, but are definitely not limited to, the National Academy of Science(
Nat'l Academies Press Collection: Global Warming/Climate Change Collection ), NASA (
Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2005 Summation ), The National Center for Atmospheric Research (
NCAR Education & Outreach Homepage ), The Environmental Protection Agency (
Climate Change | U.S. EPA ), and the American Meteorological Society (
Climate Change Research: Issues for the Atmospheric and Related Sciences Adopted by the AMS Council 9 February 2003 ).
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Even if there was, consensus has no bearing on science. There is also a consensus that God exists, if those are the standards you're going to use.
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There is a difference between something like a popular consensus or political consensus and a scientific consensus. A scientific consensus is the collective conclusion of the scientific community -- what scientists generally agree about a topic.
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The data is intentionally manipulated. This applies to everything from how temperatures are measured, to how historical data is compiled. The hottest year in U.S. history was 1934, for example. The "little ice-age" that occured in Europe is frequently removed from graphs and figures.
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Neither is true. You're confusing 1934 with a recent NASA y2k mixup. The actual change in US surface temperature was less than 1%. Globally this change was negligible (less than a thousandth of a percent). 1998 (CRU) and 2005 (NCDC) are still the two hottest years on record.
RealClimate » 1934 and all that
The little-ice-age is not misrepresented either. I have no idea where you're getting this from; a citation would be nice.