No comment on the shifting pole?

I did.

When the paper was released there really wasn't very much peer-review explicitely against global warming. Only recently have such studies been released. Naomi Oreskes even states in the study that articles against the consensus probably do exist, they just couldn't find any.

Btw the idea that science journals don't publish anti-consensus view papers is hardly true. In the couple cases where people have complained the papers contained very little quality. It speaks more against the global warming deniers that not only is their work not good or credible enough to get published, but they then complain about it afterwards because nobody is taking them seriously (and one can only wonder why). This is of course another example of the air horn phenomenon. Despite thousands of papers supporting the consensus view the 10 or so which don't agree tend to get amplified a bit, even though w/i peer-review scientists have found them to be untrue (as is the case with that graph you posted earlier -- you really don't know the title of that study? It's a great illustration of how the peer-review system weeds out bad science).You do realize that ironically junksciece.com is itself junkscience? Your website is what is know as "Internet bunk." It is a website that appears to contain credible information but really doesn't. I can forgive you though because the appearance and double speak would lead you to think that it is. If you look around though the website has historically made claims like "smoking tobacco is perfectly healthy" and other similarly outrageous claims, all the while appearing to be a legitimate resource.

Steven Milloy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Internet Bunk The Junk Science Page
George Monbiot on climate change and Big Tobacco | Environment | The GuardianThe hockey stick graph is a rather old study and is really fairly unimportant to climate science. It just made a lot of news attention when it first came out. The hockey stick graph is more than likely incorrect.

But why does it matter? There are numerous other reconstructions that show the same general conclusion. Some aren't as "hockey-looking" but they all point to the same conclusion that current warming is very unusual and that it is happening very rapidly. So it's not really a matter of this one study being incorrect; you have to look at the bigger picture.


The area around the medieval warm period and little ice age is still not completely understood and this is probably where the biggest area of controversy around the hockey graph is. We do know that the medieval warm period mostly affected the northern hemisphere and was largest during the summer, but that it also probably had a more limited effect elsewhere. Of course it wasn't nearly as warm then as it is today. This last fact is something that cannot be disputed, even if the hockey stick graph is wrong.


Here's a graph of several temperature reconstructions from that time period, and as you can see, they all support the same general conclusion. It is this conclusion that's important, not necessarily which particular study is most correct because frankly no one method is entirely perfect.



So taking pokes at the hockey stick graph wont get you anywhere. I agree that it probably is a little too "strait" where the medieval warm period and little ice age are, which is why it looks so much like a hockey stick, but this really doesn't matter all that much. This study is ancient, and Mann has sense done some new studies that actually contradict his first. It just received a lot of publicity when it first came out, which is why it seems so popular, but science has moved on sense then and has created more accurate reconstructions (like those above).

Your assertion that scientists deliberately ignore the little ice age is how ever incorrect. In the one case where a study seems to indicate that there was no such thing it was a simple mistake, and the idea that this is widespread is completely false.You're misunderstanding me. Arguing against global warming on the basis of the IPCC or Al Gore is a straw man because the IPCC and Al Gore != Global warming.

Your assertions are interesting, but I don't consider them fact. You can find evidence of institutional bias in any scientific field. It's not something specific to global warming. Look at cancer research, and vitamin C and D, for example.

I was posting the results of their survey. I wasn't aware of their checkered past, but, in regards to the specific survey, I believe they have a point. There is no consensus on what an ideal climate is or what the consequences of the current warming trend are.

And, you're misunderstanding me. I'm not arguing that global warming isn't occuring. I'm arguing that the impact of CO2 is overstated and not nearly as well understood as we're led to believe. There is evidence that limiting CO2 emissions is ineffective and extremely costly that is not taken into consideration.

The major proponents of regulations on CO2 emissions have questionable motives. I don't think that, that fact is a strawman.

Road to Bali

"Road to Bali

Peter Foster, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, December 06, 2007

The fate of the Earth hangs in the balance in Bali, but the issue is not whether humanity will succumb to a "climate crisis," or how the international community might craft a successor to the tattered Kyoto Accord (Let's call it KyoTwo). The real theme of this United Nations gabfest -- like that of its 12 predecessors, and of the hundreds, if not thousands, of related meetings --is whether globalization and trade liberalization will be allowed to continue, with a corresponding increase in wealth, health and welfare, or whether the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such) will succeed in using environmental hysteria to undermine capitalism and increase their Majesterium. Any successor to Kyoto will be rooted in hobbling rich economies, increasing the poor world's resentment, unleashing environmental trade warfare, and blanketing the globe with rules and regulations that benefit only rulers and regulators. Bali is not about climate; it symbolizes the continued assault on freedom by those who seek -- or pander to -- political power under the guise of concern for humanity.

Just at the point where Marxism was being consigned to the dustbin of history, the more or less concealed power lust that had fed it found a new cause in the environment. The fact that the UN's 1992 Rio conference followed hard on the collapse of the Soviet Union represented almost the passing of a poisoned baton. Capitalism had once been the enemy because it was alleged to make people poor. Now it was the enemy because of the alleged side effects of making them rich. The emissions of carbon-based industrial society would lead to a climate in turmoil:We would be beset by Biblical plagues of floods, droughts and monster hurricanes."

Well yeah, of course there isn't. It doesn't really matter too much what the climate is -- be it hot or cold or whatever else, species adapt. The problem isn't how hot the Earth is though, the problem is in the fact that the climate is changing. If you have any sort of basic biology background I'm sure you know that climate change -- be it up, down, or diagonally tends to be "bad." Dying species in and of itself doesn't have to be labeled "bad," of course. The problem is in our society as humans -- historical speaking changes in climate have usually been bad news. There are many problems with global warming -- flooded cities etc and a shift in ecosystems that we have become dependent on. Scientists know that at the very least global warming isn't a good thing.CO2 is definitely the largest factor on the climate. It's not the only factor, however. Current warming is something like 90% anthropogenic. It's harder to tell at the moment due to the fact that these sorts of things build on themselves overtime, and there are different feedback processes in the climate. We can look historically though at our influence in the climate.



Another study I found interesting was one published in the Journal of Climate, "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" ( http://limate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf ). Depending on the data used the solar contribution to global warming was 16% or 36% between 1950 and 1999, and the figure is only this high because of anthropogenic factors which cool the Earth such as particulate pollution (global dimming). The highest factor by far was CO2, then of particulate aerosol pollution which caused significant cooling, and there were no other significant non-anthropogenic factors identified besides the sun and a small cooling factor from volcanic activity.There's no need to politicize everything. I'm not entirely sure what kind of conspiracy they're tooting their horn about, what I got was they thought other economic factors were more important than global warming. Even if there are other problems facing us today, this doesn't change all the negative things that are going to happen because of global warming.

Furthermore whether or not global warming is "dangerous" has nothing to do with the fact that humans are primarily responsible for it.

When they are attempting to pass laws to restrict human activity, then it has already been politicized. It's not something I have done, myself, or could undo. That is the current reality of the situation. If they were pushing for a voluntary reduction in carbon emmissions, I wouldn't be opposed. And, some companies are voluntarily reducing emmissions.

Particulates are an interesting topic. The cleaner our emmissions become, the more direct impact they have on global-warming, according to the study. It's a lesson in unintended consequences.

You keep stating that CO2 is the "largest part" of global warming, which I have pointed out, is not a fact. It's a hypothesis, nothing more or less. It's not an unsupported hypothesis, but it's not a fact, either. Global warming is hypothesized to be anthropogenic.

Like I said its a whole mess of things, its probably just a cycle that happens through earths history . TO much to read here.

The industries have not volunteered up to now. What makes you think asking them to volunteer would make a difference? In fact, they have been asked behind closed doors for a while now.

The thing is you cannot debate the scientific aspects of climate change with a political argument. That's why political arguments against al gore as a person have nothing to do with the validity of global warming.

Of course there are political implications resulting from climate science, but that doesn't mean you can argue from the political side over scientific matters. Feel free to debate politics about specific political issues resulting from global warming, but not about the science itself. If anything you should use the science to back up your political arguments, and not the other way around.People who claim climate science is politicized and try to argue from that angle tend to argue from a non-scientific perspective and purposefully try to put political spins on their arguments in an attempt to discredit certain scientific findings. But as I've pointed out, a scientific grievance must necessarily be addressed with scientific findings, not liberal or conservative arguments.It's a theory. I hope you know what a scientific theory is. Anthropogenic global warming also happens to be one of the most well-supported theories in modern science. We know more about human interactions on the climate than we do many other areas of science. The climate is extremely complex so there are areas of uncertainty in climate science (much like there are in evolution or any other field of science), like what effects global warming will have on ecosystems and climate feedbacks etc, but the mathematics behind radiative forcing are very well established and this is how we know humans are causing global warming. We can look at all the different independent factors effecting the climate, measure their radiative forcing values, and then see based on the actual numbers which ones are having the greatest influence. CO2 happens to be the largest influence on the climate. Ghgs together make up almost 90% of all positive forcing on the climate, with smaller anthropogenic factors coming from things like land usage and about a 10% forcing from the sun (currently as in the last 15 years, historically as I posted above from Journal of Climate the numbers are a little different).Climate cycles are not some sort of mysterious phenomenon to scientists. From analyzing the previous 5 million years we know glacial periods come in cycles every 25k, 40k, and 100k years. Right now according to historical cycles the Earth should be getting cooler, and the Earth has indeed been getting cooler for roughly 8k years, as you can see here:




What's unexpected is the fact that the Earth is now getting warmer. We have essentially turned the climate 180 degrees in reverse.