Global Warming Doubters

I’m certainly new to the topic, having recently heard a contentious debate in a public policy making meeting. However, I find a couple things interesting about your post here. You mention having looked at specific arguments against human caused global warming and never finding any credible, but I suspect there are some that are taken to have the most credibility that you could at least mention. That Richard Courtney is then ‘debunked’ by a linked discussion not primarily of his scientific arguments but of his credibility seems an odd companion to your own implicit appeal to authority.

That global climate change occurs, I readily believe. That we are now experiencing warming, I readily believe. That there is the possibility that such change is the product of irresponsible human behaviors I readily believe. But when people start getting into stronger causal connections and recite data that shows association (and then equivocate to cause), I don’t believe. When consensus statements from largely political arms of scientific organizations (oh yes, every group has their politics) pretend there is no merit to the arguments of detractors, I become very skeptical indeed. The opening line from the dot earth site quotation says, “The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming,” while balance itself seems necessarily a very subjective and unmeasurable thing. Imbalance in the climate could be completely natural and part of a balance on a larger scale than we can neither measure nor appreciate. This is not me digging for some quibble so that I can hold fast to my bias, this is me saying something that seems so plainly true that it leads me to believe that much of the statement in question is over-stated and unreliable.

I’ll keep studying up on this and I appreciate your post.

I’ve not seen deceptive presentations by the scientists. The media of course does it’s usual incompetent sensationalist job. But that’s a whole other rant.

L, the reason he was debunked by credentials is that the list was being passed around as the argument, “look, here’s a list of credentialed climatologist who disagree.” The best way to show that such lists are problematic is to show that some of the names are deceptive. Now in doing this one isn’t saying that such lists are that relevant argumentatively. Nor is one making an appeal to authority.

I should add that not all appeals to authority are fallacious. If nearly all scientists think there is human caused global warming and claim to have investigated the arguments then that’s a reasonable appeal to authority.

The best argument from authority is that in peer reviewed papers of the past decade there is unanimity that there is global warming.

KLC, you want to read the Working Group II and Working Group III reports from the IPCC (www.ipcc.ch). You also might want to take a look at these two charts which show the effects of increasing temperatures.

There are two characteristics of the problem. The first is that the danger increases non-linearly with temperature, 1 degree C might not be much of a problem, 5 is a disaster. The second is that there are huge procrastination penalties if we don’t start taking action now. Things would have been a lot cheaper if we had started ten or twenty years ago.

Mr. Courtney, has flaunting his “expertise” for many years. He is a bag of wind. You might also want to look at a fellow by the name of Tim Ball.

What is so harmful about heeding a warning about global warming? would it not be better to be safe than sorry? (such as in Pascal’s wager). What would be so detrimental in taken steps to minimize the obvious impact we have on the environment as it relates to our survival. This issue is more often political than scientific, and i am often confused at why?

Clark: “The best argument from authority is that in peer reviewed papers of the past decade there is unanimity that there is global warming.”

The weakness with the peer review process is if the peers are all global warming true believers they will have a natural prejudice for articles which reflects their views. True belief begets true belief.

Rich

That depends upon the bias being such that any factual evidence being discarded simply because they didn’t like the idea. There’s no indication that’s going on to such an extent that no article in any journal has disagreed. It might explain a few things but not the unanimity that is current.

But Rich, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying its amazingly unlikely that no one could be more objective.

Regarding consensus. There have been paper studies such as the ones discussed at Deltoid.

Regarding your examples, could you be more specific about which paper in Geophysical Research Letters you are referring to? And what specifically was claimed? There have been some who’ve critiqued elements of certain patterns while still accepting a man-made warming link. An author at least would be helpful. Right now it’s too vague to really say much.

Ditto for the Nature article. Any claim that there’s been no warming since 1998 is just plain false but I suspect the article is much more careful in its claims. One particular measure of warming has 1998 as the warmest year but if you decontextualize that it is very misleading. That’s also one measure among many. If you’re referring to the figure I think it’s also for American temperatures and not planetary temperatures. (And of course some regions can cool while others warm) If you’re referring to the figure I suspect 2006 either matched or beat it or was slightly (0.04 degrees) cooler.

Regarding “the other Nature article” saying we’ll not return to global warming until 2015 exactly how is that not an endorsement of global warming? And how, on that basis, do you say it is cyclical? Does the article say it is cyclical or is that an inference you are making?

It’s not at all clear to me that any of the papers you mention (since there’s no reference) actually reject global warming at all. Color me very skeptical.

Regarding the “hockey stick” some of the assumptions in the original Mann calculations are now thought not to be accurate however other methods actually arrive at the same answer. To suggest that Mann’s hockey stick is “the bedrock of [global warming]” is just quote odd to me. It’s anything but. It might have been one of the original reasons to become concerned but it is not the basis for current thinking. In any case as I said there are other more robust calculations that give the same general implications. To say that there is concensus is not to say that all work is infallible. As I’m sure you know that’s just never true in science. When different methods and researchers all arrive independently at the same answers then that is quite a bit more significant. No one experiment or calculation has meaning in science. It is other peers doing confirmations (and corrections) that results in the progress of science.

Independent of all that Mann’s basic thesis has been confirmed. See for instance the NRC Study on Mann et. al. If the criticism you bring up is Wegman’s (it’s hard to say exactly what you’re asserting without references) then he just didn’t go as far as I think you are saying.

Regarding the petition you mention. Could you tell me which (of many) petitions you are referring to? Once again it’s almost impossible to respond without some reference. I did a google for the number you referenced but couldn’t find any petitions. As you may be aware there have been fraudulent petitions on this issue in the past. If the petition you are referring to is the Oregon Petition then you might wish to reconsider it’s implications. (I suspect this is what you are referring to) Here’s a discussion of the original petition. For a discussion of the newer petition check out this discussion.

OK, it was caught by the spam filter. My apologies. I only check in about once a week unless someone says something. (The spam filter is actually one of the big reasons I wanted to move away from my own blog software at the old blog - I got stuck manually deleting spam once too many times)

Your comments are now #11. I’ll respond a little later as I don’t have time right now.

Clark: We’ve been coming out of an ice age for the past 10,000 years. What has to be shown is not merely that there is warming, but that the warming is greater than we could account for by the normal cycle of change given the prior cycles of the earth. We’re about .02 degrees above what is projected given that cycle, but I don’t believe it is statistically significant. There are regular cycles of heating and cooling determined largely by the earth’s orbit (elliptical or more circular periods).

So the challenge is to show that human projects have had really much of an impact on the temperature accounting for these regular cycles. Since the cycles are not always stable, it is hard to predict. However, I do know that literally every climatologist makes money from government grants to study the climate and there is a lot more money if there is an urgent scare. That makes me begin with a skeptical edge.

The Petition

Clark: “Probably the best debunking of the petition was done by Tim Lambert.”

I find Tim Lambert to be a very good sophist who needs to be read closely. Unfortunately we are not all very rigorous in what we say. The dispute is not over ‘global warming’ but ‘anthropogenic global warming’. Sometimes AGW is just called ‘global warming’. This is a discrepancy Lambert jumped on. He quotes the study:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Lambert states: “So they weren’t saying that it was a lie or wasn’t happening, just that there wasn’t good evidence that it would be a catastrophe.” And they weren’t. But it is quite besides the point. AGW position is that manmade carbon dioxide is altering the climate which will eventually result in catastrophes. The signers of the petition are simply saying there is no scientific evidence that this is happening. If one understands the issues and can put statements into context, one can see there is no misrepresentation, regardless of what Lambert says.

Lambert then complains, “Unfortunately, the “research review” they were sent is not a research review of global warming evidence, but just a review of the evidence against global warming.” Since it is the assertion of the petition that there is no convincing scientific evidence for AGW how can the petitioners be provide with non-existent evidence of AGW?

Lambert then makes a totally unsupported assertion: “How was the “review” able to claim cooling? Simple. The authors presented the satellite data (which at the time showed slight cooling, but now shows significant warming). Where is evidence of this correction? If he is talking about his own attempt to correct the data, comments immediately following his comments point out that his corrections are methodologically incorrect. [I

Denials by professional organizations, unless the members have been polled, sounds more impressive than it actually is. A look at the AGA report shows that the statement was not a polled position but rather the opinion of a few leaders (7 or 8).

I’m not at all surprised that Lambert would oppose the petition, he’s a true believer. In other words, he uses AGW as a trump. Here is another true believer:

“That we are all facing a huge problem is no longer a matter for dispute, as far as I am concerned. I am willing - as I did yesterday in my blog, by publishing Marc Morano’s mail to me as a comment - to let detractors have a voice. What I refuse, is to engage in a discussion with them, and waste precious energy, in what I see as a pointless exercise”

This is not a scientific stance. It is a true believer’s stance. Lambert is not climate scientist. He is a computer scientist. I am therefore very skeptical of what Lambert asserts is true.

No Global Warming Since 1998.

Your own graph shows, when averaged, no increase in global warming since 1998. Now superimpose on those years the steadily increasing output of anthropogenic caused CO2 world wide. Such a graph would show steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 but no increase in GW. This suggest a lack of correspondence between the two.

Argo Probe

Clark: “While the paper you linked to acknowledges that there is no cooling it also notes no significant warming between 2004 and 2006. But for a 2 year period that’s not that significant.”

It is really three years. In the report is states between 2004 through 2006 (2004, 2005, 2006). Nevertheless, your critique is still correct: a 3 year period is not that significant. On it’s own that would be correct. However, if you combine that with your graph which shows no increase in global warming you find that they support one another. That is significant. We now have two sources indicating no increase in GW. This comes at a time when all acknowledge increasing anthropogenic atmospheric CO2. This certainly highlights a state of dissonance between increasing CO2 and increasing GW.

Spencer.

I think Spencer should be challenged. Not because I think he’s wrong but because that is how science works. Out of this give and take truth arises. We are not working with absolutes here we’re working with science which is often murky. I don’t think Spencer’s work proves or disproves AGW because I don’t believe AGW has ever been effectively proved.

One more thing about global warming. Most global scientist, I believe, will tell you that there is global warming. They will say there is global cooling. These are natural cycles the earth goes through. I think the 31,000 scientists are saying there is no evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 has affected that natural cycle. There is no consensus concerning AGW because there is no evidence of AGW.

I stumbled upon: “New Peer-Reviewed Study Finds ‘Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence” (’http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/908) And you wonder why I haven’t bought into AGW.

Rich

Regarding #21, the point is for Blake and yourself to be correct everyone would have to do this. But that is just extremely hard to believe - especially given the nature of peer review and criticism. Once again I can see this happening. I just can’t see it being true of every paper.

Regarding Spencer, I agree a response to Spencer would be worthwhile. I should note that just because I didn’t find one doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Also it may well be that people are still re-evaluating his empirical evidence. The reason people are skeptical about Spencer is because in the past his empirical evidence has been overthrown on repeated testing.

The issue of human influenced global warming is of course the debate. The point is that it is there that there is overwhelming consensus (which is not, of course, to say there aren’t doubters - clearly there are but they make up an amazingly small minority)

I’ll get to your other points later.