Is Global Warming a Myth?

[WinePusher]

Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tions.html

A report from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado finds that Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007. But didn’t we hear from the same Center that the North Pole was set to disappear by now? We all deserve apologies from the global warming fanatics who wanted to reshape the world in their image and called those who objected to their wild theories ignorant deniers.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/wat ... p-growing/

1) Does this new information show that Anthropogenic Global Warming is false?

[Strider324]

General question:

What do scientists have to gain from conluding human-caused GW is true?

What do major producers of fossil fuels and their political allies have to lose if man-made GW is gound to be true?

Who has the biggest interest in lying to the public?

+1
Exactly.

To the OP, yes, GW is a Myth.... if you drink the kool-aid of the Oregon Petition - the debunked paper that claimed that 31,000 'scientists' were pretty sure GW caused by humans was bogus. Problem is, less than 30% of those signers had anything above a bachelors degree - I reckon that makes me a 'scientist' as well - and included veterinarians (always a solid group that I personally depend on for knowledge of the climate) as well as those famous atmospheric scientists -

BJ Hunnicutt, Benjamin Pierce, Sherman Potter.....and Jeri Halliwell.

That's right - a Spice Girl is one of the august 'scientists' that signed the petition.

Turns out, less than 2% of these signers were Atmospheric Scientists - the ONLY group with the necessary bona fides to even comment with complete expertise on the subject. You might want to ask yourself - why would an interest group go to such lengths to LIE about GW by promulgating this bogus, dishonest 'petition' and try to pass it off as legit??

So..... here's your option -

Listen to the 99% of actual Climate Experts on the planet that agree that humans contribute significantly to GW - or listen to the lemmings on this board that have been duped by the Petroleum Company paid Engineers that make the loudest noise against GW.

THEY are the ones that have the most to lose if legislation to curtail their endless polluting of our planet really gains traction.

Just follow the money. As our beloved ex-president said - "This ain't rocket surgery".

[nursebenjamin]

I like how you ignored my entire post and focused in on this little bit. The problem is that global warming advocates have not specified anything that would invalidate and falsify global warming. Decreasing temperatures and increasing polar ice caps falsifies the 'theory' in my opinion, since increasing temperatures and decreasing ice caps were used as evidence to back up global warming.

The problem is that you have made this ridicules claim in the past, and I have given specifics on what would falsify the greenhouse gas theory. If you can show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that CO2 does not have greenhouse gas properties (reflects outgoing longwave energy), then you will falsify global climate change. Until this happens, any rational person will conclude that putting increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere will trap more energy closer to Earth’s surface. This increased energy is what is driving global warming and climate change.


<<<“Decreasing temperatures and increasing polar ice caps falsifies the 'theory' in my opinion, since increasing temperatures and decreasing ice caps were used as evidence to back up global warming.�>>>
Opinions are like buttholes: everyone has one. What you keep doing is the favorite trick of the climate change denier. You continue to ignore an overall trend, and point to “noise� or an anomaly within the trend. You are more than missing the forest for the trees; you are missing the forest for the rustling leaves. Your opinion is worthless because you can’t understand the fact that a dynamic system (climate) will not have a simple liner trend.

[center][/center]

[nursebenjamin]

And oil companies, and global warming skeptics in general, do not oppose the idea of global warming. At least I don't. What I oppose are the draconian governmental regulations that the left seeks to implement. Even if global warming was real this would be the worst policy to pursue. Liberals and progressives have created a fake problem and offered a horrible solution, and THAT is what I oppose.

You keep arguing the science behind the greenhouse gas theory. Here you state that you agree with the science, but oppose the idea because you oppose “draconian governmental regulations�.

The thing that we need to understand is that for the denier, it's not about the science. It's about something else. You say, “What I oppose are the draconian governmental regulations that the left seeks to implement.�

That is an emotional appeal and has nothing to do with science. Deniers are by and large scared of anthropogenic climate change being true, rather than objecting to it out of any sort of deep understanding of the science. For them, it has to be false, because if man is affecting climate, someone is going to take something away from them.

These are the same men, by and large, who objected to things like African-Americans getting the vote, equality for women, gay rights, labor rights, health care for the poor/working classes, etc. because they see life as a zero sum game. Any gain in freedom by another group is somehow seen as an assault on their "freedom." They also are scared of people who have the right to tell them "no," whether it is a woman in the bedroom or the black kid taking up "their" seat on the bus back in the 1960's. Similarly, they see a call for a need for collective action to address climate change as the government "taking away" their freedom. As if freedom is equal to driving a huge truck and owning a huge screen television.

So it is not surprising to me you guys cling to the same stale pseudo-scientific canards listed in your replies. Deniers simply don't have the guts to "man up" and face the truth.

[LiamOS]

Does it matter? Have you taken any classes in political theory, economics or business management? Am I required to take a class in a certain subject before I can comment on it? And by the way, since you're so curious, here are the statistics related classes I've taken throughout college:
[...]

In this case, it seems to matter. You're displaying a complete lack of understanding of the theory you're trying to argue, as well as the idea of a correlation itself.

I like how you ignored my entire post and focused in on this little bit.

The rest of your post was a ramble around the point I addressed. Not in a bad way or anything, but it doesn't really add any substance as significant as that which I quoted... I think.

The problem is that global warming advocates have not specified anything that would invalidate and falsify global warming.

A significant anti-correlation would be perfect. Moreover, a significant anti-correlation over a period of about the previous 30 years would be a deathblow to the theory of global warming.

Decreasing temperatures and increasing polar ice caps falsifies the 'theory' in my opinion, since increasing temperatures and decreasing ice caps were used as evidence to back up global warming.

Your arguing that one year invalidates it is objectively incorrect, as the theory is based on a general rise, over numbers of years.


Allow me to explain.

Here is some nice data giving us the global mean temperature anomalies by year: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/table ... s+dSST.txt
Columns 1, and (14+15)/2 give us the sort of data we want.
Quickly reading that into python and plotting it gives this:

There, at the end, you can actually see the 'drastic reversal' you claim invalidates the trend. You can also see that happening every couple of years.

Now, let's try some of this magical rebinning(Add k consecutive values, divide by k), by ten years:

Whoah! What the?!

Clearly, there is a massive warming going on. Consider the chances of such a hugely significant event randomly coinciding exactly with the huge increase in CO₂ emissions etc.

One year fluctuations are almost entirely meaningless. You can see the random nature of them in the first plot, and the second clearly demonstrates how they average out.

[Sonofason]

[Replying to post 8 by Philbert]

Why would cars spiral out of control because the earth's climate got a couple degrees warmer? This is sensationalism. Now, prove that global warming and cooling is not a natural cyclical trend. The entire video seems to be based on sensationalism and speculation. If the oceans should rise, I would recommend moving to higher ground, and of course, one should always remain in control of their vehicles.

[olavisjo]

Now, let's try some of this magical rebinning(Add k consecutive values, divide by k), by ten years:

Whoah! What the?!

Clearly, there is a massive warming going on. Consider the chances of such a hugely significant event randomly coinciding exactly with the huge increase in CO₂ emissions etc.

One year fluctuations are almost entirely meaningless. You can see the random nature of them in the first plot, and the second clearly demonstrates how they average out.

The problem with this graph is that there was no increase from 1940 to 1970.

Did we really stop burning fossil fuels from the beginning of WWII till the Vietnam War? CO₂ may not be the culprit after all, we need to do more research.

[LiamOS]

[Replying to post 76 by olavisjo]

That is an anomaly. It is somewhat explainable in the scale of fossil fuel use, as fossil fuel use has probably been roughly exponential over the past century or so.
Statistical deviation is still also present. Look at the 1900-1910 drop. Clearly that's not going to correlate in any straightforward way with CO₂ emission.

The main point though is that when oil/coal etc. began to be burned in extremely large quantities, there's a very significant rise. Until then any correlation was probably suppressed by general deviation in the trend.


Edit: It's actually also dependent on the bin edges. It's less noticeable if the bins are shifted by 5 years either way. I'd plot that one, but I got rid of the data and script and amn't that bothered.

[WinePusher]

I like how you ignored my entire post and focused in on this little bit. The problem is that global warming advocates have not specified anything that would invalidate and falsify global warming. Decreasing temperatures and increasing polar ice caps falsifies the 'theory' in my opinion, since increasing temperatures and decreasing ice caps were used as evidence to back up global warming.

The problem is that you have made this ridicules claim in the past, and I have given specifics on what would falsify the greenhouse gas theory. If you can show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that CO2 does not have greenhouse gas properties (reflects outgoing longwave energy), then you will falsify global climate change. Until this happens, any rational person will conclude that putting increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere will trap more energy closer to Earth’s surface. This increased energy is what is driving global warming and climate change.

This issue has been pretty much settled. I've pointed out many times in our debates about global warming that there is a significant lag between CO2 levels and temperature rates:

Source 1
Source 2

What this means is that CO2 and temperature rates may be weakly correlated with one another. There is certainly no causation between the two variables.

Opinions are like buttholes: everyone has one.

What a sophisticated and intelligent analogy.

What you keep doing is the favorite trick of the climate change denier.

So now I'm a denier just cause I don't accept this bogus claim about global warming? I suppose you and the tons of atheists on this site are 'deniers' when it comes to God and Christianity.

You continue to ignore an overall trend, and point to “noise� or an anomaly within the trend. You are more than missing the forest for the trees; you are missing the forest for the rustling leaves. Your opinion is worthless because you can’t understand the fact that a dynamic system (climate) will not have a simple liner trend.

Yes, I am pointing to anomalies in this trend because they are relevant. It would be appropriate to dismiss small and insignificant anomalies in the trend. A few temperature fluctuations and erratic weather patterns here and there probably wouldn't discredit global warming. But, we do not have small anomalies. We are witnessing very significant anomalies that blow huge holes in the claim. The fact is that ice caps do not instantaneously grow or shrink. It takes time for the ice to melt or for the water to freeze, and since water is apparently being frozen over that would indicate that the trend is reversing itself from warming to cooling.

[WinePusher]

In this case, it seems to matter. You're displaying a complete lack of understanding of the theory you're trying to argue, as well as the idea of a correlation itself.

To the contrary, you're the one who seems to not understand what's going on here. What you're basically arguing is that we should ignore the so called 'anomalies' in the trend. My question is, why? The only time you ignore a standard deviation is if it is small. These are not small deviations. I am not pointing out infrequent weather conditions or strange temperature patterns. I am pointing to a 60% increase in the polar ice caps along with research that predicts the earth is going to undergo cooling throughout the next several decades. These are not insignificant anomalies, therefore you are wrong to dismiss them right off the bat.

The problem is that global warming advocates have not specified anything that would invalidate and falsify global warming.

A significant anti-correlation would be perfect. Moreover, a significant anti-correlation over a period of about the previous 30 years would be a deathblow to the theory of global warming.

The claim being made is that CO2 (variable A) causes temperatures (variable B). All the evidence shows that these two variable may be weakly correlated, but it is completely absurd to suggest that there is direct causation between the two.

Decreasing temperatures and increasing polar ice caps falsifies the 'theory' in my opinion, since increasing temperatures and decreasing ice caps were used as evidence to back up global warming.

Your arguing that one year invalidates it is objectively incorrect, as the theory is based on a general rise, over numbers of years.

Yes, this point is valid. We should probably wait for more data to come in before doing anything rash. But, of course the global warming environmentalists of the world don't want to wait. They want to implement their green agenda, and they are making seem as if global warming is an imminent threat that will destroy the world. This is NOT TRUE, and this is really what I object to the most.

[Nilloc James]

How much research would be enough? What evidence would convince you?

Also- can we seperatr the politics from the science? Its a red herring.