Originally Posted by Bronco80

I find it hilarious that there is "Data Unavailable" for Wyoming and North Dakota, two of the top fossil fuel-producing states.

I wouldn't get too excited yet, though. There are still plenty of steps the GOP can use to delay public opinion further. If AGW denial no longer becomes untenable, they can still say things like even though it exists, the costs of mitigating it are too great, or that there may even be positive effects. Hopefully this too proves to be untenable, but I'm not ready to conclude as much yet.

AGW denial has become a political shibboleth intended to determine who accepts the political orthodoxy that emanates from right-wing elites and whom they consider traitors. It is a test of loyalty that may become the difference between getting a miserable life in a horrible world or a horrific life in a horrible world for all but elites who are the only ones still able to afford air conditioning in a world of 50C (122F) temperatures. People who can accept that can accept other self-destructive policies that ruin workers yet enrich and pamper elites. People who can't do so might find themselves in brutal labor camps until they accept the entire political and cultural orthodoxy or die of exhausting work on starvation rations.

The GOP could well be the velvet glove over the mailed fist of those who, if they got away with it, could consign tens of millions of people to death in a world of diminished capacity even of food production -- and would convince even their victims that their miserable fates are the result of personal faults -- or else. Elites do not promote pseudoscience and superstition among the masses except as tools of exploitation and demographic 'culling'.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Appreciated.

As Apollo isn't going to do his homework assignment, I might as well post the answers. The record warm year near the turn of the millennium was 1998. The two cycles that reached their hottest point together creating that hot year were the solar cycle and a monster El Nino. We are now back near the top of the solar cycle. An El Nino is indeed projected in the near future.

There is an Atlantic component that is keeping the surface temperatures lower than they should be (see this blog-post for the Cliff Notes version), but one that can and probably will be overcome and reversed by a strong El Nino. The best guess for now: surface temperatures will rise quickly once the status quo ante is restored.

Interesting article on solar power:

Scientific American ‏
Booming Rooftop Solar Power Suffers Growing Pains http://bit.ly/1uMUyBz
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...leaner-energy/
…"Even as an "expensive" alternative, solar is the fastest growing electricity source in the world. Globally, more than 100 gigawatts of solar power have been installed to date, including some 400 million solar panels, the majority in Europe where subsidies are highest. And although investments were down in 2012—just over $140 billion globally—total installed capacity was up, thanks to the declining technology prices. Solar power may be finally beginning to follow a 25-year path similar to that of now ubiquitous cell phones—from an oddity in the 1990s to world domination in the next decade or so.”...

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

AGW denial has become a political shibboleth intended to determine who accepts the political orthodoxy that emanates from right-wing elites and whom they consider traitors. It is a test of loyalty that may become the difference between getting a miserable life in a horrible world or a horrific life in a horrible world for all but elites who are the only ones still able to afford air conditioning in a world of 50C (122F) temperatures. People who can accept that can accept other self-destructive policies that ruin workers yet enrich and pamper elites. People who can't do so might find themselves in brutal labor camps until they accept the entire political and cultural orthodoxy or die of exhausting work on starvation rations.

The GOP could well be the velvet glove over the mailed fist of those who, if they got away with it, could consign tens of millions of people to death in a world of diminished capacity even of food production -- and would convince even their victims that their miserable fates are the result of personal faults -- or else. Elites do not promote pseudoscience and superstition among the masses except as tools of exploitation and demographic 'culling'.

Sorry, when people say "The discussion is over. You must just BELIEEEEVE" and when dissenters start being persecuted for doing real science,
I think we need to watch out. Thats not the sign of science, thats a sign of a religious fervor:

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_...l-warming.html

Read the work of real scientists, not scientists who also have a hidden ideology and desire to create an "Emergency" so that they can scare
people into creating a one-world government headed up by Queen Connie (Hedergaart). One of the most frightening images I ever saw was
her strutting up on the stage at the Copenhagen UN climate conference. Thats what you need to be afraid of, not fictional AGW.

So, do you think the persecution of Murry Salby is morally acceptable? Why didn't the AGW alarmists just refute his claims with scientific
reason. Persecuting people by doing petty things like cancelling his return plane ticket and leaving him stranded is not what scientists do -
they should discuss and address evidence.

Real scientists support freedom of speech, especially in scientific matters and don't conspire to ban dissenters from publishing their work for others to consider and debate.

Religious fanatics like ISIS do these kinds of things and I would content that, although the AGW alarmists have not yet killed anyone, they
share the same mentality as ISIS.

I'm sorry, I don't trust them any further than I can throw them and certainly wouldn't take their work for it and destroy our economy just
to satisfy their religious (and thats all they are) beliefs.

While I posted references to a CNN article centered on a Siberian methane creator, Real Climate posted a "wait a minute" report, How much methane came out of that hole in Siberia?

Originally Posted by RealClimate

Siberia has explosion holes in it that smell like methane, and there are newly found bubbles of methane in the Arctic Ocean. As a result, journalists are contacting me assuming that the Arctic Methane Apocalypse has begun. However, as a climate scientist I remain much more concerned about the fossil fuel industry than I am about Arctic methane. Short answer: It would take about 20,000,000 such eruptions within a few years to generate the standard Arctic Methane Apocalypse that people have been talking about.

This is why I prefer Real Climate as a source for global warming information rather than the popular press. It's a blog put out by professional climate scientists. While it's not peer reviewed as a formal journal has to be, by not peer reviewing they can respond quickly to bogus or exaggerated reports. Most of the time the bogus reports are put out by the denialist community, but they also correct when the alarmist community goes wild.

This is apparently one of those cases. This is not to say that I'm not concerned about methane. It might be that the Siberian creator is an early one, and that we'll see a lot more in the future. It would have to be a lot lot more, though, in order to declare that Doomsday will occur next week.

This also reflects the difference between propaganda and science. Propaganda or religion, one can proclaim faith in one's beliefs. The result is a lot of hot air, perhaps contributing to the global warming problem. Science... they take measurements, perform calculations, create models and such like.

Originally Posted by Bronco80

I find it hilarious that there is "Data Unavailable" for Wyoming and North Dakota, two of the top fossil fuel-producing states.

I wouldn't get too excited yet, though. There are still plenty of steps the GOP can use to delay public opinion further. If AGW denial no longer becomes untenable, they can still say things like even though it exists, the costs of mitigating it are too great, or that there may even be positive effects. Hopefully this too proves to be untenable, but I'm not ready to conclude as much yet.

While I cannot offer any insight about Wyoming, in North Dakota's case they're probably too terrified that their most dangerous criminal - a computer hacker by the name of Michael Damron - is now back on the loose, to even think about climate change and who/what is causing it.

Originally Posted by takascar2

Sorry, when people say "The discussion is over. You must just BELIEEEEVE" and when dissenters start being persecuted for doing real science,
I think we need to watch out. Thats not the sign of science, thats a sign of a religious fervor:

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_...l-warming.html

Read the work of real scientists, not scientists who also have a hidden ideology and desire to create an "Emergency" so that they can scare
people into creating a one-world government headed up by Queen Connie (Hedergaart). One of the most frightening images I ever saw was
her strutting up on the stage at the Copenhagen UN climate conference. Thats what you need to be afraid of, not fictional AGW.

Global warming is real. Although much of the carbon dioxide comes from such causes as forest and brush fires, that is relatively stable. The balance between respiration and photosynthesis is stable. Volcanic eruptions? There's nothing that we can do about those when they happen except to get away from the gas and the pyroclastic flows.

The burning of fossil fuels is not so stable. It may have had some reductions, typically in the early 1990s when the former-Socialist economies quit treating coal and oil as if they were 'free goods'. But as more people get the car bug and drive cars instead of taking the bus, fossil fuel consumption rises.

As temperatures rise, then so does the proclivity of people to use air conditioning. With air conditioning there is no free lunch. One can cool an apartment only by pumping heat into the environment -- and generating heat to pump the hot air out of a building. Have temperatures soaring past 35C, and people will need cooling anywhere other than very dry deserts.

So, do you think the persecution of Murry Salby is morally acceptable? Why didn't the AGW alarmists just refute his claims with scientific
reason. Persecuting people by doing petty things like cancelling his return plane ticket and leaving him stranded is not what scientists do -
they should discuss and address evidence.

If it is as the story is reported, then the mainstream scientists did wrong. Maybe there is more to the story. I would not expect mainstream physicists to have much tolerance for people who assert that relativity is bunk. Mainstream biologists will surely not suffer those who push creationism. Mainstream historians have no use for Holocaust deniers.

Real scientists support freedom of speech, especially in scientific matters and don't conspire to ban dissenters from publishing their work for others to consider and debate.

But they have peer review which often establishes what is acceptable and what is not. Such keeps science more honest than almost any other activity. It is possible to get papers that violate conventional knowledge published -- such as those that push young-earth creationism. Maybe there are history journals in which one can publish the idea that George Washington is a mythical character. If I were doing serious research I would not want to cite such journals.

Religious fanatics like ISIS do these kinds of things and I would content that, although the AGW alarmists have not yet killed anyone, they
share the same mentality as ISIS.

Pure hyperbole. There is no scientific Inquisition. Just don't try to tell me that the Grand Canyon is the result of the Noachic flood, lest I ridicule the idea. Nobody is going to be beheaded, buried alive, or burned at the stake.

I'm sorry, I don't trust them any further than I can throw them and certainly wouldn't take their work for it and destroy our economy just
to satisfy their religious (and thats all they are) beliefs.

No religion there.

Real scientists talk in numbers.

Greenland and Antarctica are home to the two largest ice sheets in the world, and a new report released Wednesday says that they are contributing to sea level rise twice as much as they were just five years ago.

Using the European Space Agency's CryoSat 2 satellite, the Alfred Wegener Institute from Germany has found that western Antarctica and Greenland are losing massive amounts of ice.

"Combined, the two ice sheets are thinning at a rate of 500 cubic kilometres per year," said glaciologist Dr. Angelika Humbert, one of the authors of the AWI study, in a press release. "That is the highest speed observed since altimetry satellite records began about 20 years ago."

The report, published in the online magazine The Cryosphere, says the CryoSat 2 satellite measured over 200 million elevation data points in Antarctica and 14.3 million in Greenland to track the loss of ice mass over the last several years. "When we compare the current data with those from the ICESat satellite from the year 2009, the volume loss in Greenland has doubled since then," said Humbert. "The loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has in the same time span increased by a factor of three."

Somewhat encouragingly, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is gaining mass. However, those gains are very modest and don't make up for the loss of ice in West Antarctica and Greenland. Greenland is losing 350 cubic kilometers of ice annually, mostly from its southwestern coast, and accounts for almost 75 percent of the total volume lost each year. Together, the flows from Antarctica and Greenland could cover the entire Chicagoland area with 600 meters of ice each year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5697998.html

350 cubic kilometers. A block of such ice would be 7 km high, long, and wide -- and would allow another 7 cubic kilometers. Pure coincidence in those four 7's.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

If it is as the story is reported, then the mainstream scientists did wrong. Maybe there is more to the story. I would not expect mainstream physicists to have much tolerance for people who assert that relativity is bunk. Mainstream biologists will surely not suffer those who push creationism. Mainstream historians have no use for Holocaust deniers.

But this is where the whole religious analogy comes into play. If the methods, evidence and logic that the skeptical scientist is conducting is sound than the climate change scientists should not be intolerant of their studies. They should be subject to the same respect and peer review process as everyone else. Using words like "denier" sounds a bit too much like "nonbeliever" or "heretic". These are words that should never enter a scientific debate.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

But this is where the whole religious analogy comes into play. If the methods, evidence and logic that the skeptical scientist is conducting is sound than the climate change scientists should not be intolerant of their studies. They should be subject to the same respect and peer review process as everyone else. Using words like "denier" sounds a bit too much like "nonbeliever" or "heretic". These are words that should never enter a scientific debate.

I am no scientist. Most of the denial is funded by people who have a financial stake in the denial of global warming. One can follow the money trail.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I am no scientist. Most of the denial is funded by people who have a financial stake in the denial of global warming. One can follow the money trail.

Prove that "most" "denial" (there is that disparaging word again) is funded by people who have a financial stake.

Not just one or two examples. List all of the studies over the past, oh, 20 year that tend to refute or cast doubt on the AGW theories and
then prove (or at least show some evidence) about which ones are funded by such folks and then do the math that shows that 50%+1 or
more of them fall into this category.

Making statements like yours without proving it is very unscientific. Again, its about data and numbers - you need to show your work
when talking about science, including statements that more than half of the AGW-skeptical studies are phoney.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

Using words like "denier" sounds a bit too much like "nonbeliever" or "heretic". These are words that should never enter a scientific debate.

I completely agree.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I am no scientist. Most of the denial is funded by people who have a financial stake in the denial of global warming. One can follow the money trail.

You can say the same thing about the global warming scientists. They are funded by government grants and special interest groups who have a vested interest in a lot of the proposed "solutions" to global warming. I'm not a climate scientist either so I'm not qualified to debate the scientific aspects of this issue, but I've noticed that the global warming supporters tend to, more often, resort to condescending bullying tactics and that reflects poorly on their side's ability to prove their case based on logic and evidence.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

You can say the same thing about the global warming scientists. They are funded by government grants and special interest groups who have a vested interest in a lot of the proposed "solutions" to global warming. I'm not a climate scientist either so I'm not qualified to debate the scientific aspects of this issue, but I've noticed that the global warming supporters tend to, more often, resort to condescending bullying tactics and that reflects poorly on their side's ability to prove their case based on logic and evidence.

Most governments have a vested interest in not having their most populous regions and their prime cropland inundated. So do most people. The only undeniable benefit of AGW is the opening of sea lanes in the Arctic Ocean.

The opposite of AGW would be a return of glacial conditions. Nobody wants ice sheets forming in the Scottish Highlands and advancing on Edinburgh and Glasgow, either, let alone the transformation of upper-middle latitudes into worthless tundra in such places as Dublin, Paris, London, Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow.

Slow AGW, which may still be inevitable, might allow people to adjust. Rapid AGW is an unmitigated disaster.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

You can say the same thing about the global warming scientists. They are funded by government grants and special interest groups who have a vested interest in a lot of the proposed "solutions" to global warming. I'm not a climate scientist either so I'm not qualified to debate the scientific aspects of this issue, but I've noticed that the global warming supporters tend to, more often, resort to condescending bullying tactics and that reflects poorly on their side's ability to prove their case based on logic and evidence.

I can't disagree about comity, which should be the basis for all intellectual study and analysis. Without it, tribes form, and each tribe tries very hard to control its narrative, often without regard to counter evidence. That said, there are some knowns that should be moved pretty high on the indisputable list. We have satellites that measure the radiation arriving from space and re-radiation back into space: the planet is gaining energy. We may not know the details of what becomes of the excess heat, but we know its here somewhere. We know that the seas are rising, and the only reasonable causes involve heat effects. We also know that the Arctic is clearing, that Greenland and Antarctica are calving huge segments of their ice sheets, and species drift is already occurring - not incidentally including crops.

So evidence of change is strong. We can speculate about cause, and AGW is the strongest contender. We can argue about solutions, of which there may be few to none. We can also argue about the details or speculate about future trends. So far, the AGW crowd has done the best science here. That doesn't make AGW certain, just highly likely.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

I completely agree.

Would one have a problem with using the word "denier" to describe those who tried to show that tobacco use had no link to cancer and other diseases?

Public relations and science are usually incompatible.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Would one have a problem with using the word "denier" to describe those who tried to show that tobacco use had no link to cancer and other diseases?

According to teh wiki, that is a normal part of the scientific method:

For example, the concept of falsification (first proposed in 1934) reduces confirmation bias by formalizing the attempt to disprove hypotheses rather than prove them.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Originally Posted by takascar2

Sorry, when people say "The discussion is over. You must just BELIEEEEVE" and when dissenters start being persecuted for doing real science,
I think we need to watch out. Thats not the sign of science, thats a sign of a religious fervor:

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_...l-warming.html

Are you really unaware of the fact that the Heartland Institute is not in the business of informing people? It's primary purpose is to generate propaganda for whom ever holds their purse strings.

This article refers to "Nobel Prize winner" Ivar Giaever, as if his opinion matters in the slightest. He is a materials physicist. He doesn't have the slightest bit of training or expertise on climate science.

Might want to take a look at their next so-called martyr's record. Murray Salby Not exactly the paragon of academic skill they make him out to be.

Read the work of real scientists, not scientists who also have a hidden ideology and desire to create an "Emergency" so that they can scare
people into creating a one-world government headed up by Queen Connie (Hedergaart). One of the most frightening images I ever saw was
her strutting up on the stage at the Copenhagen UN climate conference. Thats what you need to be afraid of, not fictional AGW.

So, do you think the persecution of Murry Salby is morally acceptable?

Persecution? He mismanaged his grant money and didn't live up to his his employers' expectations. None of that is persecution and none of it has anything to do with his research claims. As to his science, it ain't all it's cracked up to be.

EDIT: Found another discussion of Salby's science. I really like a quote from an actual climate scientist discussing Salby's work face to face with him:

I was lucky enough to attend Murry Salby’s talk at the IUGG conference in Melbourne. The thesis is not quite so simple as a correlation between CO2 rise and short-term temperature variations, because he found corroborating evidence in the change of CO2 slope over time. This made the argument not so easy to dismiss out of hand, although Salby was extremely careful not to draw any conclusions in his public presentation.

It was quite good sport to play “spot the flaw” in real time. Fortunately, the talk was the last of the session, and both Alan Plumb and myself chatted with him right afterwards. Aside from whether a statistical argument makes physical sense, it also must hold water statistically by being applicable beyond the time frame of model development. In discussing what his model would mean for past variations of temperature and CO2, it eventually became clear that he believed all paleoclimate data that supported his statistical analysis and disregarded all paleoclimate data that countered his statistical analysis, even though the latter collection was much larger than the former.

Eventually I realized that if 0.8 C of warming is sufficient to produce an increase of 120ppm CO2, as Salby asserted, then the converse would also have to be true. During the last glacial maximum, when global temperatures were indisputably several degrees cooler than today, the atmospheric CO2 concentration must have been negative.

That was enough for me.

Why didn't the AGW alarmists just refute his claims with scientific
reason.

They have. On numerous occasions. You are just unaware of that fact because the Heartland Institute does not inform people. It just spouts propaganda.

Persecuting people by doing petty things like cancelling his return plane ticket and leaving him stranded is not what scientists do -

Correct. Scientists had nothing to do with his plane ticket cancellation.

they should discuss and address evidence.

They do. His evidence is unconvincing and has some fundamental problems. See above.

Real scientists support freedom of speech, especially in scientific matters and don't conspire to ban dissenters from publishing their work for others to consider and debate.

His work has been published. It was then roundly refuted by the world's experts on the relevant topics.

Religious fanatics like ISIS do these kinds of things and I would content that, although the AGW alarmists have not yet killed anyone, they
share the same mentality as ISIS.

So, Godwin's Law seems to have developed a corollary?

I'm sorry, I don't trust them any further than I can throw them and certainly wouldn't take their work for it and destroy our economy just
to satisfy their religious (and thats all they are) beliefs.

Never mind the fact that your entire economy is fundamentally built upon and is constantly infused by scientific research.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

But this is where the whole religious analogy comes into play. If the methods, evidence and logic that the skeptical scientist is conducting is sound than the climate change scientists should not be intolerant of their studies. They should be subject to the same respect and peer review process as everyone else. Using words like "denier" sounds a bit too much like "nonbeliever" or "heretic". These are words that should never enter a scientific debate.

You are being sucked in by the propaganda. They are deniers. Most of their upper-echelon of "experts" are perfectly aware of what the science is and what the evidence indicates. But their daily jobs are not to push science. Their job is to obfuscate and deceive. Publicly they deny what they deep down know to be true. The "grunts" in this war, like takascar, are trained to just repeat the denials they have been given. Calling the group and their members deniers is absolutely appropriate. This isn't a scientific debate. It's a social and political debate and one position is centered around repeated denials of the actual science.

Originally Posted by takascar2

Prove that "most" "denial" (there is that disparaging word again) is funded by people who have a financial stake.

Not just one or two examples. List all of the studies over the past, oh, 20 year that tend to refute or cast doubt on the AGW theories and

Please provide your list of the studies you think (meaning you have been told by others) "tend to refute or cast doubt on the AGW theories." It won't take more than a few minutes with Google Scholar and Real Climate to show exactly how each of your studies is mistaken, out of date or has been thoroughly refuted.

then prove (or at least show some evidence) about which ones are funded by such folks and then do the math that shows that 50%+1 or
more of them fall into this category.

Your most recent article was authored by Rupert Darwall.

Rupert Darwall read economics and history at Cambridge University, after which he worked at the Conservative Research Department and then in the City as an investment analyst and in corporate finance. He was a special advisor at the Treasury under Norman Lamont (alongside David Cameron).

In the private sector he has advised a number of companies, including Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, in addition to writing articles on politics and economics for publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

He is the author of Paralysis or Power? – The Centre Right in the 21st Century (CPS 2002), A Better Way to Help the Low Paid – US lessons for the UK tax credit system (CPS 2006), and Reluctant Manager – A report on reforming Whitehall (KPMG, 2005). He has also written three 4,000-6,000 word essays for the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, the third of which is being published this autumn.

This text comes directly from the Heartland Institute's website.

Can you show me were exactly Mr. Darwall attained his expertise in climate science and climate scientists?

Care to have a discussion about the primary financial backers of the Heartland Institute?

Making statements like yours without proving it is very unscientific.

You wouldn't recognize "unscientific" if it crawled up your nose and died.

Again, its about data and numbers - you need to show your work
when talking about science, including statements that more than half of the AGW-skeptical studies are phoney.

Says the guy who references Heartland Institute propaganda as a credible source.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

According to teh wiki, that is a normal part of the scientific method:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Please don't try to fake your understanding of the term falsifiable. You look like an idiot.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

You wouldn't recognize "unscientific" if it crawled up your nose and died.

This may be an exaggerated claim. Perhaps we should perform the experiment?

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

You can say the same thing about the global warming scientists. They are funded by government grants and special interest groups who have a vested interest in a lot of the proposed "solutions" to global warming.

If global warming were not occurring those climate scientists would still be funded by governments and interest groups. That's how all science works.

I'm not a climate scientist either so I'm not qualified to debate the scientific aspects of this issue, but I've noticed that the global warming supporters tend to, more often, resort to condescending bullying tactics and that reflects poorly on their side's ability to prove their case based on logic and evidence.

When the case has been "proved" already and your opponent continues to deny it, what then Socrates? Deniers have been shown the evidence and had their lies exposed over and over again and the next week or in another forum they will spout off the exact same lies. More "logic and evidence" is not what is called for in their case. The only effective strategy is to call a denier what they are. Call them deniers repeatedly. Make sure that any witnesses to the "discussion" are completely aware of the fact that the denier is lying, yet again. Call that bullying if you want but you do grave insult to people who have suffered real bullying. Deniers are just dicks who whine about being called on their dickishness.

Originally Posted by B Butler

This may be an exaggerated claim. Perhaps we should perform the experiment?

We could substitute a small rodent as an initial trial run, just to work out the kinks.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Please don't try to fake your understanding of the term falsifiable. You look like an idiot.

Please see my sig line.