Global Warming is a hoax.

[Papist]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1305224170' post='2240550']
Fortunately source matters so discerning science from fluff is often pretty straight forward. Check out some of the stuff on previous pages for answers to your questions. It's all there.
[/quote]
So then, are you the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler who determines which sources are science and which are fluff? Let me guess, all the ones that you disagree with are fluff. In that case, NASA must be fluff.

[Amppax]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1305247574' post='2240693']
So then, are you the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler who determines which sources are science and which are fluff? Let me guess, all the ones that you disagree with are fluff. In that case, NASA must be fluff.
[/quote]

I have a feeling from a lot of what L_D posts (btw i'm not just talking about in this thread) that he is much more knowledgeable scientifically then many of us... not that that means that he is necessarily right. I just think that he is probably knows more about this then most of us. I could be wrong, but that is just what I have observed.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Amppax

[MithLuin]

*is a science teacher *



The amusing thing about authority, [b]Ice nine[/b], is that science itself takes such a dim view of the concept. Doesn't matter how famous/prestigious you are...if your ideas aren't born out by actual data/observations/facts, sorry! Moving on, now....

There is all that talk about only being able to see because of standing on the shoulders of giants, and of course everything is named after the person who came up with it, so there [i]is[/i] some respect for authority. It's just...not really viewed as an argument within the sciences to quote an authority.

I realize that, in reality, famous names and famous schools/institutes certainly get more attention and respect than some guy off on his own. And some stuff that survives peer review is still junk.


The fear-mongering of the media is just sickening. Sure, there are ways in which data has to be presented to make sense to people, but....leaping at random conclusions isn't really the way to go about it.

And I wish they understood what 'reasonable doubt' means in science...it's not a courtroom. You'd think scientists were running around proving things and certain of all their answers, the way some reporters tell it. Science is investigating the unknown, and there's always a lot we don't know!


Venus is not irrelevant because it's atmosphere is unaffected by living critters. I mentioned it as an example of what happens when your atmosphere is composed of mostly CO[sub]2[/sub], and the answer is...it traps a ton of heat. In other words, I wasn't bringing it into the equation to demonstrate the idea that humans changed anything, but rather to demonstrate the contribution of CO[sub]2[/sub] to the greenhouse effect. Denying that reality would involve denying the thermal properties of carbon dioxide...as well as the direct evidence of Venus' atmosphere.

Deforestation is actually a bigger issue than the burning of fossil fuels, but of course the industrial revolution drove both of those outcomes, so they are linked, not unrelated.

[img]http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~rjs/oco/ipcc_global_mean_forcing.jpg[/img]

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' timestamp='1305237916' post='2240646']
"unconvincing" "not compelling"

well, it's atl east plausible to say it's unconvincing that man made is the cause. we know there's lots of things the cause of warming isn't... including volcanoes sun etc etc, if you buy what the science suggests. but that leaves us asking 'what is the cause'. it could be something else. but we know CO2 is increasing significantly and causes warming, etc so it seems like the best take is that it *is* convincing.
[/quote]

Also a science teacher


I am saying that this warming is absolutely no more rapid than the last warming, and we certianly were not pumping out huge amount of greenhouse gases in A.D 1200. Does Co[sub]2[/sub] retain more heat than N or O sure. Can the sea absorb vast amounts of heat, also yes. There are all kinds of things that could cause this warming, the Earths climate is extremly complicated.
We have cycled on and off in temp for the last 14000 years no more or less dramaticly than we are now, but this time is so much more catastrophic than all the others? Further, please explain the Co[sub]2[/sub] source for Medieval Warm Period, what exactly where all those people doing in the 9th century?.

If in fact it was not Co2 that cuased that rapid change,or the other rapid changes mentioned above thenit is obious that manythings can and [i]have[/i] cause this kind of change, thus it is reasonable to assume that something that [i]HAS [/i] caused it in the past, repeatedly, is causal now. In fact, it is irresponsable to assume that there is a novel cause until established causes are eleminated. Doing the opposite,assuming that there is a novelcause to an established phenomenon is extremely poor science.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Don John of Austria

[Nihil Obstat]

What's cobalt doing in the atmosphere?
[img]http://pt.chemicalstore.com/images/thumbnails/cobalt.gif[/img]

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1305261179' post='2240731']
What's cobalt doing in the atmosphere?
[img]http://pt.chemicalstore.com/images/thumbnails/cobalt.gif[/img]
[/quote]


Shut up....my shift key is acting funky,as is my space bar.... IthinkIam going tohave toget another keyboard, and that saddens me.

I Swear Ikeepholding downmy shift and it just isnt working a lot of the time.....


by the way cobalt levelsinthe atmosphere have definantly increase in the last 150years.

[Nihil Obstat]

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1305237940' post='2240647']
I don't have tolerance either for anti-free market socialist activists marketing themselves and their agendas in Catholic terms, myself.

And, sorry, but if you'd display 1/100th of the zeal for defending the Catholic Faith that you show for your rabid green ideology, maybe I'd have a little bit more respect for your viewpoint.
[/quote]
Irrelevant. Climatology is based on physical evidence. It is no more based on socialist theories or green ideologies than is meteorology or geophysics. Perhaps I am foolish to assume that participants in this discussion have a basic understanding of what science is and how it works. ([i]Zing![/i])

You have no right or reason to imply that I'm anti-free market, a socialist, or a proponent of rabid green ideology, not that any of this would be relevant. And you are especially out of line criticizing my Catholic Faith, which I have in no way appealed to anyway. Maybe you should excuse yourself from this discussion if that's how you're going to approach it.

If what you're trying to do is discredit my pov with emotionally-based insinuations of scary and sinister ideological motives, well, that's pretty cheap...

Anyway, I'm not putting forth my own ideas, or claiming that I'm an authority in any way. All I'm saying is that people should look at the scientific evidence. (In my experience most anti-GW people just spout off ridiculous and condescending talking points and have zero appreciation for the science.) I've even been so kind as to provide resources to aid in that. My own opinion of what is legit? No, I've indicated the institutions and publications that largely constitute the field of climatology.

Btw, I find your outburst of personal attacks to be intolerable and have no intention of speaking to you again.

[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1305247493' post='2240692']
L_D with all duez respect it actually [i]can[/i] be hard. Sometimes ideas that are chic among intellectual circles turn out to be pseudoscience...
[/quote]
[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1305247574' post='2240693']
So then, are you the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler who determines which sources are science and which are fluff? Let me guess, all the ones that you disagree with are fluff. In that case, NASA must be fluff.
[/quote]
Short reply:

All I'm suggesting is checking sources. And I disagree ice; in my experience pseudoscience is pretty easy to spot 90% of the time when put to some basic tests. Anyway, when was the last time that a denialist paper appeared in the journals and stood up to peer review? If you're going to deny a scientific theory that has been repeatedly confirmed you really should do so based on evidence and not mere innuendo, dubious assertions, anti-science mongering, or whatever. The authority of science is in the evidence, the methodologies, and it's self-correcting capacity. So the question is, who is doing the science? That's all there is to it. All of the major synthesis reports, reflecting the conclusions of every major research institution in the world, unanimously affirm the reality of global warming. Why? Because science follows the data.


Longer reply:

[spoiler]

To me this isn't even about AGW per se, it's more about science vs pseudoscience. Where are the academic journals, the PhD programs, the research programs, the satellites, the supercomputers, the international collaborations, etcetera? Glenn Beck? The Acton Institute? Obviously not. This doesn't mean that they can't be right about things of course. But in matters of science I find it more reasonable to turn to the collaborations of scientifically trained professionals who actually have the resources and methods to carry out the research etc.

Technical journals aside, show me one reputable source of popular science journalism that reflects GW denial. Scientific American? New Scientist? ScienceNews? National Geographic? Nope. 'Tis quite a conspiracy... No, what is much more reasonable to me is that there is a problem of science illiteracy in our society and some interest groups successfully capitalize on this. Any debate about GW or AGW is a scientific debate among collaborations of qualified scientists, it is not a matter of public discussion to be settled by the loudest pundit.

In spite of Socrates' nasty insinuation I'm not driven by a "rabid green ideology" and was on the fence about this issue for a long time (out of ignorance mostly but also trust for dubious sources who spread the misinformation and bogus attitudes). What has made me care about it is the realization that I was duped for so long and that an entire scientific community is being slandered and attacked by what in my estimation is probably reducible to a power grab and money. I hate lies and lairs. Many of the same organizations that created propaganda against the ozone hole, the harmful effects of smoking, etcetera, are the very groups now disseminating anti-GW factoids and misinformation. But I think that's another topic...

Below are some of the resources I provided to help people discern the science from the non-science. If you're a denier of global warming please provide your own list of research institutions and journals that reflect this science so that we can judge for ourselves what is legitimate. I respect "dissenting" research and interpretations that are a part of the legitimate milieu. Sure, in the history of science there have been unpopular views and dissenters who had to fight tooth and nail and were perhaps only vindicated much later, and I think rightly so in most cases. Science has to go where the data leads, period. If someone wants to turn the tables they'd better have some damm good evidence and it ought to be put to the test. Generally when the evidence is sufficiently compelling right away the science changes, and that's it. It didn't take much more than the Michelson-Morley experiment to bury the luminiferous aether for example. The "science is biased" charge is classic doubt-mongering, perhaps the prime tactic of cranks. Don't give it more weight than it deserves. But anyway...

[spoiler]
[b]Notable Climate Research Institutions[/b]

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
http://climate.nasa.gov/

National Center for Atmospheric Research
http://ncar.ucar.edu/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
http://www.climate.gov/

Center for Climate Systems Research
http://www.ccsr.columbia.edu/

The Earth Institute (Columbia University)
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/

NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/

Max Planck Society
http://www.mpg.de/en

Met Office
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/

University of Colorado
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/

University of Oxford
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/

University of Washington
http://coenv.washington.edu/

U.S. Geological Survey
http://www.usgs.gov/

Chinese Academy of Sciences
http://english.cas.cn/

U.S. Department of Agriculture
http://www.usda.gov/oce/climate_change/

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
http://www.csiro.au/

Centre national de la recherche scientifique
http://www.insu.cnrs.fr/
http://www.cnrs.fr/inee/

ETH Zurich
http://www.ethz.ch/themen/energy_and_climate_change/index_EN

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
http://www.serc.si.edu/

James Cook University
http://www.jcu.edu.au/ctbcc/

Rutgers University
http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
http://climate.llnl.gov/


[b]Notable Journals Publishing Climate Change Research[/b]

Nature
http://www.nature.com/

Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/

Global Change Biology
http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1354-1013

Journal of Climate
http://journals.ametsoc.org/loi/clim

Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/

Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
http://journals.ametsoc.org/loi/apme

Climatic Change
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h118xt925240/

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
http://www.pnas.org/

Climate Dynamics
http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geophysics/journal/382

Quaternary Science Reviews
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/636/description

Ecological Applications
http://www.esapubs.org/esapubs/journals/applications.htm

Ecology
http://www.esajournals.org/loi/ecol

International Journal of Climatology
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-0088

Earth and Planetary Science Letters
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/503328/description#description

Ecological Modelling
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/503306/description#description

Geology
http://geology.gsapubs.org/

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/503355/description#description

Paleooceanography
http://www.agu.org/journals/pa/

Global Biogeochemical Cycles
http://www.agu.org/journals/gb/

Oecologia
http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/ecology/journal/442

To recap here are the papers that I consider to be foundational for a discussion of the evidence. I'm sure an actual climate scientist would have much better recommendation, I don't claim to have a shred of climatological authority, I only claim that the following is a sample of the evidence.
[spoiler]
Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change (PDF)
http://www.behaecol.amu.edu.pl/Publications/Publications_2008/files/Nature%20453%20353-358.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/abs/nature06937.html (via Nature)
Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.


Climate change: Attributing cause and effect (related to the above)
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0808/full/453296a.html
The climate is changing, and so are aspects of the world's physical and biological systems. It is no easy matter to link cause and effect — the latest attack on the problem brings the power of meta-analysis to bear.


Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH (PDF)
http://crecherche.ulb.ac.be/facs/sciences/biol/biol/CaldeiraWickett2003.pdf
Most carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels will eventually be absorbed by the ocean, with potentially adverse consequences for marine biota. Here we quantify the changes in ocean pH that may result from this continued release of CO2 and compare these with pH changes estimated from geological and historical records. We find that oceanic absorption of CO2 from fossil fuels may result in larger pH changes over the next several centuries than any inferred from the geological record of the past 300 million years, with the possible exception of those resulting from rare, extreme events such as bolide impacts or catastrophic methane hydrate degassing


Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change
http://hal-sde.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00297882/
Methane frozen into hydrate makes up a large reservoir of potentially volatile carbon below the sea floor and associated with permafrost soils. This reservoir intuitively seems precarious, because hydrate ice floats in water, and melts at Earth surface conditions. The hydrate reservoir is so large that if 10% of the methane were released to the atmosphere within a few years, it would have an impact on the Earth's radiation budget equivalent to a factor of 10 increase in atmospheric CO2.
Hydrates are releasing methane to the atmosphere today in response to anthropogenic warming, for example along the Arctic coastline of Siberia. However most of the hydrates are located at depths in soils and ocean sediments where anthropogenic warming and any possible methane release will take place over time scales of millennia. Individual catastrophic releases like landslides and pockmark explosions are too small to reach a sizable fraction of the hydrates. The carbon isotopic excursion at the end of the Paleocene has been interpreted as the release of thousands of Gton C, possibly from hydrates, but the time scale of the release appears to have been thousands of years, chronic rather than catastrophic.


Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants (PDF)
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/TLRetal-NaturePublished.pdf
Over the past 100 years, the global average temperature has increased by approximately 0.6 °C and is projected to continue to rise at a rapid rate1. Although species have responded to climatic changes throughout their evolutionary history2, a primary concern for wild species and their ecosystems is this rapid rate of change3. We gathered information on species and global warming from 143 studies for our meta-analyses. These analyses reveal a consistent temperature-related shift, or 'fingerprint', in species ranging from molluscs to mammals and from grasses to trees. Indeed, more than 80% of the species that show changes are shifting in the direction expected on the basis of known physiological constraints of species. Consequently, the balance of evidence from these studies strongly suggests that a significant impact of global warming is already discernible in animal and plant populations. The synergism of rapid temperature rise and other stresses, in particular habitat destruction, could easily disrupt the connectedness among species and lead to a reformulation of species communities, reflecting differential changes in species, and to numerous extirpations and possibly extinctions.


Detection of Anthropogenic Climate Change in the World's Oceans
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5515/270.short
http://www.mest.ntnu.edu.tw/%5C/seminar/981/981_1006Kueh/ref.1_Detection%20of%20anthropogenic%20climate%20change%20in%20the%20world%E2%80%99s%20ocean.pdf (Full PDF here)
Large-scale increases in the heat content of the world's oceans have been observed to occur over the last 45 years. The horizontal and temporal character of these changes has been closely replicated by the state-of-the-art Parallel Climate Model (PCM) forced by observed and estimated anthropogenic gases. Application of optimal detection methodology shows that the model-produced signals are indistinguishable from the observations at the 0.05 confidence level. Further, the chances of either the anthropogenic or observed signals being produced by the PCM as a result of natural, internal forcing alone are less than 5%. This suggests that the observed ocean heat-content changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic forcing, which broadens the basis for claims that an anthropogenic signal has been detected in the global climate system. Additionally, the requirement that modeled ocean heat uptakes match observations puts a strong, new constraint on anthropogenically forced climate models. It is unknown if the current generation of climate models, other than the PCM, meet this constraint.


Global phytoplankton decline over the past century (PDF)
http://www.fmap.ca/ramweb/papers-total/Boyce_etal_2010.pdf
In the oceans, ubiquitous microscopic phototrophs (phytoplankton) account for approximately half the production of organic matter on Earth. Analyses of satellite-derived phytoplankton concentration (available since 1979) have suggested decadal-scale fluctuations linked to climate forcing, but the length of this record is insufficient to resolve longer-term trends. Here we combine available ocean transparency measurements and in situ chlorophyll observations to estimate the time dependence of phytoplankton biomass at local, regional and global scales since 1899. We observe declines in eight out of ten ocean regions, and estimate a global rate of decline of ~1% of the global median per year. Our analyses further reveal interannual to decadal phytoplankton fluctuations superimposed on long-term trends. These fluctuations are strongly correlated with basin-scale climate indices, whereas long-term declining trends are related to increasing sea surface temperatures. We conclude that global phytoplankton concentration has declined over the past century; this decline will need to be considered in future studies of marine ecosystems, geochemical cycling, ocean circulation and fisheries.


A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems (PDF)
http://biology.ucf.edu/~rnoss/papers/Parmesan%20and%20Yohe%202003.pdf
Causal attribution of recent biological trends to climate change is complicated because non-climatic influences dominate local, short-term biological changes. Any underlying signal from climate change is likely to be revealed by analyses that seek systematic trends across diverse species and geographic regions; however, debates within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveal several definitions of a 'systematic trend'. Here, we explore these differences, apply diverse analyses to more than 1,700 species, and show that recent biological trends match climate change predictions. Global meta-analyses documented significant range shifts averaging 6.1 km per decade towards the poles (or metres per decade upward), and significant mean advancement of spring events by 2.3 days per decade. We define a diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial 'sign-switching' responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends. Among appropriate long-term/large-scale/multi-species data sets, this diagnostic fingerprint was found for 279 species. This suite of analyses generates 'very high confidence' (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.


Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model (PDF)
http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~keller/courses/esm202/AccelerationGlobalWarming.pdf
The continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide due to anthropogenic emissions is predicted to lead to significant changes in climate1. About half of the current emissions are being absorbed by the ocean and by land ecosystems2, but this absorption is sensitive to climate3, 4 as well as to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations5, creating a feedback loop. General circulation models have generally excluded the feedback between climate and the biosphere, using static vegetation distributions and CO2 concentrations from simple carbon-cycle models that do not include climate change6. Here we present results from a fully coupled, three-dimensional carbon–climate model, indicating that carbon-cycle feedbacks could significantly accelerate climate change over the twenty-first century. We find that under a 'business as usual' scenario, the terrestrial biosphere acts as an overall carbon sink until about 2050, but turns into a source thereafter. By 2100, the ocean uptake rate of 5 Gt C yr-1 is balanced by the terrestrial carbon source, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are 250 p.p.m.v. higher in our fully coupled simulation than in uncoupled carbon models2, resulting in a global-mean warming of 5.5 K, as compared to 4 K without the carbon-cycle feedback.


Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change (PDF)
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/mallen0001.pdf
Forecasts of climate change are inevitably uncertain. It is therefore essential to quantify the risk of significant departures from the predicted response to a given emission scenario. Previous analyses of this risk have been based either on expert opinion1, perturbation analysis of simplified climate models2, 3, 4, 5 or the comparison of predictions from general circulation models6. Recent observed changes that appear to be attributable to human influence7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 provide a powerful constraint on the uncertainties in multi-decadal forecasts. Here we assess the range of warming rates over the coming 50 years that are consistent with the observed near-surface temperature record as well as with the overall patterns of response predicted by several general circulation models. We expect global mean temperatures in the decade 2036–46 to be 1–2.5 K warmer than in pre-industrial times under a 'business as usual' emission scenario. This range is relatively robust to errors in the models' climate sensitivity, rate of oceanic heat uptake or global response to sulphate aerosols as long as these errors are persistent over time. Substantial changes in the current balance of greenhouse warming and sulphate aerosol cooling would, however, increase the uncertainty. Unlike 50-year warming rates, the final equilibrium warming after the atmospheric composition stabilizes remains very uncertain, despite the evidence provided by the emerging signal.


Natural and anthropogenic climate change: incorporating historical land cover change, vegetation dynamics and the global carbon cycle (PDF)
http://www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/matthewsetal2004.pdf
This study explores natural and anthropogenic influences on the climate system, with an emphasis on the biogeophysical and biogeochemical effects of historical land cover change. The biogeophysical effect of land cover change is first subjected to a detailed sensitivity analysis in the context of the UVic Earth System Climate Model, a global climate model of intermediate complexity. Results show a global cooling in the range of –0.06 to –0.22 °C, though this effect is not found to be detectable in observed temperature trends. We then include the effects of natural forcings (volcanic aerosols, solar insolation variability and orbital changes) and other anthropogenic forcings (greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols). Transient model runs from the year 1700 to 2000 are presented for each forcing individually as well as for combinations of forcings. We find that the UVic Model reproduces well the global temperature data when all forcings are included. These transient experiments are repeated using a dynamic vegetation model coupled interactively to the UVic Model. We find that dynamic vegetation acts as a positive feedback in the climate system for both the all-forcings and land cover change only model runs. Finally, the biogeochemical effect of land cover change is explored using a dynamically coupled inorganic ocean and terrestrial carbon cycle model. The carbon emissions from land cover change are found to enhance global temperatures by an amount that exceeds the biogeophysical cooling. The net effect of historical land cover change over this period is to increase global temperature by 0.15 °C.


Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
The evolution of the Earth's climate has been extensively studied1, 2, and a strong link between increases in surface temperatures and greenhouse gases has been established3, 4. But this relationship is complicated by several feedback processes—most importantly the hydrological cycle—that are not well understood5, 6, 7. Changes in the Earth's greenhouse effect can be detected from variations in the spectrum of outgoing longwave radiation8, 9, 10, which is a measure of how the Earth cools to space and carries the imprint of the gases that are responsible for the greenhouse effect11, 12, 13. Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.


Radiative forcing - measured at Earth’s surface - corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect (PDF)
http://www.slf.ch/ueber/mitarbeiter/homepages/marty/publications/Philipona2004_IncreasingGhE_GRL.pdf
The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and radiative forcing to increase as a result of human activities. Nevertheless, changes in radiative forcing related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations could not be experimentally detected at Earth's surface so far. Here we show that atmospheric longwave downward radiation significantly increased (+5.2(2.2) Wm−2) partly due to increased cloud amount (+1.0(2.8) Wm−2) over eight years of measurements at eight radiation stations distributed over the central Alps. Model calculations show the cloud-free longwave flux increase (+4.2(1.9) Wm−2) to be in due proportion with temperature (+0.82(0.41) °C) and absolute humidity (+0.21(0.10) g m−3) increases, but three times larger than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gases. However, after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm−2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.

[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Insofar as your claims derive from the above, or are valid and relevant in the current scientific discourse, you're doing something right. Dissent has to be justified and based on evidence. I have not put forth any "opinions" or "theories" of my own on the science. Even if I were a professional climate scientist active in climate change research I would not do so without properly qualifying it as my opinion. If a professional climatologist were to approach me right now and say, "hey, look at this data from such and such, I think this falsifies AGW!", that would be pretty exciting and scientifically significant, but he or she would have to submit it for peer review, it would have to be explained in light of all the other evidence and phenomena, and we'd have to wait for independent confirmations.

But as far as discerning junk science, sure, there are many cases in which it is not clear-cut, but in the vast majority of cases, for issues such as global warming vs denialists, or evolution vs creationist "science," I find it to be as simple as checking the source(s) of a claim. If a source is merely journalistic then that source ought to have its own sources. If there are no deeper sources I can't check it then I don't find it compelling. It is anecdotal at best.

Anyway, the second part of my meaning with the "doc dump" was the following:

[spoiler]
[b]Exxon-Funded Outlets of Denial[/b]

Acton Institute (membership includes Michael Novak of First Things and National Review)
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Cato Institute (of Penn & Teller fame; also Pat Michaels)
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Committee for Economic Development
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Foundation for American Communications
Frontiers of Freedom
George C. Marshall Foundation
Reason Foundation

Source:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon-Funded_Skeptics
Full report here:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

Of interest:
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX3y6BQd4LI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX3y6BQd4LI[/url]
And
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXyTpY0NCp0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXyTpY0NCp0[/url]

[spoiler]
[b]Further Reading[/b]

Expert credibility in climate change
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.abstract
Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers


The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism (PDF)
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/envs501/downloads/Jacques%20et%20al.%202008.pdf
Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed ‘sceptics’ claim to be unbiased analysts combating ‘junk science’. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks (CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection


Balance as bias: global warming andthe US prestige press (PDF)
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/boykoff04-gec.pdf
This paper demonstrates that US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse. This failed discursive translation results from an accumulation of tactical media responses and practices guided by widely accepted journalistic norms. Through content analysis of US prestige press— meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, andthe Wall Street Journal this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming andresultant action.


How much should the public know about climate science? (PDF)
http://www.cmmap.org/news/docs/SomervilleClimaticChange2010.pdf
The article in this issue of Climatic Change, by Shepardson et al., “Student Conceptions about the Greenhouse Effect, Global Warming, and Climate Change,” is more than a science education assessment study. This article confirms and adds to our understanding of what the broad public does and does not know about the science of climate change, and it raises several important questions. The subset of the public sampled in this research consists of 51 students, 39 in junior high school and 12 in high school, all of whom attend schools in small rural communities in the mi -western United States. We are told only a few other facts about these 51 students, such as that they completed the assessment study, “prior to any classroom instruction on the greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change.”


The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
Policy-makers and the public who are not members of the relevant research community have had to form opinions about the reality of global climate change on the basis of often conflicting descriptions provided by the media regarding the level of scientific certainty attached to studies of climate. In this Essay, Oreskes analyzes the existing scientific literature to show that there is a robust consensus that anthropogenic global climate change is occurring. Thus, despite claims sometimes made by some groups that there is not good evidence that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, the scientific community is in overwhelming agreement that such evidence is clear and persuasive.


Testing Time for Climate Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5979/695.full
On 31 March 2010, a British parliamentary committee exonerated Philip D. Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, of personal wrongdoing in his conduct and management of research. Climate science fared less well. The Science and Technology Committee concluded in its report that the focus on a single individual had been misplaced: “we consider that Professor Jones's actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community” (1). Those practices included routine refusals to share raw data and computer codes. The committee judged that this had to change and that all future raw data and methodological work should be publicly disclosed.


A slippery slope: How much global warming constitutes "dangerous anthropogenic interference"? (PDF)
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen.pdf
Are we on a slippery slope now? Can human-made global warming cause ice sheet melting measured in meters of sea level rise, not centimeters, and can this occur in centuries, not millennia? Can the very inertia of the ice sheets, which protects us from rapid sea level change now, become our bêete noire as portions of the ice sheet begin to accelerate, making it practically impossible to avoid disaster for coastal regions?


American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous? (PDF)
http://anthonyleiserowitz.com/pubs_assets/AmericanRiskPerceptions.pdf
Public risk perceptions can fundamentally compel or constrain political, economic, and social action to address particular risks. Public support or opposition to climate policies (e.g., treaties, regulations, taxes, subsidies) will be greatly influenced by public perceptions of the risks and dangers posed by global climate change. This article describes results from a national study (2003) that examined the risk perceptions and connotative meanings of global warming in the American mind and found that Americans perceived climate change as a moderate risk that will predominantly impact geographically and temporally distant people and places. This research also identified several distinct interpretive communities, including naysayers and alarmists, with widely divergent perceptions of climate change risks. Thus, “dangerous” climate change is a concept contested not only among scientists and policymakers, but among the American public as well.


Managing the risks of climate thresholds: uncertainties and information needs (PDF)
http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~kzk10/Keller_cc_07.pdf
Human activities are driving atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations beyond levels experienced by previous civilizations. The uncertainty surrounding our understanding of the resulting climate change poses nontrivial challenges for the design and implementation of strategies to manage the associated risks. One challenge stems from the fact that the climate system can react abruptly and with only subtle warning signs before climate thresholds have been crossed (Stocker 1999; Alley et al. 2003). Model predictions suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions increase the likelihood of crossing these thresholds (Cubasch and Meehl 2001; Yohe et al. 2006). Coping with deep uncertainty in our understanding of the mechanisms, locations, and impacts of climate thresholds presents another challenge. Deep uncertainty presents itself when the relevant range of systems models and the associated probability density functions for their parameterizations are unknown and/or when decision-makers strongly disagree on their formulations (Lempert 2002). Furthermore, the requirements for creating feasible observation and modeling systems that could deliver confident and timely prediction of impending threshold crossings are mostly unknown. These challenges put a new emphasis on the analysis, design, and implementation of Earth observation systems and strategies to manage the risks of potential climate threshold responses.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
One can insinuate that the scientific community is in some way analogous to the eugenics movement but without evidence this is pretty meaningless, and probably slanderous. More anti-science fear-mongering?
Beware of scientism? Whatever you mean by that. Scientism seems to be to be little more than a buzz word that people throw around when they don't like a given scientific theory. Fortunately this issue isn't all that complex and convoluted with profound religious and philosophical implications. lol. Global warming is a legitimate, evidence-based scientific theory that has been repeatedly confirmed. The factuality of this isn't a matter of public armchair debate. If you disagree with this scientific consensus you'd better have some serious evidence that has passed peer review. Seriously, if you're someone willing to publicly proclaim that global warming is bunk, is a hoax, is refuted, is "suspect", etc., you really should be speaking from the best available scientific information. If you want to say, "look, this particular scientist suggests that .... and therefore AGW may not be contributing to .... etcetera" that is just fine. It would be nice to have something concrete to examine.

[spoiler]
[b]Supplement[/b]

Michael Shermer's Sagan-inspired "Ten Questions" are always helpful to ask:

[list=1]

[*]How reliable is the source of the claim?
[*]Does the source make similar claims?
[*]Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
[*]Does this fit with the way the world works?
[*]Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
[*]Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
[*]Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
[*]Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
[*]Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
[*]Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
[/list]


Also of interest:
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

[/spoiler]

Claims that the field of climatology is hopelessly corrupt, conspiratorial, and biased constitute a cheap obscurantist tactic imo. Evidence aside, science is bigger than the sum of the individual scientists doing the work. The methodologies of science will prevail in spite of the biases of individuals. Heliocentrism has prevailed, because it's true; evolution has prevailed, because it's true; atomic theory; germ theory; plate tectonics; etcetera. And junk "sciences," such as racial eugenics, the fabricated "science" of the tobacco industry, or the "intelligent design" theory of certain ideologically-motivated think tanks, ultimately fail. As Michael Shermer is fond of saying, "science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works." Indeed.
[/spoiler]

P.S. If you're not open to the possibility that global warming is true, or you believe that the climatological community is perpetrating an elaborate fraud on the world for some reason, please don't bother responding to me, I don't want to talk to you. Thanks.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Papist]

[img]http://www.oism.org/pproject/Slides/Presentation/Slide1.png[/img]

Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, with time resolution of 50 to 100 years and ending in 1975, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea. The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000-year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean. A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.

[MithLuin]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1305261179' post='2240731']
What's cobalt doing in the atmosphere?
[img]http://pt.chemicalstore.com/images/thumbnails/cobalt.gif[/img]
[/quote]

In yer atmosphere, makin yer sky blue



But no, seriously, of course there are many other factors that affect climate. It's never going to be just [i]one[/i] thing that does anything. It's all these different factors, working together, that produces a net result. The sun does not output a fixed amount of heat...there are fluctuations there. The oceans vary. The atmosphere varies. The albedo of the earth's surface varies. Etc. What drives a shift in the climate one time may not be the major factor driving the shift the next time. In fact, it would be surprising if the same thing that caused an Ice Age also caused the Medieval Warm Period.

We [i]do[/i] know that the levels of CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere are higher now than they have been in recent history. This increase has been going on for over a hundred years. So....

1) Human activities, including burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, etc) and deforestation (clearing land for farming) have contributed to more carbon being put into the atmosphere than in previous centuries.

2) Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contribute to more heat being trapped by the greenhouse effect.

3) So, the net human impact has been to contribute to any climate change in the warming direction.

4) Since fossil fuels contain carbon that has spent millions of years locked in the ground, suddenly releasing it all into the atmosphere can have a significant and geologically [b]sudden[/b] effect.

Massive changes in a short amount of time tend to have a profound effect on living things, leading to a bottleneck and mass extinction event. Even avoiding something that serious, major changes can be expected in what is able to live where.

Not a reason for hysteria and dire hyperbole, but certainly not a reason to clap hands on ears and say 'lalala' either.

It's always good to be aware of what the possibilities are, and to do what we can to consider the consequences of our actions.

Eventually, this will be a moot point. Once you cut down all the rainforests and burn all the fossil fuels, you've hit the end of the road. Changes in how we do things will have to come eventually, whether we like it or not, because our modern lifestyles are not sustainable. I guess the only question is whether we adapt gradually over the next hundred years or so, or suddenly when we are forced to.



[b]Papist[/b], as you can see, a couple of degrees Celsius in ocean temperature can have a pretty profound effect on climate. Any changes at all are worth monitoring.

Edited May 13, 2011 by MithLuin

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1305289638' post='2240800']
[img]http://www.oism.org/pproject/Slides/Presentation/Slide1.png[/img]

Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, with time resolution of 50 to 100 years and ending in 1975, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea. The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000-year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean. A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.
[/quote]
I'm not really sure what you're trying to assert with this but I'll reply nonetheless.

Short reply:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?

Your source, namely [url="http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm"]The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine[/url], is a well-established outlet of quackery. Sorry.

2. Does the source make similar claims?

Yes, they've reprinted that article several times and they organized that deceptive "scientist petitions" against global warming, among other things. They engage in other questionable endeavors such as the crackpot journal [i]Galilean Electrodynamics[/i]. More in the longer reply. But why is this question important? Well, if a person or organization seems susceptible to pseudoscience and quackery in other areas this can be a pretty good clue that maybe their science in this case isn't legit. I mean, if someone is a heretic when it comes to physics, medicine, etcetera, is it really likely that they are more enlightened than the scientific community in all these fields? Maybe there is something else going on.
It also may be of interest to mention that Seitz is affiliated with the Exxon-funded Marshall Institute (one of the more disastrous "think tanks") and has worked on behalf of the tobacco industry to deny the health impacts of smoking.

3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?

Some of the "claims" are probably uncontroversial. The graph above, although it is embarrassingly incorrect in some ways (e.g, Before Present dates in paleo-records refer to before 1950 AD not the present day, the 2006 plotted value is incorrect, etc), is based upon legitimate, albeit old, scientific research (nice of them to cherry pick that single figure when there is so much data available; real climate scientists examine compilations). That article was most recently published in a dubious journal called [i]Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons[/i] (funny place for a climate science paper) and [url="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf"]here you will find a reply[/url] that was printed in the same journal. I guess this counts as peer review. lol.

Anyway, this is supposed to be the short reply.

Longer reply:

[spoiler]
What you posted was adapted by OISM from the paper [url="Here is is: http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/others/keigwin_sargasso.pdf"]The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea[/url], by Lloyd D. Keigwin, published in [i]Science[/i] back in 1996. This paper reflects legitimate scientific research. What should be noted is that the Sargasso Sea constitutes less than 1% of the surface of the Earth and to draw global conclusions from this is cracked. That paper is the tip of the iceberg as far as climate data is concerned. I don't know how important (if at all) that Keigwin paper actually is but here are a few more recent things that reference it: [spoiler]
[url="http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Loehle-2000-year-non-treering-temp-reconstruction-Energy-and-Environment.pdf"]A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies[/url]
[url="http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/medclimopt.pdf"]Medieval Climatic Optimum[/url]
[url="http://www.springerlink.com/content/677kx61w6812gx81/"]The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and simulated climatic variability[/url]
[url="http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1579/0044-7447-29.1.51"]How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?[/url]
[url="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4011.1"]Detection of Human Influence on a New, Validated 1500-Year Temperature Reconstruction[/url][/spoiler]


Here is what Jim Lippard (a contributor to Skeptic Magazine and National Center for Science Education) has to say about The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine:

[quote]Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM)

The Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM), a private research organization run by Arthur Robinson and his two sons Noah and Zachary Robinson, was founded in 1980. The OISM faculty listed on their website are the three Robinsons, Martin D. Kamen (a deceased chemist), R. Bruce Merrifield (a deceased chemist), Fred Westall (a biochemistry professor), Carl Boehme (who has an M.S. in electrical engineering), and Jane Orient (a medical doctor). The OISM sells DVDs on “nuclear war survival skills” and civil defense, as well as a home schooling curriculum, and has taken over the publication of the late Petr Beckmann’s Access to Energy newsletter which defends nuclear energy and now also criticizes AGW. (Beckmann was a physicist who became an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, and in addition to promoting nuclear energy also challenged Einstein’s relativity and published a journal for that purpose called Galilean Electrodynamics.)

The OISM Petition Project was set up to oppose U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Treaty and currently has over 31,000 signatures of Americans with degrees in a scientific subject. The initial call for signatures was sent out with a letter from Frederick Seitz while he was still president of the National Academies of Science, along with a 12-page “Research Review of Global Warming Evidence” by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon which was formatted to look like a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. The petition was originally billed as a “survey,” but it has not been reported how many solicitations were sent out compared to how many were returned, nor how many scientists disagreed with the statements on the petition (as pointed out by Gary Whittenberger in eSkeptic). The signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent. By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science. The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field. (Blogger Chris Colose has looked at a subsample of names on the petition, without finding any with climate-related publications.)

One of the other “faculty” at the OISM is Dr. Jane Orient, M.D., of Tucson, Arizona, whom I’ve heard speak in opposition to AGW. She is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative organization that publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS). This journal published an anti-AGW articles by Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willie Soon (2007), and by Arthur Robinson, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary Robinson (1998), as well as articles opposing vaccination of children, claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that homosexuality causes crime and disease, opposing fluoridation of water, accusing the FDA of fraud for banning DDT, and criticizing the theory of evolution (see evaluations by Kathleen Seidel and Orac). The Robinson et al. (1998) article is apparently a version of the article originally distributed with the Oregon Petition, and another anti-AGW article by the same authors was published in the journal Climate Research (Soon et al. 1998). Arthur Robinson has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech and was an associate of Linus Pauling. Noah Robinson also has a chemistry Ph.D. from Caltech, and Zachary Robinson is a veterinarian with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. None has relevant climate science expertise.

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (1980 Ph.D., astrophysics) are astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who study solar variability, both have also been associated with the George C. Marshall Institute and the Heartland Institute; Soon is the chief science advisor for the Science and Public Policy Institute (above). Baliunas received the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP), a group associated with OISM (Jane Orient is president of DDP). In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an anti-AGW article (arguing that warming was due to solar variation) in Climate Research that led to protests from 13 of the authors cited that their work had been misrepresented and misused. Subsequently the new editor-in-chief, Hans van Storch, resigned along with two other editors when the publisher refused to print an editorial about improvements in the journal review process. Baliunas' fourth-most-cited paper has 230 citations; Soon’s has 68. Timothy J. Osborn and Keith R. Briffa (2006) repeated Soon and Baliunas’ methodology in a paper published in Science that did not reproduce their results. Osborn and Briffa are both climate scientists associated with the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University; Osborn's (1995 Ph.D., environmental sciences) fourth-most-cited paper has received 152 citations and Briffa's (1984 Ph.D., dendroclimatologist) has received 250.

I've given special attention to OISM and AAPS because of the extent of crankery associated with them.[/quote]

If you want to know why that OISM paper doesn't get much play in the legit journals here are some clues (in sum it is a load of cr[s][/s]ap and pseudoscience):

[url="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf"]Analysis by Michael MacCracken of the paper “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon[/url]

[url="http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/10/critical-review-of-robinson-robinson.html"]Critical Review of Robinson, Robinson, and Soon's "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide"[/url]

[url="http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm0.HTM"]A Global Warming Counterfeit[/url]

[url="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine"]Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (on Source Watch)[/url]

[url="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/the_journal_of_american_physicians_and_s.php"]Here's a little something about that weird journal[/url]


No offense, but the synthesis reports strike me as considerably more reliable and informative. A much better source of information on climate change is [i]Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis[/i], from the IPCC.

[url="http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf"]Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change (PDF)[/url]

In my last post I said, "if you're a denier of global warming please provide your own list of research institutions and journals that reflect this science so that we can judge for ourselves what is legitimate." Let's begin this list with the following:

[b]Notable Climate Change Denial Institutions?[/b]

[url="http://www.oism.org/"]The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine[/url]

[b]Notable Journals Publishing Climate Change Denial[/b]

[url="http://www.jpands.org/"]Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons[/url]

What do you think Papist? Is this a legitimate and preferable scientific counter-establishment?
[/spoiler]

Edited May 13, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Papist]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1305301294' post='2240875']
I'm not really sure what you're trying to assert with this but I'll reply nonetheless.

Short reply:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?

Your source, namely [url="http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm"]The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine[/url], is a well-established outlet of quackery. Sorry.

2. Does the source make similar claims?

Yes, they've reprinted that article several times and they organized that deceptive "scientist petitions" against global warming, among other things. They engage in other questionable endeavors such as the crackpot journal [i]Galilean Electrodynamics[/i]. More in the longer reply. But why is this question important? Well, if a person or organization seems susceptible to pseudoscience and quackery in other areas this can be a pretty good clue that maybe their science in this case isn't legit. I mean, if someone is a heretic when it comes to physics, medicine, etcetera, is it really likely that they are more enlightened than the scientific community in all these fields? Maybe there is something else going on.
It also may be of interest to mention that Seitz is affiliated with the Exxon-funded Marshall Institute (one of the more disastrous "think tanks") and has worked on behalf of the tobacco industry to deny the health impacts of smoking.

3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?

Some of the "claims" are probably uncontroversial. The graph above, although it is embarrassingly incorrect in some ways (e.g, Before Present dates in paleo-records refer to before 1950 AD not the present day, the 2006 plotted value is incorrect, etc), is based upon legitimate, albeit old, scientific research (nice of them to cherry pick that single figure when there is so much data available; real climate scientists examine compilations). That article was most recently published in a dubious journal called [i]Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons[/i] (funny place for a climate science paper) and [url="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf"]here you will find a reply[/url] that was printed in the same journal. I guess this counts as peer review. lol.

Anyway, this is supposed to be the short reply.

Longer reply:

[spoiler]
What you posted was adapted by OISM from the paper The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea, by Lloyd D. Keigwin, published in [i]Science[/i] back in 1996. This paper reflects legitimate scientific research. What should be noted is that the Sargasso Sea constitutes less than 1% of the surface of the Earth and to draw global conclusions from this is cracked. That paper is the tip of the iceberg as far as climate data is concerned. I don't know how important (if at all) that Keigwin paper actually is but here are a few more recent things that reference it: [spoiler]
[url="http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Loehle-2000-year-non-treering-temp-reconstruction-Energy-and-Environment.pdf"]A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies[/url]
[url="http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/medclimopt.pdf"]Medieval Climatic Optimum[/url]
[url="http://www.springerlink.com/content/677kx61w6812gx81/"]The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and simulated climatic variability[/url]
[url="http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1579/0044-7447-29.1.51"]How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?[/url]
[url="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4011.1"]Detection of Human Influence on a New, Validated 1500-Year Temperature Reconstruction[/url][/spoiler]


Here is what Jim Lippard (a contributor to Skeptic Magazine and National Center for Science Education) has to say about The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine:



If you want to know why that OISM paper doesn't get much play in the legit journals here are some clues (in sum it is a load of croutons and pseudoscience):

[url="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf"]Analysis by Michael MacCracken of the paper “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon[/url]

[url="http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/10/critical-review-of-robinson-robinson.html"]Critical Review of Robinson, Robinson, and Soon's "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide"[/url]

[url="http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm0.HTM"]A Global Warming Counterfeit[/url]

[url="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine"]Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (on Source Watch)[/url]

[url="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/the_journal_of_american_physicians_and_s.php"]Here's a little something about that weird journal[/url]


No offense, but the synthesis reports strike me as considerably more reliable and informative. A much better source of information on climate change is [i]Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis[/i], from the IPCC.

[url="http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf"]Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change (PDF)[/url]

In my last post I said, "if you're a denier of global warming please provide your own list of research institutions and journals that reflect this science so that we can judge for ourselves what is legitimate." Let's begin this list with the following:

[b]Notable Climate Change Denial Institutions?[/b]

[url="http://www.oism.org/"]The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine[/url]

[b]Notable Journals Publishing Climate Change Denial[/b]

[url="http://www.jpands.org/"]Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons[/url]

What do you think Papist? Is this a legitimate and preferable scientific counter-establishment?
[/spoiler]
[/quote]
Exchanging links is not going accomplish anything. I am not saying that nothing is going on. Global Warming/Global Cooling/Climate Change/etc is nothing new. It has been around since God created Earth. Both sides give a litany of research data, and I have yet to hear/read any concrete evidence that man is causing any catastrophic global temperature fluctuations. That said, I do believe mankind could be a bit more responsible in their stewardship of Earth.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1305302845' post='2240886']
Exchanging links is not going accomplish anything. I am not saying that nothing is going on. Global Warming/Global Cooling/Climate Change/etc is nothing new. It has been around since God created Earth. Both sides give a litany of research data, and I have yet to hear/read any concrete evidence that man is causing any catastrophic global temperature fluctuations. That said, I do believe mankind could be a bit more responsible in their stewardship of Earth.
[/quote]
Exchanging links? Do you really see it that way? Clearly I've been wasting my time anyway. Bye.

[Lil Red]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1305237940' post='2240647']
And, sorry, but if you'd display 1/100th of the zeal for defending the Catholic Faith that you show for your rabid green ideology, maybe I'd have a little bit more respect for your viewpoint.
[/quote]
i was with you up until this point.

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1305295707' post='2240831']
In yer atmosphere, makin yer sky blue



But no, seriously, of course there are many other factors that affect climate. It's never going to be just [i]one[/i] thing that does anything. It's all these different factors, working together, that produces a net result. The sun does not output a fixed amount of heat...there are fluctuations there. The oceans vary. The atmosphere varies. The albedo of the earth's surface varies. Etc. What drives a shift in the climate one time may not be the major factor driving the shift the next time. In fact, it would be surprising if the same thing that caused an Ice Age also caused the Medieval Warm Period.

We [i]do[/i] know that the levels of CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere are higher now than they have been in recent history. This increase has been going on for over a hundred years. So....

1) Human activities, including burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, etc) and deforestation (clearing land for farming) have contributed to more carbon being put into the atmosphere than in previous centuries.

2) Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contribute to more heat being trapped by the greenhouse effect.

3) So, the net human impact has been to contribute to any climate change in the warming direction.

4) Since fossil fuels contain carbon that has spent millions of years locked in the ground, suddenly releasing it all into the atmosphere can have a significant and geologically [b]sudden[/b] effect.

Massive changes in a short amount of time tend to have a profound effect on living things, leading to a bottleneck and mass extinction event. Even avoiding something that serious, major changes can be expected in what is able to live where.

Not a reason for hysteria and dire hyperbole, but certainly not a reason to clap hands on ears and say 'lalala' either.

It's always good to be aware of what the possibilities are, and to do what we can to consider the consequences of our actions.

Eventually, this will be a moot point. Once you cut down all the rainforests and burn all the fossil fuels, you've hit the end of the road. Changes in how we do things will have to come eventually, whether we like it or not, because our modern lifestyles are not sustainable. I guess the only question is whether we adapt gradually over the next hundred years or so, or suddenly when we are forced to.



[b]Papist[/b], as you can see, a couple of degrees Celsius in ocean temperature can have a pretty profound effect on climate. Any changes at all are worth monitoring.
[/quote]


Are you really arguing that sit is legitement in scientific investigation, or any investigation to assume a novel causation without elimination of known previous causes for that phenomena?